Horse Training: What Your Horse's Rear End Can Tell You about His Head

A while back I wrote a blog post about how your horse's tail can tell tales. In short, the flexibility of your horse's tail tells you something about the flexibility of his personality ... or of his ability to transition easily from one activity or career to another.

Now I have a follow up chapter to that story. As I mentioned in that previous post, Walker's tail was unbending, and he very much disliked me "playing" with it. It's now a few months later, life has changed for Walker, he has a new career ... and his tail reflects a fundamental change in his personality.

What's Been Happening with Walker?
Since my first post about the tails a few months ago, Walker has continued to grow and learn in his new career as a roping horse. You might recall that when we first started in roping training, Walker was terrified of the lariat because he had been roped as a 3-year-old, much to his terror.

Several horse training sessions with very slow rope work, along with very regular doses of the herbal supplement Eleviv, have changed Walker. I would give Walker 2 capsules of Eleviv daily, and then 2-4 capsules of Eleviv before we went for roping practice. It worked wonders. He went from bolting at top speed to get away from the rope to simply accepting the rope.

He has also become a thinking horse. Being a heeling horse, it's important for Walker to stop in his tracks the moment he sees me throw my rope. Otherwise, the chances of him getting a front leg caught in the loop are high. Earlier in his roping training, we had not been as careful about stopping as soon as I threw the rope. Sure enough, I caught his front foot with my loop.

What was really cool is that instead of bolting, Walker just stopped. He froze, and waited for Dusty, our instructor, to release him from the loop. That's the reaction of a thinking horse who is operating from his healthy parasympathetic nervous system, not the reactive bolt of a horse coming from his "fight or flight" sympathetic nervous system. I was impressed. What was even cooler was that thereafter, Walker always stopped when he saw the lariat leave my hand. He "learned" rather than "reacted."

What's Up with Walker's Tail
A few days ago, I took Walker to another roping clinic. This was the first time we worked outdoors. We worked on standing quietly in the boxes while watching the chute open and close. The chute is pneumatic so it makes a hissing sound every time it opens or closes. It also clangs like a son of a gun! A lot of horses at the clinic hated the thing on sight!

Since this scenario contained a ton of new horse training elements (including steers at the far end of the arena), I wondered how Walker would be. I tried to give him his Eleviv before we left, but he refused to take it. When I finally forced it into his mouth, he spit and spit and spit. I trust his instincts so I simply loaded him into the trailer and away we went.

I was concerned that with so many new elements in the outdoor arena and no Eleviv, Walker would be a basket case. He wasn't. In fact, it was just the opposite. He was the star of the clinic. He was one of only two horses who would stand quietly and correctly in the box, then move quietly out of the box to chase the Robosteer, and get into position for me to toss the rope. This was the case even when the wind started kicking at gale force winds.

I was amazed ... practically agog with surprise. I had to find out what was going on.

As soon as I had him unloaded at home, I tied him to the trailer and messed with his tail. To my surprise, his previously inflexible "stiff as a board tail" was now soft and flexible. He didn't mind me bending it, swiveling it, or gently twisting it.

I thought maybe it was a fluke so I tried it again the next day. Same deal. Soft tail. So now, I'm beginning to think that with the help of our "going slow is faster" horse training methods, along with the months of Eleviv, Walker has fundamentally changed in character. No longer is he a reactive and fearful horse. He is now a thinking, accepting, and trusting horse.

He was able to accept all the elements of the outdoor arena with ease and grace, and he NEVER lost his cool. How cool is that?

So now I believe that I can "read" more about what's going in my horse's brain by "feeling" the flexibility of his tail. His tail does tell me tales! I love it. Now, of course, I have to go play with all the horses in the pasture to see if this is true, but I am like a bloodhound who is onto a scent ... I won't let go of this topic until I verify my hypothesis.

What about y'all? Have you played with this? Tried it? Gotten any results other than a pile of poop at your feet?

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Horse Training: Blink Blink Equals Think Think

Did you know that in horse speak blinking equals thinking? It does. So do ear twitching, trembling lips, and faster breathing.

Horses can't speak to us in words so they use body language, and you can read a horse like a book if you know their language. There are lots of horse training manuals out there by big-name horse trainers who detail all of this, and yet it's always so much clearer when it happens to you and your horse.

A Horse Training Example of Blinking and Thinking
I've been slowly preparing my quarter horse gelding, Walker, for a roping clinic that is starting soon. Every clinic participant was sent a "how to prep your horse for roping" manual. This manual, provided by Mary Duke and Dusty Healy of Stirrup Cup Farm, offers step by step instructions on how to accustom your horse to the rope.

The manual features really simple instructions, big pictures, and lots of explanation. All of this should have been easy to do with Walker, except for one vital fact: Walker had been roped to be caught as a three-year-old. He had to be roped because his former owner had dropped him off at the reining trainer's place without bothering to halter break him.

The trainer had to rope Walker to catch him. Once caught, Walker was gelded, shod, and put into intense training. It's no wonder Walker associates a rope, or lariat, with "bad news"!

Well, Walker and I did fine on the groundwork preparatory exercises, but when I got in the saddle and lifted the rope off the saddle horn, Walker lost it. He ran like a bat out of hell and only skidded to a 10-foot sliding stop when he encountered a panel he couldn't jump. Yikes.

