Stormy's Story
Stormy is a six-year-old mare that has been boarded at our farm for the last seven months or so. Stormy first came here for training, to be started under saddle by Carrie, the person who does training here. My capacity has been as a resource for Carrie and to teach Stormy's owner the horsemanship skills she needs to become successful in her relationship with Stormy.
When Stormy first came here, she was very tense, spooky, and snorty. She snorted at everything. So the initial assessment by Carrie was that she was RBE. There were times when she would appear to go RBI too, she would get starey and then go back to RBE. So, Carrie focused the majority of her time on Friendly game and desensitizing. The thing was, there was very little improvement compared to the amount of time invested into the desensitizing, honoring thresholds, taking it slow, etc. After about four months of full-time training, Stormy had made some improvement but emotionally was still basically about the same.
Around this time I suggested to Carrie that she change tactics. I had always gotten a feeling from Stormy that she wasn't as scared as she was acting. There were just certain inconsistencies. So I had Carrie start to drive Stormy away every time she startled or snorted or got bracey. The mantra was, "if she makes you jump, you are going to make her jump". It was basically just mirroring Stormy's emotions. In less than a week, Stormy made a huge change and most of the snorting, spooking, and jumping went away. But she was still tense and uptight much of the time. Carrie stuck with this technique for about another month and Stormy became less reactive and would eventually calm down, but the tension was still there during the requests. Stormy would do as asked, but her body would be hard and tense with head up, until Carrie released for the physical response, and then Stormy would drop her head and relax.
We decided to change tactics again. This time I suggested that Carrie continue as she had been, but to only release when Stormy relaxed during the yield. This change proved to be the thing that Stormy needed. Within two sessions, she made a 180 degree switch. Carrie was able to start cantering her calmly on-line, canter calmly under saddle, introduce new things and work through the tension quickly, and make big strides.
During this last phase of Stormy's training a couple of complications did come up. One of them was when she figured out to lower her head without relaxing her emotions. This just meant that we all needed to be very careful to read the signs that Stormy was truly relaxed and not just going through the motions to get the release.
So now, about six months into Stormy's training, the snorting is almost non-existent--maybe 1% of the time she is being handled compared to almost 100% before. We can introduce new requests, new obstacles, and other changes and if Stormy does get tense, she calms down right away--as long as the handler responds by mirroring her tension and then relaxing after she relaxes.
Stormy's owner is able to handle her and make these changes too. Her owner is only handling her on the ground right now, but will be working towards riding her this summer. The communication between Stormy and her owner about Stormy's emotions is becoming so refined that if Stormy starts to get tense, her owner can just square her shoulders and start to raise her hand to mirror Stormy's tension, and Stormy will say, "that's all right, I'd rather we just relax, thanks". Another pleasant side effect of this is that now, if Stormy is confused about something because her owner wasn't clear enough, she drops her head and relaxes. This allows her owner the time to see that she needs to be clearer and figure out how to do so. Stormy used to be very intolerant of unclear directions and any clumsiness with the stick/string or rope. She would get emotional and resistant any time the slightest change occurred.
When something like this happens, my question is always two-fold--why did the horse get that way? And why did what we did work?
My theory for Stormy and why she became the way that she was is based on knowing some of her history, from what her owner told me, and also from my own observations of what was occurring. Stormy was a rescue horse. She was a weanling when she was rescued. I don't think she was abused, but just the label of "rescue horse" causes some people to feel that the horse needs to be treated differently. Stormy's owner was relatively inexperienced. She had owned a couple of horses during her life, but they were older and already trained when they came into her life. This was her first experience with a young, green horse.
So we have a green horse and a green owner. And we also have a horse who the owner thinks deserves special treatment. So we have an owner who may not understand how to break things down for a green horse and we also have an owner who wants to coddle the horse. Stormy's owner had also been knocked down and broken a collar bone when Stormy ran her over one day. So we also had an element of fear in there. To put it simply, I think that Stormy learned that if she got tense and explosive, it would cause the humans to back down.
Now initially this may have been because something was introduced in such a way that it wasn't "explained" to Stormy or broken down into small enough steps for her to understand. So her initial reaction of fear and explosiveness was justified. But I think that, over time Stormy learned that this reaction was a very effective way to "train" her humans to not try anything she didn't want to do. Stormy's window of what humans were allowed to do narrowed down to become petting (on her terms) and being fed.
By the time Stormy came here, she had decided that the answer to anything that a human might want to do with her, that wasn't her idea, was going to be "no, and back off or I'm gonna get scary!". So Stormy appeared to be very unconfident and skeptical, but it really was disrespect and dominance.
So when Carrie and I changed gears and started treating it as dominance instead of unconfidence, that was why we were able to make the first big change so quickly.
Then when we made the second shift to not releasing until Stormy relaxed, we just changed her perception to this new way of "training" humans to back down and relax. Now Stormy still gets to think that she is controlling her humans, but her humans get to feel safe in the process too.
I also think that with this type of behavior that their can be a negative loop, where initially the horse is being tense or resistant as a way to control the human, but then as time goes on the horse actually becomes tense/afraid. This would be the same concept as when we are feeling a little bit down, if we can put a smile on our face and square our shoulders, we will start to feel happier. Or vice versa, if we start out feeling happy, but then put ourselves in a depressed posture, pretty soon we are going to start feeling more depressed and less happy.
