Leader

One of the guys I work with plays rugby with a local amateur club. Their coach was luck enough to win a training session for the club with a big professional coach, who turned out to be Shaun Edwards the Wasps & Wales coach. This was a major event for my mate as he is Welsh, so he was very excited. I saw him the day after limping along the corridor and asked him how it went. “AMAZING!” was the reply, so I asked why it was so good. The answer was interesting.

Leadership!

Shaun Edwards leadership style was the key.
He broke down things in to their component parts.
Taught each part at a time.
Put them back together again.
He was strong, but polite, approachable & humble. Admitted his mistakes.
Drew from other sports and fields of endeavour to inform and improve his chosen sport.
He was consistent.
He was persistent.
He was patient but progressive.
He didn’t make anyone feel they were wrong but made sure they were right.

How are Wales doing at the moment, oh yeah, they’re winning.

Hmm! How interesting!

Celtic Chieftan

"Gypsy Gold does not clink and glitter, it gleams in the sun, and neighs in the dark"

Look Ma! ... No Hands!

I've got to write this down now, 'cos it was sooooooo cool.

Last night we did 2 laps of trot the rail with my arms folded!

So Cool!

Harley also put four feet on the bridge and left his hind feet on it when he stepped off. Level 4 pony.

... and relax

Ears below the withers to relax. ...

Another equine NLP anchor.

Tonight, tonight.

Tonight I got out of work a little early, so I actually saw some sunshine!

We did FTR to the right with absolutely no problem whatsoever, so last night must have worked to some degree. Once he got it right for 3 laps (and Mandy/Fred & Em/Lilly came in) we rode out of the yard & down the drive, opening & shutting gates as we went. He was a bit on his toes so I had to concentrate quite hard to keep him focussed. Once on the cross-country I re-went through the on-board flight checks before setting off again. When he laterally flexes he does seem to relax, unlike Arch who sometimes pretends to relax.
He was a bit impulsive and at one point I had to bend him to a stop. At the bottom of the big hill I got off 'cos it was as slippy as the road to hades and I don't want him falling over with me on board. The rest of the ride was a mixture of walk & trot with some squarking pheasants thrown in to help de-spook Harley. By the time we got back he was fairly chilled, even though it was going dark.
He's soooo cool! And I'm impressed with my seat. Still only riding bareback and no moments at all.

Last night Harley and I played in the school under the flood lights. He was curious about the weird crackly ice layer on the sand but quickly got bored with it. I had the usual ready-to-ride-check play and hopped on.

We're still doing the FTR foundation pattern, but I need to be a bit more progressive with it. We did a straight FTR to the left and he was great so we did some FTR with stop at the barrels. He was great at that too although his stops started getting a little sloppy so I got more particular. We did some turns on the haunches, which generated lots of licking & chewing.

"Ok" thinks I, "time to even it up", so we do FTR to the right. Suddenly he can't go in the corners, FTR gone all squiffy. So we play the corners game with lots of rest in the corners and lots of disengaging the HQ until he could go in to the corner. After quite a while of making the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult, we got FTR on the right back again.

Damn that cellular cognition malarky!

Remuda

Last night I dug out my notes from the courses we did at Stoneleigh in the summer. It was interesting to basically read them for the first time since I wrote them.

Most of the stuff in there I explicitly remembered but every so often there would be a little detail that I'd go "Wow! I'd forgotten that". A specific example which is now stuck in my mind came from the Natural Collection. In the section on Flexion and Contra-lateral motion was a comment in a box in capitals.

DON'T USE LOWER LEG!
TURN TOES IN.

Hmm! I'd forgotten about that one.

stretch!

Got out of work late (Damn how having to earn money gets in the way), so I decided to try and keep it short and sweet with Harley tonight.

