Lesson Plan Workshop: Define Your Starting Point
After you know where you want to go, it is vitally important to define where you are. Knowing your starting point does two things. First of all, it is a very important clue for defining the steps you will take and the techniques you will use on the way to your goal. Secondly, it serves as a marker while you are in the middle of implementing your lesson plan, so you can see how far you have come. It can be easy to get discouraged when progress is slow and feel like you are not getting anywhere. But one look at your starting point will help you define where you have made progress, even it it doesn't feel like it.
This week, sit down and think about the goal that you defined last week and then think about where you are right now in relation to that goal. Try to define where you are in concrete terms wherever possible. This could mean the percent of times your goal occurs, distance achieved, minutes achieved, location you can go to, location you can touch, etc. For example, if your goal is to have your horse catch you all the time, define the percent of times your horse catches you right now. If your horse never catches you, that is fine too, then define it that way.
If your goal was a more general picture-type goal, you will need to clarify what that means to you so that you can then define specifically where you are in relation to your goal. To use the example from last week of, "I would like to feel happy and harmonious as I interact with my horse". That definition might include things like:
If you are having problems defining your goal and starting point in concrete terms, it could mean that part of your goal is "fuzzy". If this is the case, look at each word you have used in the goal and make sure that you know exactly what you mean with each word. This will usually help you find the part that is hard to define and allow you to re-write the goal to use a more specific term or to define the hard-to-define part in a way that will allow you to measure it.
In the example above, "my horse leaves the herd easily and quietly", leaves the herd, easily, and quietly; could all be further and more specifically defined if I was having a hard time figuring out how to measure that. "Leaves the herd" could mean the act of first walking away after catching, going through the gate, or heading out on the trail; depending on the horse and the goal being defined.
As you can see, just these two steps can start to provide insight on where certain issues might be originating from for you or your horse.
Feel free to post your starting points in the comments section. If you have any questions post them there and I will do my best to answer them. Also, if you would like feedback on how you are measuring your goal or your starting point, make a note of that too and I will help you with it.
This week, sit down and think about the goal that you defined last week and then think about where you are right now in relation to that goal. Try to define where you are in concrete terms wherever possible. This could mean the percent of times your goal occurs, distance achieved, minutes achieved, location you can go to, location you can touch, etc. For example, if your goal is to have your horse catch you all the time, define the percent of times your horse catches you right now. If your horse never catches you, that is fine too, then define it that way.
If your goal was a more general picture-type goal, you will need to clarify what that means to you so that you can then define specifically where you are in relation to your goal. To use the example from last week of, "I would like to feel happy and harmonious as I interact with my horse". That definition might include things like:
- My horse catches me or allows me to walk up to him 100% of the time.
- My horse stands relaxed and still while I brush him and tack him up 100% of the time.
- My horse leaves the herd easily and quietly whenever I want to go out alone.
- If I start to feel frustrated, I have a plan to deal with it in the following foreseeable situations: a, b, and c.
If you are having problems defining your goal and starting point in concrete terms, it could mean that part of your goal is "fuzzy". If this is the case, look at each word you have used in the goal and make sure that you know exactly what you mean with each word. This will usually help you find the part that is hard to define and allow you to re-write the goal to use a more specific term or to define the hard-to-define part in a way that will allow you to measure it.
In the example above, "my horse leaves the herd easily and quietly", leaves the herd, easily, and quietly; could all be further and more specifically defined if I was having a hard time figuring out how to measure that. "Leaves the herd" could mean the act of first walking away after catching, going through the gate, or heading out on the trail; depending on the horse and the goal being defined.
As you can see, just these two steps can start to provide insight on where certain issues might be originating from for you or your horse.
Feel free to post your starting points in the comments section. If you have any questions post them there and I will do my best to answer them. Also, if you would like feedback on how you are measuring your goal or your starting point, make a note of that too and I will help you with it.
Comments
1- willing to saddle
a- relaxed - meaning soft neck
b- head down - meaning calm
c- ears forward - meaning accepting whatever is happening
2- relaxed tail
To define my starting point with "willing to saddle": Java lays her ears back and points her nose when I approach her with the saddle, I believe if I were to keep progressing without any change she would eventually bite. If she has the chance, she will walk away when I approach her with the saddle. Her head goes up and she has a stiff neck, as if she is saying "NO! dont do that" or "you dont have my approval, NO!". once I get the saddle on she drops her head, licks her lips, and usually yawns, these are all good signs (I think), but I feel like she is anticipating a painful saddle.