Stormy's story is a work in progress. She still needs to learn about being ridden outside of an arena and her owner wants to be able to safely trail ride her.
When Stormy first came here, she was very tense, spooky, and snorty. She snorted at everything. So the initial assessment by Carrie was that she was RBE. There were times when she would appear to go RBI too, she would get starey and then go back to RBE. So, Carrie focused the majority of her time on Friendly game and desensitizing. The thing was, there was very little improvement compared to the amount of time invested into the desensitizing, honoring thresholds, taking it slow, etc. After about four months of full-time training, Stormy had made some improvement but emotionally was still basically about the same.
Around this time I suggested to Carrie that she change tactics. I had always gotten a feeling from Stormy that she wasn't as scared as she was acting. There were just certain inconsistencies. So I had Carrie start to drive Stormy away every time she startled or snorted or got bracey. The mantra was, "if she makes you jump, you are going to make her jump". It was basically just mirroring Stormy's emotions. In less than a week, Stormy made a huge change and most of the snorting, spooking, and jumping went away. But she was still tense and uptight much of the time. Carrie stuck with this technique for about another month and Stormy became less reactive and would eventually calm down, but the tension was still there during the requests. Stormy would do as asked, but her body would be hard and tense with head up, until Carrie released for the physical response, and then Stormy would drop her head and relax.
We decided to change tactics again. This time I suggested that Carrie continue as she had been, but to only release when Stormy relaxed during the yield. This change proved to be the thing that Stormy needed. Within two sessions, she made a 180 degree switch. Carrie was able to start cantering her calmly on-line, canter calmly under saddle, introduce new things and work through the tension quickly, and make big strides.
During this last phase of Stormy's training a couple of complications did come up. One of them was when she figured out to lower her head without relaxing her emotions. This just meant that we all needed to be very careful to read the signs that Stormy was truly relaxed and not just going through the motions to get the release.
So now, about six months into Stormy's training, the snorting is almost non-existent--maybe 1% of the time she is being handled compared to almost 100% before. We can introduce new requests, new obstacles, and other changes and if Stormy does get tense, she calms down right away--as long as the handler responds by mirroring her tension and then relaxing after she relaxes.
Stormy's owner is able to handle her and make these changes too. Her owner is only handling her on the ground right now, but will be working towards riding her this summer. The communication between Stormy and her owner about Stormy's emotions is becoming so refined that if Stormy starts to get tense, her owner can just square her shoulders and start to raise her hand to mirror Stormy's tension, and Stormy will say, "that's all right, I'd rather we just relax, thanks". Another pleasant side effect of this is that now, if Stormy is confused about something because her owner wasn't clear enough, she drops her head and relaxes. This allows her owner the time to see that she needs to be clearer and figure out how to do so. Stormy used to be very intolerant of unclear directions and any clumsiness with the stick/string or rope. She would get emotional and resistant any time the slightest change occurred.
When something like this happens, my question is always two-fold--why did the horse get that way? And why did what we did work?
My theory for Stormy and why she became the way that she was is based on knowing some of her history, from what her owner told me, and also from my own observations of what was occurring. Stormy was a rescue horse. She was a weanling when she was rescued. I don't think she was abused, but just the label of "rescue horse" causes some people to feel that the horse needs to be treated differently. Stormy's owner was relatively inexperienced. She had owned a couple of horses during her life, but they were older and already trained when they came into her life. This was her first experience with a young, green horse.
So we have a green horse and a green owner. And we also have a horse who the owner thinks deserves special treatment. So we have an owner who may not understand how to break things down for a green horse and we also have an owner who wants to coddle the horse. Stormy's owner had also been knocked down and broken a collar bone when Stormy ran her over one day. So we also had an element of fear in there. To put it simply, I think that Stormy learned that if she got tense and explosive, it would cause the humans to back down.
Now initially this may have been because something was introduced in such a way that it wasn't "explained" to Stormy or broken down into small enough steps for her to understand. So her initial reaction of fear and explosiveness was justified. But I think that, over time Stormy learned that this reaction was a very effective way to "train" her humans to not try anything she didn't want to do. Stormy's window of what humans were allowed to do narrowed down to become petting (on her terms) and being fed.
By the time Stormy came here, she had decided that the answer to anything that a human might want to do with her, that wasn't her idea, was going to be "no, and back off or I'm gonna get scary!". So Stormy appeared to be very unconfident and skeptical, but it really was disrespect and dominance.
So when Carrie and I changed gears and started treating it as dominance instead of unconfidence, that was why we were able to make the first big change so quickly.
Then when we made the second shift to not releasing until Stormy relaxed, we just changed her perception to this new way of "training" humans to back down and relax. Now Stormy still gets to think that she is controlling her humans, but her humans get to feel safe in the process too.
I also think that with this type of behavior that their can be a negative loop, where initially the horse is being tense or resistant as a way to control the human, but then as time goes on the horse actually becomes tense/afraid. This would be the same concept as when we are feeling a little bit down, if we can put a smile on our face and square our shoulders, we will start to feel happier. Or vice versa, if we start out feeling happy, but then put ourselves in a depressed posture, pretty soon we are going to start feeling more depressed and less happy.
Stormy's story is a work in progress. She still needs to learn about being ridden outside of an arena and her owner wants to be able to safely trail ride her.
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