Did a very quick warm up to make sure that he was paying attention to me, then jumped on. He was really trying at the FTR but kept doing this weird back arching. Max assured me that he was just reached down and stretching his back. This is really cool 'cos it's the start of relaxation and longitudinal flexion. I'm using the hackamore so I can't kid myself that I can skip doing fluid rein, but very cool none the less. I tried to encourage this with strokes and rest whilst trying to follow the rail as well. He'd get distracted and wander when he stretched down, but if I kept my focus he'd correct again. After a while he actually started to blow and relax, which he's never done before. Wow!
So how come the sudden change? Well, I noticed that previously I've had a tendency to lean back a bit while trying to get my weight in my pockets (cowboy style), but since our little trail ride on Sunday I've kept my body more central and curved my back to put the weight in the right place (like a pushing passenger). I realised tonight that each time I leaned back, Harley's head came up. Each time I stayed central and pushed back, his head went way down.
Hmm! How interesting!
Talk about feedback.

By the end I felt like I could FTR with my arms crossed. If it goes well a few more times then maybe we can move on to the next foundation pattern as well.

Snow Cool!

Decided that I was fed up with not playing with Harley and that the school wasn't that bad really, so this afternoon we played.

Did the usual "ready to ride?" checks. He's so cool even the snow's warm compared to him. So I jumped on bareback, as usual, and did FTR. He did it first time, so after a bit of rewarding rest time, I upped the ante and after four laps both ways I thought "That'll do nicely, Stop whilst we're ahead".

Max & Archie and Me & Harley wandered down the drive, over the road and went to find some grass. This is the first time I've ridden him out since the summer and the first time I've trail ridden bare-back, so I was looking forward to it, but not sure how good my seat was. (Last weekend he spooked in the school during out obstacle course demo and I didn't have a problem, so I should have been confident, but I wasn't).
First big puddle we came to Harley went all sceptical, but I kept my focus and he went through it. When we got to the big puddle on the corner, where we've had fun and games before , he was sceptical again, but Arch went straight through, so after a little hesitation Harley did too. I got off a little further on and we grazed until it started to snow. Coming back through the big puddle Harley went "Nope, not doing it". There was some uncertainty and some dominance , but I kept pointing his nose at it. If he tried, I'd stop asking and rub him. If he didn't try, I kept asking. In the end he just traipsed through it like it was his idea, which it was by then.

A few more passes through and we were actively seeking puddles on the way home. All in all an enjoyable restart to trail riding.

Perception Haze

I'm sat here in a telecon meeting listening to various debates and something strikes me about it all.

People don't necessarily hear what you say or read what you write. They hear what gets filtered through their experience & expectations.

It can be very difficult to be patient enough to communicate (emotional fitness strikes again!).

Business world parallels the Horse world?

Watch your thoughts, they become your words,
Watch your words, they become your actions,
Watch your actions, they become your attitude,
Watch your attitude, it becomes your character,
And you and I are both characters in the world,
So watch your thoughts!




... and you are not your behaviours.

Feel, timing & leadership

Whilst at the Honza clinic Steve and I played with the 51/49 mirroring game only this time with somewhat more feel and subtlety than when we did it at Stoneleigh.

For those of you that don't know what the 51/49 mirroring game is all about. When you are providing a feel for your horse and giving leadership (ridden or on-line) it should be like a dance where you move together with your partner as one. The control should be shared 51% to you as the leader and 49% to the horse. One way of simulating this and experiencing it for yourself is to partner up with another human. Both hold your hands up and place one of your hands, palm to palm, with one of theirs. Now one of you has 51% and start to move their hand around. The other with 49% just follows and mirrors the others movements as accurately as possible. After mirroring for a while slowly start to guide, gently taking that 2% until the roles have swapped.

As Steve and I played with this we were both trying to be as gentle and perceptive as possible (considering we were freezing our fingers off!). When the roles did swap it was almost like telepathy, because although Steve said he'd deliberately steered, I had also deliberately moved that way independently, or so I believed. It was fascinating! The more feel we tried to use, the harder is became to work out the actual point at which the roles swapped. Hmmm!

Quick Thought ...

