Playground Play and Posing with Lexi

Goal accomplished: Lexi stands quietly while I
take a picture on the way back from our ride.

With these snowy conditions, I haven't been able to do much riding, but I have been able to work on small projects with Lexi that might otherwise get designated to another day. One of my goals has been to work with her on stopping and standing when we're out in the orchards. She likes going out and has a nice forward walk for a small horse, but she doesn't like to stop and stand. I've tried to convince her that if she would just hang out beneath an apple tree she'll be well rewarded, but she hasn't been convinced. And in Kevin's "playground," a part of the farm that's dedicated to fun, she gets anxious. It's a lovely spot with a small pond (though not one we can take the horses into) and some flat and hilly ground for galloping and lots of little logs for jumping. In the summer there's a water complex too, but it's full of snow today as is the playground in general. Every time we got out there, she wants to take off, which would be fine if there weren't gopher holes hiding under the snow and the potential for slipping. So my goal has been to get her listening even when she's feeling spicy.

The challenge with clicker-training Lexi in particular is that she's not food-motivated when she's tense. She has broadened her view of acceptable treats, but until two days ago I could rarely get her to eat one when we were out. When she did, she usually gobbled it down while she tried to charge off or held it in her mouth as she stared at whatever goblin might be up ahead. 

But we've been doing a lot of click/treating while walking out in the snow the past couple of weeks, and two days ago we ventured into the playground and walked around the pond and up the hill past the cross-country jumps that usually get her wired up. As usual she would start getting high-headed and "looky," but this time I asked her to walk figure-eights on the ground around me, then disengage her hind quarters, with plenty of clicking and treating for a quiet response. And pretty soon she was offering me behaviors. What if I drop my head to the snow? Click/treat. What if I stand quietly with my ears pricked? Click/treat. What if I touch this log? Click/treat. And so on.

And yesterday we rode out in the orchards and for the first time she stopped to take treats quietly and appeared to be trying to sort out what behaviors might get her a click/treat. What if I walk faster? Drop my head at the walk? Stretch my nose forward? How about a trot transition? The beauty of the click is that the response to what she's doing is immediate. She gets instant feedback. "Yes, that's a lovely walk." "Yes, rounding your neck and lifting your back is absolutely the right thing to do." And so she does it again. And again. And if I respond with perfect timing (hah!), theoretically I could make rapid progress towards whatever my goal is. 

The challenge for me is sorting it all out. Clicker training teaches mindfulness, because it's very easy to miss a clickable moment, or worse, to click the wrong thing because you're a split second late. So, for example, when tied for grooming, Lexi has her little buoy to target as I'm grooming. She has a small repertoire of behaviors which I'm working to "microshape." That is, I want to take her from touching the buoy with her nose stretched out and her neck flat and change her "shape" to an arched neck, her weight balanced and slightly rocked back so that she lifts her back at the halt. It's something Alexander Kurland calls "the pose."* We've been working on the pose over the last few days and today, as I was grooming her, I had her standing closer to the buoy, her neck lifted and her head more perpendicular to the ground than it has been, as well as her ears pricked. I was working to click her only when she gave me a more attractive look as she touched the buoy, a step closer to the pose (I'm not asking for the finished product. It's too soon!) If you were watching, you would have seen her moving her head quite a bit. What if I touch the snow? No? OK, how about wiggling my lips on the buoy? No? What about looking out across the distance with my ears pricked, with my nose almost on the buoy? Click/treat. Hurray! OK, what about pricking my ears with my nose on the buoy. Click/treat. Yeah!!!!! 

And so on. But if I mistime the click, I'm clicking her for turning her head towards me, or for pinning an ear, or for taking a bite out of the buoy, so I have to be absolutely mindful in order to click at the right moment. I don't always get it right and that's why it's a slow process, but it's always fixable. If something isn't working, I just go back to the previous step. 

Next up: Using play, and fixing as I go.

*Make sure to watch this video by Alexandra Kurland to see what "The Pose" will lead to (I hope) as my work with Lexi progresses.

I'm Not Afraid of that Monster!