My starting point with "Relaxed Tail" currently when I ask for transitions in the saddle she swiches her tail, but only sometimes. I will have to really que in on our next session to see when this is exactly happening... I think it may be random times, but I will see.
I hope this is what you meant this this lesson :)
Yes, that is what I meant--to think about where you are right now.
Let us know what you find out about your starting point for her tail.
Good job,
Holly
My starting point for my big picture goal, as of last fall before our "sabbatical", Gunny would consistently go faster than the speed that I was asking for within that gait. He also could get emotionally high, braced, and tense when he wasn't getting his way under saddle.
For teaching him to carry himself in the best possible way, when we have done dressage-type thing, he can carry himself in a collected posture but then gets high and full of himself too.
For lowering his head while trotting, I will continue to work on teaching him to lower it at a walk and gradually move up to trotting. I would like him to have his head level or lower 100% of the time while riding him.
For Zip - I want to work on keeping her relaxed while riding and noticing when she starts to tense and work from there. Eventually I would like her to be able to go out the driveway and down the road wherever I want and stay relaxed. First, I would like to get to the end of the driveway, then I'll pick points little by little until I can get her to the neighbors house.
For this week's part, please define where you are right now with this stuff. Your post was good for last week's lesson, and maybe that's what you meant. But for this week, define where you are in relation to where you want to be. For example with Booger, what percent is he not relaxed when you are with him right now? And for trotting with his head down, how can you measure where you are at with it right now?
Hope that helps. Good job of being specific though!
Holly
So I want to ride anywhere alone and have Booger paying attention to me 50% of the time instead of his pasture mates or other horses. Right now he is concerned about them everytime we go out.
Right now with Booger's head - it is always up while trotting. At the walk I guess I really don't know - I've been so focused on how high it is at the trot. But if I had to guess - at the walk it is down 75% of the time. I guess I better pay more attention at the walk and work up from there.
As for Zip - she tenses up everytime I ride her. So I need to start small and add on feet that we can go relaxed. I want her to be relaxed 100% of the time.
All right, now you have some concrete information in regards to your starting point. So Booger is relaxed 50% of the time that you are riding by yourself. And that as of right now, the behavior of Booger paying attention to his pasture mates happens during 100% of your rides alone.
And for Zip, getting tense occurs for part of the ride, on 100% of the times you ride her.
I am having you guys think in these isolated ways to help you learn how to separate each piece in the planning process. Try to avoid falling into the trap of trying to figure it all out in one chunk.
My intention is not for you to take the goal and the starting point and make a plan from that. We are only looking at where we are and where we want to get to at this point. Maybe one way to think about it would be if you were planning a trip, at first you would need to know where you wanted to go to and where you are going to be coming from. But how you get from one spot to the other could still be done in millions of different ways.
You did gain some insight by doing these two steps, from how you noticed that Booger's not being relaxed may be related to Booger's wanting to pay attention to his pasture mates. At this point it is just another tidbit to note, though. It may end up being a key point in developing your lesson plan, or it might end up being just a symptom of something else.
We will be gathering more information on the next couple of weeks before we actually start putting everything together into a plan.
I hope this makes things a little bit clearer for everyone.
So for the ears back at feeding time. That happens at least once during 90% of the times I feed him. For wanting to go faster than the pace I want within the gait I chose, that was happening 100% of our rides, for about 80% of the ride. Before I ended the ride I would make sure he was going the speed I chose, but it took about 80% of each ride to do so.
For carrying himself in a collected frame and getting high and full of himself, that was happening 100% of the time that I asked him to be collected.
on that note I need to figure out how to ask her at phase one to do all the things I ask her to do, most importantly is the canter... most noticed at canter departure from any gait. - I need to figure out what javas phase one is to ask her to canter... wish me luck!
On the ground whenever I would ask Java ANYTHING other than walk relaxed she would swish her tail. now i realize why owners of pissy horses in the show ring numb their tails because they dont want to figure this out... its too much of a pain, but I am determined!!
so in the arena I was able to ask her to trot . she swished at me. I stopped her in a straight line. and asked for it again.. after doing this 3 times she decided she was not going to swish her tail at me...
Now this was only walk to trot i am going to continue this and see what happens...
when yielding her hind quarters she does a little swish.. i just continue to yield until she stops swishing and then smile.. also we will see where that goes...