Outside Stimulus Control

This weekend was an interesting one. After our good(ish) Thursday ride and questionable time in the arena, I spent Friday and Saturday basically fluctuating between negative emotions, mostly brought on by the drama on Thursday, the disastrous ride on Friday, and not getting any sleep either of those nights.

Doesn't mean that bad days don't have good elements!

Friday was horrible, but it started out well. I decided that since TC was being ridden in the covered arena, and had technically cantered in there (bolting counts as cantering, right?), I would ride him around the ranch.

He was GREAT! Spooky, sure, but really a good boy. We wandered around, and the worst spook we had was him dropping a foot and splaying his legs. We also had one that was trotting forward for a few steps when a hose moved around him. It was good information, I really don't consider him a particularly spooky horse. He mostly spooks at things that surprise him. Once as he's been exposed to something, he's fine. Like that day he was fine with walking by a guy mowing some of the grass. He was also fine the second time around everywhere.

Unfortunately BRH trainer thought that because TC was quiet walking around, he'd be fine for him to just hop on and go in the ring. I've made that mistake before and probably should have spoken up. TC is always fine walking around the ranch. I would ride him bareback in the halter up to turn him out at our previous barn- he'd be fine just moseying along, but the second I got off of him, he'd explode and gallop for 20 minutes straight. TC outside != TC in arenas.

The ride was horrible from the start. His first bolt went out the arena and he crashed into the gate (which was open). After that it was just bolt after bolt after bolt, at least ten or twelve of them in the maybe twenty minute ride. The only good thing that came out of that was complete and utter justification of my fear last fall. I was surprised when I was afraid of him, just because come on, it's TC, he's a good boy. I blamed it on my fitness and my terrible job, which yah were totally factors. But this was horrific. He is so quick to go from what seems like total relaxation to galloping and it seems completely random. Even with BRH trainer's various techniques, nothing could a) prevent the bolt or b) stop it quickly.

Cat in a box = good stress relief

A few non-pony things and the horror of seeing my horse bolting so much made me tell BRH trainer that I would not be seeing him on Saturday, and would be riding on my own on Sunday. I just wanted a day to breathe, you know. Assess the situation by myself, since I am actually a horse trainer myself, even if I'd rather play ammy with behavioral problems like this. Control, sometimes I need it.

Saturday I did go out to the barn, but just to throw food at him. I spent the day stressed and exhausted, not having slept much the night before and mostly unable to keep my mind off of the situation with the horse. Good that I didn't ride him, it would have been horrible even if he had been foot perfect. One thing I did do though, in my obsessing, was read a book that Kate lent me (and constantly snapchatted it to her).

On Sunday it was cooler in the morning so I stupidly decided to ride a client's horse first, then go ride TC. I got caught up talking with friends at the (other) barn so by the time I was down at WMF, where TC is, it was 3pm, and so windy. I forgot it got windy in the afternoons down there, ugh.

Wandering past his stall

I got TC out and he was wired. Sorry pony. He had been ridden early on Friday and late on Sunday, with nothing in between. I can't wait until he can get turnout all day. At least then he will have something to do.

We wandered around the barn and then stood to talk to a friend who had been at a horse show. Just as she was talking about having to deal with a Friesian in the warm up arena that ran someone over, my half Friesian half ran me over because he spooked at nothing. I laid into him and then he decided that I was scarier than the thing he saw and stood frozen away from me.

In the round pen, I got to work on one of the things that the book really drove into me.

The book, which I will talk about in a later post, is basically a book on horse psychology as it relates to training. I read the first couple of sections, but then one section pointed me to a small section about bolting. First, shout out to the book for making me feel like this isn't as big of a deal as I thought it was. Every article and post on COTH seems to say either that "horses bolt because they are terrified of their rider" or that "bolting is not something you can ever fix," or both! Fuck you people, I will fix this and my horse will be fabulous.

The book basically said this: Bolting is caused by the horse running past stimulus control. Fuck yes. Behavior Analysis. I legitimately studied this in grad school. An entire section of my thesis is literally on stimulus control.

Stimulus control means that a stimulus (perhaps an aid) has control over a behavior. So when I ask TC to go, he goes, and when I ask him to stop, he stops. When he bolts, he gets outside of stimulus control, and I can't stop him. My aids are not going through.

In a perfect world, I'd know what caused the bolting so I could obsess over it prevent it completely. I don't. Not yet. I don't want to dwell on it (although I have thought about putting all my rides into an excel document and using multivariate statistics to examine them) because honestly, the correction is going to be the same regardless.

To fix this, the book says to install what is called a bolt-stop, or what I know from Pony Club as a pulley rein. Teach the horse to have really sensitive brakes so that they are more powerful and can maintain stimulus control even when the horse goes to bolt.