As I was sliding across the car park this morning I thought to myself

"This is an ideal opportunity to walk on my balance point"

So watch out for the Pat Parelli impersonations!


Come to think of it Dave Stewart always looks like he's carefully walking on ice.

A New Direction - Continued

Ok, back to the Honza clinic.

It was very certainly a thought provoking clinic with many things to lick and chew over. In fact we were only going to go on the Saturday and maybe leave early to see to the horses. We actually stayed the whole time Saturday and Sunday (and froze our bits off!).

Being ex-Parelli he was essentially very similar in a lot of ways but he had several concepts that were different (or not as similar). The easiest way to cover these is to list them first then try and explain them. Not easy as I'm sure there were far more subtleties to it than I picked up. So, in no particular order:

1. Draw first not drive
2. Sit, stay, disconnect, reconnect
3. Intent not "Life"
4. Flexion, Impulsion, Respect in that order
5. Don't rope wiggle
6. Scoring who wins the game.
7. Unconfidence vs dominance (ears forward, ears back)

1. Honza made a big thing about not driving the horse away at the start of the relationship. He didn't like "Join Up" or The Catching Game or The Circling Game. His premise was that if you start off driving the horse away it'll not want to come back to you, so by the time you get to Liberty if you put any pressure on it, it'll leave. If you start by establishing draw, when you get around to sending the horse away, it'll want to come back to you. The horse will want to be close to you. So instead of standing as far away as it can looking at you, it will spend the whole time saying "Can I come to you, please?". This is certainly a very attractive proposition and matches up with some of the experiences that Max and I have had with both Harley & Archie. The way he achieves it is by not driving Z1/2 away - no circling. He draws Z1 to his belly button. He plays stick to me but he backs away drawing the horse to him and keeping its nose on his belly button. The horse must not move its nose more than one degree away from your BB. If it does just re direct it back again. When you stop it must keep its nose there and relax. Safety and comfort is found in your BB. Pretty soon they seek your BB and even when their life is up, if you can get them to put their nose in your BB they will relax. This is the point at which you can introduce flexion (see point 4). Now start pushing Z2 away as you back up, but keep Z1 on your BB. When this is firmly established you can start to move backwards in circles pushing Z2 away whilst Z1 stays on your BB. Then you can move back to alongside the horse. Now you're looking towards close range circling with their nose on your BB. If you want them to circle further out you have to push them out and when you stop pushing they fall back in towards you. Basically they really, really, really want to be with you. Isn't that The Dream?

2. Ok,this is an interesting extension of Pat's Sit-Stay model. Park your horse somewhere (preferably not in too big an arena) and walk away with purpose (it should be obvious to the horse that it's not supposed to follow you, by your body language & intent) then turn around and look at Z4 with that "Turn and look at me" look. If your horse doesn't turn and look at you with both eyes and say "Yes?", start to approach its Z4 with an "I'm going to bite you" look. If you get close enough to flick it with your Carrot Stick (CS) then do so. It should then spin round to look at you. If it approaches you, back it up to where you left it, go in and start again. Start close and gradually increase the distance. If you horse leaves then intercept its Z1, stop it, disengage Z4, back it up. The horse should understand that it hasn't gained anything by moving and it's better off standing still. Usually horses will head for corners, if there are any. At liberty you don't want them to gain comfort by running off or standing in a corner, so you need to stop them, disengage them and back them up. You need to repeat this Sit/Stay exercise all over the area (including corners) and move to bigger areas, when you can do it in small areas. You should be the centre of your horse's attention all the time, but he should also know when he should wait for you. Honza says that this is his "bread", he does it everyday and uses it all the time with all his horses, even Gaston.