Off we went to Mary and Dusty's for some help. We started back at the groundwork level. Walker let me touch him all over with the rope, but when I started to swing the whole lariat gently at my side, he got upset and threw his head up. Mary told me to keep swinging my rope in the same rhythm and look for "signs" that Walker was thinking. These included:

- blinking - faster breathing - twitching his ears - trembling lips

Whenever Walker showed these signs of thinking, I would stop swinging the rope and praise him. Within a few cycles of thinking, praising, and resuming my exercises, Walker would offer a release, which included any of the following behaviors:

- moving his feet - licking and chewing - snorting - yawning - taking a deep breath - shaking his head and/or whole body - dropping his head

The whole process was fascinating. When I tuned into these signs of thinking and released the pressure as soon as I saw one of the signs, he would process the information much more quickly and give a "release." A release indicated that he had accepted the exercise and was ready for me to either repeat it or move on to another exercise. If I repeated the exercise, he would offer a release more quickly than the previous time.

Using this approach, we proceeded from groundwork to work in the saddle quite quickly. Only once while in the saddle did he "lose it." It was a brain fart more than anything else. We had been doing the exercises in the saddle quietly for 15-20 minutes when he suddenly bolted. I immediately dropped the rope and we started over with the saddle exercise, looking for the same signs of thinking and release.

After that, Walker was fine. I was impressed with how subtle his signals of "thinking" were, and how much I had to focus my attention on him see those signals. Once I did, though, he rewarded me with a lot of fast learning and releases.

Without a doubt, Walker associates the lariat with trauma, but by tuning into his body language I can help him more quickly overcome that. All in all, it's been a whole lot of fun and a very interesting experience all the way 'round!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader. Also, check out my ebook for wacky horses and humans, or holler at me if you want to know how I fund my horse addiction ... and you can, too!

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shedboy/ / CC BY 2.0

eHarmony for Horses: If I Knew Then What I Know Now

I have been pretty lucky in my selection of horses ... until now. Starting out, I had trainers who helped me pick the best horses for my temperament. My temperament can be summed up in a single phrase: "I want to win!"

Luckily, my trainer helped me pick out a good match for my first real long-term equine partner: Marcus (he's the one in the picture). Marcus didn't necessarily want to win, but he did want to please. In wanting to please me, we won a lot. Marcus had an Earth horse personality, so he was always willing to please as long as I brought treats, plenty of treats. Earth type horses work for food.

Next, I had a couple of geldings I did fine with, and then I moved into the big adventure of training mustangs. When you go to pick out a mustang to adopt, unless you are planning to adopt one that has already been halter-broke or started under saddle, you basically get to choose your horse from a distance.

Mustangs: A Whole New World
I get all of my mustangs from the Canon City facility in Colorado, where BLM and the inmates at the prison facility work together to house, maintain, and train a bunch of mustangs (soon to number around 3,000). When I want to adopt a mustang, I drive 6 hours to facility on a scheduled adoption day, join a group of adopters, and wander through this giant facility.

Most of the mustangs are fairly wild, so mostly you stand outside a pen that holds between 30 and 500 mustangs, and you try to "pick" one that you think you would like. I've been lucky. My first mustang mare was Bella (you can read about her here), a gentle mare with an Earth horse personality. Again, as long as food was present, everything was fine.

My next mustang mare, Valentine, had a Wood horse personality. Her motto, "I will win!" matches mine pretty well. As long as we both want to win at the same event, we are unbeatable. On the events where we don't agree, forget it. You can't "make" Valentine do anything she doesn't want to do. But generally, I "ride the horse in the direction she's going," and we get along fine.

After that came three more mustangs, all with suitable horse personalities. All of them had strong personalities and could withstand some fairly tough training in multiple events. We do everything from team penning and sorting, to hunter/jumper and barrel racing. Fun stuff.

Along Came Walker
Then I got interested in the sport of reining, and I was told in no uncertain terms that my mustangs had neither the conformation nor genetic background to be reining horses. So I bought Walker, my first "expensive" luxury-model horse in a very long time (it costs only $125 to adopt a mustang). Wow, Walker was genetically and conformationally built to spin, stop, and lope circles. He was the perfect reining horse.

The only problem was that Walker was not the perfect reining horse for me. He and I do not have matching personality types. I have to admit that Walker was an impulse buy and that I never stopped to consider his horse personality type before I bought him. It turns out that Walker is a Shao Yin (Fire/Water) horse personality, which means that he is eager to please but also among the most fragile of all the personality types.

When Walker gets a small cut on his leg, his entire leg swells up like a balloon. When one of my mustang mares gets a cut, they don't even notice it. When Walker gets a stone bruise, he limps like he needs hit foot amputated. When the mustangs get a stone bruise, they lope a little slower on trail but otherwise don't care. When Walker gets his feelings hurt, he doesn't react outwardly, but immediately develops some kind of earth-shattering ailment. When the mustangs get upset, they have great fun refusing to be caught. Are you starting to see the difference here?

There is, of course, nothing wrong with Walker. He is a dream horse for most people. He will try his heart out for me and I love him dearly for his kindness, gentleness, and sweetness. I'm just not used to dealing with horse personality types that are "hothouse flowers." Had I known Walker was a Shao Yin before I bought him, I would have never bought him because I know that I am not the nurturing type. I'm a no-holds-barred tough zen cowgirl who needs a horse just as tough.

The Moral of This Story
So, while Walker and I are learning to get along together, I thank him for teaching me a valuable lesson:

Always test the personality of the horse you are about to buy before you buy him.

The test, which is the equivalent of eHarmony for horses, is free at www.horseharmonytest.com. You can read short summaries about the different horse personality types on the Horse Harmony website. Better yet, get the full scoop by reading the Horse Harmony book (order online here).

Figure out what type best suits your personality, the discipline in which you ride, and the management style you have. Pick the right type and you'll have a match made in heaven. Pick a type that's a little bit of a mismatch, and you may be looking for a different horse within a short period of time. So take the test (you can test yourself as well as any potential horse) and learn something about you, your existing horse, or a future horse. It's fun, it's free, and it's a learning experience!

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