I'm Not Afraid (Video -- also posted on FB)

Today, when I got to the farm, I found myself in a text conversation with my sisters, so didn't go "catch" Lexi right away. Afterwards, as I was pulling items out of my storage space, I heard thundering hooves and looked across to see who was charging around. It was Lexi. She was galloping and gallivanting at the bottom of her paddock. When she saw me she whinnied and charged up to the gate. I got the distinct impression she had been trying to get my attention, and when I wasn't getting her more subtle hints, like nickers and pacing the fence (and probably smiling, or touching various potential targets), she got irritated and decided to see if thundering hooves would make me pay attention to her. I had intended to go straight to riding, but she was so happy I figured I'd better do some fun stuff with her for a bit, so before riding out in the orchards we “played” in the round pen. I put a bunch of "monsters" in there for her to pick from. She went from one to the other. She upended the green bucket. She nuzzled the old saddle pad. She pawed at and tried to eat the tarp. She lined herself up by the mounting block for me (and actually tried to step up on it -- I'm hoping to ask Kevin if he'll help me build a bridge for her if I buy the materials).

And I imagined what it would be like to have a baby, a furry little sweet-faced Lexi baby whom I could play with using this kind of training. Instead of the traditional sacking out ritual, where you do a kind of dance with the horse wanting to take off and you putting pressure on and then removing it right before the horse is about to leave until he or she finally decides the thing isn't scary after all, instead of that the horse picks the pace, decides to play with the monsters as he or she is comfortable, learns that approaching the monster is a choice that's rewarded with a click/treat. I could go so far with a baby long before I ever sat on his or her back. We'd be dancing on the seashore together with no tack in no time. We could audition for Cavalia or Odysseo! It would be great!

OK, back to reality. I have no idea what I'm doing, and both of us are just fumbling around trying to figure each other out. But it's fun.

In gratitude to Lexi. (And now back to those papers I have to read before Monday!)

And then I messed up....

Image taken from Alexandra Kurland's
Clicker Training Your Horse

Last weekend, I took Lexi to my friend's place for another lesson. She was reluctant to load again, and it may be she'll just be one of these horses who doesn't like to ride in the trailer. I hope as she gains experience she'll become more and more reliable about loading, but for the moment she's still somewhat iffy. Still, I was happy with how a little ground and target work got her in the trailer, and she rode with some restlessness but no explosions out to our destination about 50 minutes away.

Then we got there, and I messed up. I had tied her slightly differently than before, deciding to use a short quick-release trailer tie. When I unhooked it, I didn't do it properly and she ended up getting a bump on the way out of the trailer when her lead rope got caught up. Being Lexi, she panicked, pulled back and fell. Again. The last time it happened she panicked because the butt bar terrified her, but this time it was my fault. I wanted to harangue myself for not making sure everything was perfect, but there's no point, especially with horses. I had to just move forward, knowing I was likely going to have a problem to fix later on.

She got up and I checked her over and then we went for a quiet walk and started some clicker-training "long line" work (I'll explain it in another post), and she was excellent the rest of the day, including a fairly relaxed dressage lesson despite the howling wind and the presence of the ever-terrifying piebald calf and his Great Pyrenees dog best friend.

But then I went to load her. And she said no. And no again. And so an hour later there we were, working on loading in a howling gale while occasional drops of icy rain spat out of an ominous sky. I kept in mind Alexander Kurland's story of her horse, Peregrine, who has never learned to be totally comfortable in a trailer. (I was binge-reading her blog a while ago and I'm pretty sure she was talking about Peregrine when she mentioned a horse whom she always needed to work on the ground a little before asking to enter the trailer. He was never totally comfortable with just walking in.) Anyway, I watched Lexi carefully as I worked to combine the little bit of clicker training I knew with traditional work. Away from the trailer I asked for slow lateral work at a walk and slow trot. Close to the trailer I let her relax. When she put her feet on the ramp, theoretically I could click/treat her to help increase her desire to continue into the trailer, but Lexi won't eat when she's stressed, so I had to move back towards more traditional methods, which was to let her rest on the ramp, and then ask her to back up and go to work when away from the ramp.

Eventually I saw her turn her head towards the trailer every time she passed it, her ears indicating she wanted to be in it. But she could only stay on the ramp (or in the trailer as she gained confidence), a second or two before her anxiety got the better of her. I worked hard to anticipate how long she could tolerate being in the trailer, using Kurland's "Four Second Rule," which says that if the horse can handle something for four seconds, click/treat in three. Since Lexi won't eat when she's stressed, I couldn't really use clicker training to reinforce her, so instead I would simply ask her to back out of the trailer before I thought she was going to leave herself. Once out, we'd do a little slow work, and if she turned her ears towards the trailer, I'd invite her to load. Eventually she was walking all the way in, and finally she stood quietly while I fastened the butt bar. The drive home was quiet, and she unloaded well at the other end.

Clearly I need to work more on all the ground work we're doing, but I feel OK about how things went. Safety and relaxation are my goals. Lexi wasn't relaxed about the trailer at first, but she was safe and not panicky, and our work was slow and quiet, which helped her to maintain her sanity.