3. When we're learning how to do Parelli and are teaching our horses that we can use our body language, we tend over-do the life-up/life-down thing. In some ways we have to do that so we become aware of our own life energy (or Chi, to borrow from Eastern philosophy & Martial Arts). We have to teach ourselves to control our energy, thoughts, emotions and intent. Likewise we are also explaining to the horse that we are controlling these things (unlike most humans) and that it means something. "Everything means something and nothing means nothing". What Honza had his students doing was refining it, so that instead of using gross exaggerations they could just use intent. So here's how it goes: Back the horse up using the CS (see point 5). The horse should move instantly without the CS, just on your intent. If not use the CS. When you stop and drop your intent the horse should instantly stop. When you're (I initially put "they're" but it's actually both of you) doing that well then step towards the horse with the intention of rubbing its chest with your CS. If it moves back, follow it until it stops and rub it. Repeat until it doesn't move. Now use point 6 until you and your horse have totally sussed it. Expand this out in to everything else you do with your horse. No more gross Life-up/Life-down, just intent until it seems to an outsider that your horse is telepathic and you dance together.

4. Honza seemed to suggest that the Parelli system of Respect - Impulsion - Flexion doesn't make sense in the context of classical dressage and to horsemen (gender non-specific) who already have feel and timing. He seemed to suggest that once you have sufficient respect not to get killed that it makes more sense to work backwards. Achieve some flexion before you ask for impulsion. If you're working on points 1,2 & 3 then the respect will come, the enthusiasm will also be there to provide the impulsion. For impulsion go back to the Nose in the BB game and as your intention to step back starts to rise the horse should start to step forward so that you both move together. He quoted Ray Hunt "Don't Leave without the horse and don't let the horse leave without you". To teach it play it as a game where if, having given them ample opportunity to read your intent (long phase 1) they don't step with you, you flick them on Z4 with your CS&SS (quick phase 2,3,4). Pretty soon they'll be very keen to follow you. You can also do it starting a little further out and pretty soon they'll canter to you (This can be a bit scary). It's interesting to note that in Parelli one of the basic things we do once we can actually approach our horse, is to halter them and as we do it we ask for a little flexion (turn their nose toward us). Likewise when we take the halter off we ask for a little flexion. If we don't get that flexion when we put the halter on, we get brace. Mental, emotional and physical brace. Which isn't a good starting point for the rest of whatever we do that day.

5. This is a quick one. If you wiggle the rope to back a horse up, it invariably raises its head up and away from the pressure. If you tap a horse on the chest it tends to drop its head to move backwards. We are looking for our horses to relax and stretch out and down. They can't do this if their heads are up in the air. We need to teach our horse to drop their heads and stretch out & down.

6. This one is a little harder to explain succinctly. When playing the backing up or rubbing game in point 3 count how many times you have to touch the horse when backing compared to how many times the horse moves so you don't need to touch it. i.e. your score against the horses score. Again when you're intending to rub the horse how many times does it stand still compared to moving away. i.e. Horse's score compared to your score. If you then look at these two scores you have an objective measure of how much Drive & how much Draw you have. It also indicates how well you both are doing and what you need to focus on more .

7. If a horse is unconfident they are less likely to come to you and more likely to run away. If a horse is confident to the point of dominance then it is more likely to come in to you (or at you), albeit in a driving manner. Honza described an analogue scale, in the form of a meter, from Unconfident to Dominant where balanced was in the middle. He said that when playing at Liberty (or in Honza's case, doing shows) you want more Dominance because the last thing you want is the horse to leave. He also suggested that you could build up a store of confidence by pushing the meter further toward dominance and then use it up by doing things that use it, such as sending the horse away or spins etc. He asserted that the horse's ear position was a measure of this. If they are back they are driving, therefore confident. If they are forward they are questioning therefore uncertain, therefore on the unconfident side. I struggle with the second part as we've all seen scared horses put their ears back and leave. I feel that it is probably a deliberate over simplification to get the point over and that the truth is almost certainly a complex, context sensitive, moment by moment interpretation. Either way, he doesn't tend to do the "Take that look off your face".

Please bear in mind that these are the concepts as I understand them and so are subject to my interpretation. They may not be accurate (we all perceive the world through the filter of our experience) and I am still not sure with how much I agree, but Honza is a phenomenal horseman and it sure makes you think. Which has got to be good.