Firm Foundations:
Have We Got The Base Right? (Part 1)

➡️When it comes to training plans, are you Organised Orla or Wing It Wendy?

If you’re somewhere in between, you might relate to this.

Sometimes when we train, we kind of launch right into it. Even best laid plans can go out of the window - if they happen at all! The mental planning, the scribbles on paper, the training timeline - whilst well intended, can go slightly awry once the excitement of putting it into practice develops. There’s almost nothing quite as exciting as getting a new horse and beginning that new training adventure all over again. 🐴

📒There’s a definite bonus to being somewhere in the middle when it comes to planning. Having a mental plan 🧠 but also the flexibility of adjusting to a changing environment can mean that little bumps in the road don’t become big obstacles. If there’s one thing I know about horses, it’s that things can change ♻️

Back in June when Blue arrived, I had made a training plan - at least mentally in any case. If you’ve seen pictures of Blue, you’ll know he is a beautiful blue roan, 18 year old Connemara gelding. Traditionally trained and with very little R+ experience - he was an almost clean slate when it came to reward-based training.

And I had plans for where training was going to take us. Spoiler alert: Blue hadn’t read those plans.

With R+ summer camp approaching, one of my aims was to teach him the reverse round-pen. I wanted some practice teaching the exercise to a horse completely from scratch because I knew that, at camp, I was likely to be helping people who were completely new to it too.

It was a perfectly reasonable training goal.

🛣️A trip down the driveway

About 7 weeks after Blue arrived, I had a manual therapist come to see him.

As part of her assessment, she wanted to see him trot up along the driveway away from the yard. Nothing particularly complicated: out through the yard gate, trot along the drive and come back again.

😯Except we couldn't get through the gate.

As we approached it, Blue froze. 🚫

His head was held high, his eyes were wide and the muscles throughout his body were rigid. He looked primed to respond to any potential threat. ⚡

When I applied a gentle pressure cue through the headcollar to ask him to move, however, he remained frozen to the spot. When I asked him to hand-target, he could tentatively offer a step forwards, but I could tell he felt conflicted. He wanted the food reward available, but the task he needed to complete was too much.

At that point, I had a decision to make 🤔

I could increase the pressure until I got Blue through the gate, or I could listen to what his behaviour was telling me.

I chose the latter.

The trot-up wasn't sufficiently important to justify pushing him through a situation he was clearly finding difficult. So instead of the driveway being something Blue had to do that day, walking and eventually trotting calmly along it became a training goal for another day. ➡️

That might sound controversial - letting the horse “get away with it!” - but I think giving the horse a voice is important. Choosing not to “push on through” and instead saying “this our training goal”.

A small distinction, but I think a very important one. 👌

❓What if the behaviour changes the question?

When a horse won't do something we want them, it's very easy for our first question to be:

🐴How do I get my horse to do this?

How do I get them through the gate?

How do I make them stand?

How do I get them to load?

How do I stop them spooking?

How do I get them to pick up their feet?

Those aren't necessarily unreasonable questions. But increasingly, I think there is another question that needs to come first:

🐴Why is this difficult for this horse, at this particular moment?

That question takes us somewhere very different. 😅

Instead of immediately looking for a training technique, we start looking at the whole horse.

▶️Could there be pain or physical discomfort?

▶️Is the horse frightened or highly aroused?

▶️Does the environment make the task unnecessarily difficult?

▶️What previous experiences might the horse bring to the situation?

▶️Does the horse understand what we're asking?

▶️Are there competing motivations?

▶️Has the horse actually learned the skills we're expecting them to use?

▶️And is the horse currently in an emotional state in which productive learning can take place?

Behaviour gives us information. Our job is not simply to make that behaviour disappear, but to work out what information it might contain.

The foundations matter

One of the things Blue has really highlighted to me is that successful training may depend as much on the foundations beneath it as on the training technique itself.

We already recognise this in relation to physical health.💊

We can't simply train through pain. 🦴

If behaviour could be associated with pain or physical discomfort, appropriate veterinary investigation needs to form part of our response. Depending on the individual horse and the presenting problem, other professionals may also have a role.

Training cannot resolve an underlying physical problem.

But I think there is a parallel here with emotional state. 🧠

🧱Just as we can't train through pain, we can't build confidence on a foundation of significant fear. 😱

That doesn't mean a horse must never experience uncertainty, mild concern or challenge before we can teach them anything.

It means that if a horse is already frightened, highly aroused or responding defensively to a situation, simply concentrating on obtaining the behaviour we want may miss an important part of the picture. 🔍

Sometimes we need to change the emotional response before we can reasonably expect the behaviour to change. 🔄

That might mean carefully planned desensitisation and counter-conditioning. It might mean changing the environment. It might mean reducing the difficulty of the task. It might mean giving the horse more time.

Sometimes it means deciding that today isn't the day to train that particular behaviour.

🌍Making Blue's world smaller before making it bigger

Blue is a cautious horse. 🐴

He can become anxious around unfamiliar situations, people and objects and he needs considerably more processing time than some horses I've worked with.

I've been advised that I should take him out, show him lots of different things and expose him to different environments to help develop his confidence.

At the moment, I've chosen not to do that.

That's not because I want to protect Blue from novelty indefinitely. My hope is quite the opposite: I want him eventually to feel sufficiently secure to explore a much bigger world. 🐾

🤔But I'm not convinced that repeatedly exposing an already cautious horse to more uncertainty is necessarily the best foundation from which to develop that confidence.

Instead, I've been thinking about the security provided by a dam to her foal. 🐎

🐴The dam provides an anchor. From that secure base, the foal can gradually explore their surroundings and develop increasing independence. 😘

I'm using that as an analogy for the approach I'm taking with Blue.

For now, I want his home environment to become predictable.

I want him to learn the routines.

I want him to become increasingly comfortable being handled by different members of the team.

I want familiar things to feel genuinely familiar.

I want him to have time to look at something, process it and decide what to do next without someone immediately escalating pressure because he hasn't responded quickly enough.

Then, from that increasingly secure base, we can gradually make his world bigger. 📏

Learning to see the smaller changes

There are already subtle changes.

😳When Blue first arrived, his facial expression was frequently wide-eyed, with noticeable triangulation above the eye. His head carriage tended to be higher and his movement could look hurried and tense.

I'm increasingly seeing a different Blue. 💙

His big dark eyes look softer and more almond-shaped. His head carriage is becoming lower. His pace is often slower and his movement more fluid.

These observations don't allow me to know exactly what Blue is feeling, but taken alongside his wider behaviour, they are changes I want to continue watching. 🔍

Perhaps most importantly for me personally, his response to me has changed.

🥰 Blue now nickers when I arrive. 🥰

I'm not going to pretend that a nicker provides scientific proof of what a horse is thinking or feeling.

But I can say what it means to me.

❤️I'm beginning to feel that we're building a relationship. ❤️

And that feels considerably more important right now than teaching him reverse roundpen.