I love what Kurland says in the image above, which I took from her book, Clicker Training for Your Horse, an excellent book to jump start your clicker training adventures: "Any time you think you have all the answers, some horse will come along to tell you that you don't. You can never stop learning and evolving. The key to good training is to always be looking for new ideas to add into the mix." I know I used to think teaching horses to load was pretty straightforward. Not with Lexi -- in part because of my own mistakes. But it's a perfect opportunity for growth and new learning.

In gratitude for learning.

My therapist is short and red-haired and always listens to what I have to say and never charges me a penny

It will be easy, they said. It will be fun, they said. You might as well give it a shot.

And so I did; I applied for a sabbatical. It's been 16 years since I've had one, and I've been working at YVC for 25 years. Time for myself. Time to write.

It sounded all well and good except for the promises I made. I had a funny kind of proposal, a two-way proposal. I told the committee that if a miracle happens and I get published right away and have to do readings, then I'll do the glamorous writer thing and travel and read to adoring fans and write in the peace of my hotel room at night. But most likely I won't be published (yet -- hope springs eternal), and if that's the case I'll take the time to finish the next novel and thereby get it done in a couple of years instead of the 12 years it took to finish Entangled Time.

But then, just because I wanted to increase my chances of actually getting a sabbatical, I made a ridiculous proposal. I was going to go on social media. I was going to promote myself. I was going to learn all about marketing my writing!

And now here I am, facing the dragon. I am going to have to share words with the world in some kind of public way because that's what writers do nowadays. No more garrets and talking to friendly rats in the glow of a dying candle.

Normally I would procrastinate. My sabbatical isn't till spring. I have MONTHS before I have to think of this whole "exposing yourself on Facebook" fiasco I set myself up for. But now it looks like I'll also have winter off work, or at least somewhat off, and that means I can theoretically start writing sooner.

And I have Lexi, and this little blog I started to track her progress, and maybe without thinking consciously about it, I have set myself up for how I'm going to meet the terms of my sabbatical. Because, you see, writing and horses are quite similar, and for me they are inextricably intertwined.

Yesterday an old school friend of mine asked me an innocent question. She asked me if Lexi was mine, and when I answered yes, she asked me if I thought having a horse was helpful with recovery from mental health issues. And that opened up Pandora's Box.

See, I grew up in a house of secrets and I turned to horses to survive the weight of those secrets. Horses freed me; they lifted me up, empowered me when I had no power. Writing did the same thing in a different way.

If I were to dissect the elements that have brought me here today, suffice to say I couldn't do it in a quick conversation over tea. It's too complicated and too messy and too much the stuff of dirty laundry. But I'm getting more and more convinced that sometimes we do need to drag the laundry out into the daylight and wash it where everyone can see where the dirt came from. Because when we hide the laundry, when we're silent, we end up being complicit in a world that lets horrors happen. I don't even want to speak about those "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" monkeys that shaped so many years of my life. They're responsible for an awful lot of evil in the world today.

So for my sabbatical, for me, I'm going to write on this blog. I'm going to write about monkeys and bastards, about genderfluid chickens and learning to train horses in a new way, about disagreeing with Skinner and yet loving clicker training, about what happens when a human saves a horse with PTSD, and when that same horse saves a human with PTSD.

And maybe I'll answer my friend's question about how horses can make all the difference when it comes to psychological wellness. They do for me, anyway.

In the meantime, meet my therapist:

Lexi's lesson with Meg

Lex was fabulous today. Went right into the trailer, travelled quietly except for a couple of pawing moments at stoplights, and got to our destination with hardly a ruffled hair.  Then she saw signs of the Apocolypse across the road through the trailer window: a whole herd of carnivorous goats, a horse-hating Pyrenean Mountain Dog, and the dog's best friend, a cow -- which is just wrong. Cows and dogs aren't supposed to be best friends, and if they are, clearly the cow is seriously abnormal and can't be trusted. So Lexi, who doesn't mind cows normally, had a moment. Head in the air, dancing in the trailer, wanting to rush out. But I asked her to step forward and be calm before I opened the back doors and the ramp, then asked her to relax again before dropping the butt bar, and she was good, came out pretty quietly on command and stood at the bottom of the ramp to think about mouthing a treat. 

At that moment, the carnivorous goats and abnormal cow with her dog-sidekick decided to approach the fence on the other side of the road, so Lexi got a little marbles-in-her-nose attitude and danced around to warn me that we should really be running rapidly from the vicinity. I had to do a little light lunging to settle her before I rode, but once she figured out she really was OK, she was excellent for our lesson with Meg. 

