March 6, 2019

Don't Lose "Better" In The Quest For "Perfect": Part I

Echo continues to make clear to me the importance of recognizing progress as a true journey, not a single leap.

An equine student is just like a human student:  you may have an over-arching goal, but in order for your student to keep working towards that goal without souring, you have to hand out plenty of stickers & extra credit along the way.  Echo reminds me that is doubly important when dealing with young things.  Trust, confidence, enthusiasm, try - these are fragile items.  Handle with care.

It's about making sure our conversations are dominated by "Yes!" Not a new topic for this blog, but a reminder that is always relevant. 

Think of it this way:  when you decided to learn how to ride, you likely had a vision of yourself soaring over a course of jumps or cantering a victory lap with a blue ribbon or trotting up to the summit of a mountain trail...all with glorious views.

You won...something...
But this is not a feasible skillset to learn in a week.  First you had to learn how to get on a large creature with questionable judgement.  Then you were expected to guide said fur-covered bag of opinions with squeezes of your legs & fingers, whilst balancing yourself over its bouncing spine.

I don't know about you, but I didn't execute those tasks with instant grace & poise.  Fortunately, my teachers were kind enough to exclaim, "Good job!" when I successfully posted the trot on request...even though I was on the "wrong" diagonal, my reins were flapping in the breeze, & the horse meandered drunkenly between the quarterline & the rail.
Details...

Taking heart from that initial success, I could then turn my attention to improving other items on the list, each in their turn. If, during that first trot, the instructor had instead bellowed, "That was garbage! You didn't steer the horse, your reins were a mess, the diagonal was wrong - that's not what I asked for!!  Do it again, & this time you better do it right!!"

If the 2nd scenario had been repeated each time, without stopping, when I didn't ride the posting trot exactly right...I never would have made it to "doing it right."  I would have gotten frustrated, discouraged, & would have soon given up this obviously impossible quest.  I probably would have developed some very unpleasant feelings towards the bellowing tyrant who expected me to both master new techniques & develop new strength all at once.

Our horses are no different.  Case in point:

I'm using trot poles as one tool to develop Echo's hind end strength, particularly to tighten & build his stifles.  Given the eleventy billion inches of rain, my steeper hills will not be usable for some time.

My "poles" are really an assortment of heavy duty PVC pipes found or scavenged, of varied diameters up to about 6-8".  I like the extra challenge they provide the horse in asking him to flex all his joints without my having to build extra pole lifters.  Bonus:  they fit exactly within my training budget of $0.

They even come in different colours
We began at a walk with the poles ~9' apart.  Echo being the clever creature that he is, quickly progressed to 5' spacing (this is my standard for a true trot pole).  My expectations were for him to walk through four poles (this is how many poles I possess), with an even rhythm, without tripping on them or kicking them out of whack.

This was achieved in about three to four sessions, primarily because I am not going to climb on & off the horse a bunch of times if I don't have to.  So I just introduce changes in each new session & I only spend a portion of the ride on them -- in a 30-minute ride (as calibrated to 4-yr-old horse brain), this is 5-10 minutes at most.  Keepin' it fresh.

As Echo locked in on the task quickly each time, as we built up from two, to three, then four poles, this is where it became CRITICAL to manage my expectations & reward incremental progress.
Random stills from one video of us are all I have so far - but he be tryin'
If you have ridden a fit horse over four sequential trot poles, you have felt that delightful sproing-sproing-sproing-sproing-yippee (yes, that is exactly the noise it makes, including human punctuation cheer) as the horse coils his leg joints & butt muscles collectively & gains an extra moment of suspension.

There was a part of me that set this feeling as my expectation, but I had to check myself, because guess what (this shouldn't really have been hard to guess) - Echo is not strong enough to sproing yet.  It takes a loooong time for a horse to develop the strength to have that kind of cadence & balance, which is generated through the powerful coil/release of muscular energy.  It would have been easy for our sessions to devolve into me simply telling him, "No, that wasn't perfect, do it again slower & just right," on repeat.

Had I done so, as his muscles got tired & as the demand got repeated again & again & again, he would have gotten frustrated, discouraged, & he would have developed some very unpleasant feelings towards the bellowing tyrant who expected him to both master new techniques & develop new strength all at once.

Bc this is his face with almost no contact (ignore my out of shape issues)
I think this is a concept that is easier to recognize in retrospect, though, & a line that can be very, very thin depending on both the challenge & the horse.  I have to watch myself very carefully & make sure I don't get greedy, make sure I don't fall into the trap of "one more time, surely he'll get it just right if we go one more time."

What does this look like in practice?  Well, that's part II...

11 comments:

  1. I remember reading somewhere that trainers need to be splitters not lumpers. We should always be looking for ways to break down an exercise more if want our students to learn quickly and not get frustrated. Unfortunately our natural tendency is to lump tasks together too soon and ask for too much. I definitely battle with this. I love your trot poles. I use old fence posts, and I am glad I am not the only one that is "up-cycling" :)

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    1. As a biologist, I love this application of lumpers vs. splitters, that's a good description.

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    2. I am a biologist too, so maybe that is why I like it so much :) haha

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    3. What??!! There are TWO of us biology-horse nerds on the interwebz??! Awesome! <3

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  2. i love the green horse journey, so much to always be learning! and uh, love those "trot poles" too haha, +100 for creative recycling!

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  3. I feel sometimes that the more I learn as a rider, the more I can feel what's 'wrong' and the more tempted I am to nitpick or not reward the small efforts appropriately. Ignorance was bliss is some ways!

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    1. I had not thought about it from that perspective, but you are so right! Good example: not long ago, I was getting annoyed when Echo was leaning on his inside shoulder during a ride. I felt my temptation to get all up in correcting that -- then I made myself take a breath and say "this very young, very green creature doesn't have all those lateral aids yet, why don't you focus on keeping a rhythm first? You can then finesse bend and balance when he's stronger and has more buttons."

      I was rewarded by a happier horse who felt like he was doing things right (which he was, I was being too picky) by steering, stopping, and starting promptly when I asked him to.

      "Human management" really is the hardest part of training!

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    2. This- I fall into this trap and lose the vision of the big picture. I'm a perfectionist by nature so the last several years have been more "reschooling sarah" to be selectively ignorant and focusing on "better" rather than "schooling RedMare."

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    3. I am certain "reschooling me" comprises the vast majority of my time in the saddle, LOL. You are definitely not alone!

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    4. Human emotional management is so hard! But you are absolutely correct, we have to continually build them up for their small achievements in order to get those brave horses who will jump when we ask.

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