The other thing, and I think I'm adding this but maybe not, don't want to look it up, is to regain stimulus control as quickly as possible. I want TC to fully believe that there is no way to get away from the rider so he will eventually just give up. It's like if every time he tried to run me over, I didn't let him continue to run me over, and instead made it clear that I will NOT be run over. Oh wait...

I knew most of these but the cause of the
long snorting is something I never knew!

To start, we did work in hand and on the longe. I would say WHOA and pull him to a halt, then rein back. The book emphasized both halting and reining back, working to get it on a light aid. This was helpful because TC halts just fine, but reining back is super hard. Could it be that when he gets going fast, he tries to slow down when the aid comes on right away but just doesn't have the muscle to stop? Is it simply muscle that makes the bolting so severe? Maybe. Maybe not. But lots of reining back, until he was more comfortable.

I also threw on the outside side rein when we went to trot. This meant that it would stay stable when I pulled on the inside longe rein, which acted like a pulley rein, which I would use later. That was probably the best idea I've had in the last seven years (want to know what seems like the worst sometimes? Yah. It's my pony. But I love him, mostly).

He bolted a fair amount on the longe. But to hell if he got more than two steps before I caught him and he was being sent backwards. Fuck. Yes.

I got on him in the round pen and installed the bolt-stop/pulley rein/WHOADAMNIT. First at the walk, then the trot. TC was good, although still falling out over his right shoulder. I also tried to be much softer on the reins and just let him do whatever- just trying out the idea that he might be bolting away from the rider. He never bolted undersaddle so we'll see how that goes over time.

The canter was a little springy and he kicked out once at the fence post he almost ran into (yeah TC, it's the fence's fault that you weren't steering, whatadick). But man he was so lazy. The pulley rein lead to a very clean canter to halt transition, which was AWESOME to feel. He felt ready to stop at any moment. Excellent.

Remember this? It's quite relevant now too,
although I think at the old barn we never left
that top bit. Now we're like half way down most
of the time!

I decided to put him back on the line and go in the covered. I'm not saying I longed in there, since it's not allowed. Um. But I put the outside side rein back on and put him out on the line and he started the bolting again. He tried the gallop-out-the-arena bolt and I dug my heels in and stopped him. He only dragged me 18" or so (then spooked later at the drag marks lol), which I thought was pretty good.

I did actually get on him, but by then it was about 5pm and it was windy, he had been fed at 4 and was starving, and he was probably fairly mentally fried. We just walked around. He started screaming and shaking his head, so then I found a good moment, got off, did a bit of ground work, and took him home.

If I had worked, I should have just picked up the canter, but I didn't want to push it. It was a huge day for us. I rode him alone, I gave him a lot to consider with the bolting in hand, and I wasn't in a bad mood. Also honestly I don't think the bolt-stop is good enough to be used in the covered yet. It doesn't take just thirty minutes to train something onto a horse.

Reminders, this book is my jam

Overall, it was a shit day. He bolted in hand more than ever, tried to run me over walking around, and was generally an asshole. But I left the barn feeling better than I had in days. I was able to stop him mid bolt and get him to trot off quietly shortly after that.

I also found that his eye looks mischievous whenever he is about to bolt in hand. Undersaddle he looked more scared, although to be honest, I wasn't actually watching very much. I think, at least on Sunday, the bolting in hand was mostly because he hadn't been out rather than he was *terrified of his rider* since with the way he screams at me when I get to the barn and wants to cuddle during every walk break, I don't think he's petrified of me. But I'm not ruling out rider influence at all.

It's not going to be fun. It's going to take a long time. I'm not going to enjoy him for a while. But it's fixable and I think I'm onto something here. Only time will tell.

I hung out with Rico after riding TC and told him that he was perfect. Then repeated to him, as I'm trying to do every day for myself, I used to hate this horse. For years I thought it was a mistake to buy him. I was afraid of him. I thought his bucking/rearing wasn't fixable. I wanted to sell him but was afraid of where he'd end up.

And now he's Rico. The most perfect animal ever. I look back and just smile at the number of times he bucked me off, stepped on me, pulled back and got loose, kicked me, or reared. The number of times I got off of him and put him back because I was scared, the number of times I got stuck on a trail and had to lead him home because he wouldn't stop rearing, the number of times I wrote an ad for him and then took it down...

And here I sit hoping that TC turns out to be Rico. Riding horses is a special kind of insanity, right?

He's really not that spooky

FYI, for those of you itching to tell me it's a health problem:
- calling the chiro today
- putting him on U-Guard today
- his saddle was professionally fit a few weeks ago
- he is due for a trim in two weeks
- he shows no signs of lameness
- he probably is a little muscle sore, I'm changing his schedule to help him out on that front
- after he's on U-Guard I might put him on bute or prevocox for like 5 days and see if it improves