A Safe Horse is Quiet

...but quiet horses aren't safe.

The pony is being interesting right now. I decided to longe him for a bit after I rediscovered some good sized holes in his training. I've only really longed him with kids on him or to let him run around to buck.

He stared at my pivo and I thought it was so cute!

I haven't been cantering him lately because at his last acupuncture appointment, his neck was all screwed up. I think the trail ride + the clinic we went to the week after in January really screwed him up unfortunately. In both situations, his spinal integrity was compromised and I think that caused his neck to flare up. 

He got a light week and acupuncture and was feeling much better, but I decided to basically start over with the work we've been doing. Lots of abduction work at the walk and trot. I've also started all his rides with Celeste's three pillars on the ground and that's been HUGE to help him turn off his underneck. 

He's all about the clicker training

He's been WAY better since then, but I haven't been pushing it. 

On the longe, the issues he's long had undersaddle were present. Namely, he will give me the bare bare bare minimum response to my aids, so I make them a little louder, a little louder, a little louder... until he overreacts to them. 

Kate and I were talking about it and she said "a safe horse is quiet but quiet horses are never safe" and I think this is totally the pony. He's so safe and so quiet... until he's not. He's amazing for my niece because he ignores all her silly stuff, he stands stock still when she's near him, he quietly plods along as she puts her arms out and cheerfully screeches (her new thing is to say "aunt mimi trot" over and over again with each syllable being a beat of the trot). I mean, TC is not like that. TC would take in her joy and put it right back out toward her and probably accidentally step on her or launch her. 

But I feel 1000% safer on TC. It's not that TC is quieter, he is not. It's that he's right there with me every step of the way. He tells me when things are up that are suspicious, which almost always leads me to sing "don't be suspicious, don't be suspicious" at him as he snorts at stuff or spooks. He tells me when he needs to buck and run. He tells me when he's having a tough time with what I'm asking. He's very communicative and I respect his communication and do my best to give him what he's asking for. Unless what he's asking for is to pounce on squirrel balls (two squirrels, not sure if it's the same two or not, frequently roll into the arena on top of each other in front of us, this has caused hilarious pouncing akin to bird-shadow-pouncing as you can imagine), in which case, I am the fun police. 

Abduction work

The pony is quiet. Eerily quiet. He does not communicate with me. He yields to pressure, that's all I can really say about our communication. 

I really want him to be a bit more in tune with me, so starting on the ground with clicker training seemed like the best way to do that. He took to the clicker training very quickly (he loves food!), but was still very reluctant to trial behaviors. Over the next few weeks though, he got more and more comfortable, so I was able to get him to respond really well to voice commands for longeing. I figured either way, this will help when I'm longeing my niece on him. But it was also helpful in figuring out some of his issues. 

The main issues I've found with him that I wanted to address were this: 

- He is very reluctant to move forward for the first 10-15 minutes of work

- Once he's gotten through that though, then he's almost too sensitive/forward/reactive

- His trot to canter transitions are very difficult for him, he launches into the air to get them about 35% of the time

Such a good boy! There's definitely some good
training in there, I think the silicosis made him a bit
protective of his body

With the longeing, I was able to allow him to warm up slower without harassing him so much (we added pillar work for the first 5 minutes, which seemed to help him loosen up). This meant that he was less reactive when he did go forward, and I'm sure the clicker helped with that. 

Because I wasn't on him, when he'd launch into canter, he'd just canter on. I think undersaddle he thinks he might get told that he's a naughty pony, so a lot of the time a single launch will turn into panic. I was able to be completely unreactive, so he stopped panicking so much about the transitions. 

And in turn, the transitions got better! In our last longeing session, he didn't explode once into canter, just quietly picked it up. 

Slowly getting his shape back to normal

I'm still working through stuff with him, but he's starting to be more in tune with me and communicative. He has become more quietly observant about things happening around him. My cousin came by to pick something up and Sunny kept an eye on him while we were riding. Before, I feel like he would have ignored what was going on until it became too much for him to deal with, and then an explosion would have been imminent. He's also pointed out cars, squirrels, and a giant white egret that landed next to the arena. Just observing, no reactions. 

As of this post, I've started riding him again, mostly just at the walk and trot doing abduction work and transitions with the clicker. Last time, I hopped off of him and put him on the longe and he was SO good and so forward. I think we'll do that routine for a little bit until he's stronger/more comfortable, then we'll try cantering undersaddle again. 

I'm glad I've got a bit of a project, even though I'm bummed that we had such a big setback in January. I was looking through photos the other day and it made me sad that I was actually jumping him this last summer and now I'm not even cantering him undersaddle, but that sometimes happens. We have set backs and then we come back from them. TC and I were doing Third level two years ago and now I am stoked to get a canter to walk transition. In both horses' cases, these set backs will result in a much better future, even though it can feel annoying at times!