And afterwards she loaded without any need of help from others (she took a couple of false starts because she was busy making sure the carnivores on the other side of the road weren't heading our way, but then went right in). She didn't budge a foot the whole way home and was calm and polite when unloading. And not sweating. And not in a panic about getting out.

I love having the time to take our time and do it right. :)

Trailer success

This is huge!

When I got Lexi, I was told she trailered fine, but I think she was used to a slant load that she walked out of facing forward. The first time I loaded her into the straight load trailer, she followed me in fine, but panicked when I closed the butt bar. When I opened it she roared out backwards and fell, hurting herself. With her confidence shaken, things went downhill. Every trip ended with her a tense, sweating mess. She is a stress pooper, so the sight of the trailer would lead to instant runs. She would follow me into the trailer with pressure from behind, but I had to lead her and it took people behind her to get her to agree to go into it. Once inside, she thrashed and stamped and pawed, rocking the truck and trailer so much it was quite a sight. Our trips down the road were accompanied by the trailer jumping behind me as she stomped and bucked in place.

I did everything to try to figure out what was causing her anxiety. I drove like a granny to prevent her being thrown around. I had my friend Mark drive the trailer while I rode in it to see if anything might be causing her worry. The owner of the barn where she's boarded looked around to see what might be upsetting her and suggested bungee cording the divider to help diminish rattles. Both Mark and Kevin suggested getting a hitch with a lower drop to level the trailer, which I did.  After the new drop, the trailer towed better and so did Lexi, but her anxiety was pretty ingrained by then. She started getting better with slow, careful work, but she still needed two people to load her, and I wanted to get her so I could send her in alone. I worked on doing so, and got her so she'd put her front end in for me, but she always got stuck halfway in.

I've been pretty successful loading recalcitrant horses over the years. I'm no cowboy genius who can "natural horsemanship" a horse into a trailer in an hour, but I've been successful with slow, steady work, and usually I can tell if a horse has reached that moment right before saying, "OK, I'll do it. There you go." But Lexi never got there, and she went backwards if I made the tiniest mistake in ways I wasn't used to. I was beginning to think I'd forgotten anything I ever knew about loading horses, or handling them at all, for that matter.

Then I went to the Horse Park with friends. It took two people to load her, as usual, and when we got there she was anxious and a bit het up. I knew I needed to be absolutely solid about bridling her because if she panicked and got away, I’d never get her back. There was no way to get her into a contained area, and the freeway was across a four-foot wire fence beyond some trees. I’ve been at the Horse Park when a horse got out onto the freeway, and there is no way I was going to risk that happening to Lexi (The mare that got onto the freeway was caught just fine, luckily. I had to gallop the borrowed horse I was riding back from the water complex to the stabling area to find someone with a trailer who would go get the mare and hopefully catch her before she got run over. In the end, it all worked out. But still….)

Anyway, my friends were anxious to get on the trail, and I didn’t want to hold them up, so I suggested they go ahead. After they left, I spent time walking Lexi around in her halter, showing her the scary stuff, then taking my slow, sweet time bridling her. I had just started clicker training, so I used what I knew to keep her focused on me and calm.

Finally her bridle was on, and off we went. But when I was done and ready to go home, I had no one to help me get her in the trailer. I worked with her for a while before someone drove by and saw me and helped me out.

At that point I decided from then on my goal was to be able to send her into the trailer solidly, calmly and alone. And I decided to go with my gut in how to do it.

It took a long time (though granted, working with the trailer only once or twice a week slowed things down!). But gradually we got to where she no longer got the stress runs when she saw the trailer. And she stopped running backwards out of it every time she put a foot into it. And she started trusting that I wasn’t trying to kill her. And tonight she walked in calmly, stood while I closed the butt bar, accepted her click and treat quietly, and then started eating hay. It’s the first time she’s been willing to eat hay in the trailer. She refuses to eat anything, even her favorite treats, when she’s stressed, so the fact that she ate her dinner (grain and supplements) and some hay calmly and peacefully while I groomed her from the other side of the divider was gratifying. She unloaded like a champ, waiting till I pulled on her tail and told her “back,” and coming out slowly and carefully, stopping halfway down the ramp as I’ve taught her to get a rub and a click/treat.

Now to get her solid and take her on a short trip. :)

I tell you, having my own horse is bliss. I get to decide everything about how I’m going to work with her and there’s no pressure to perform a particular way or get her going fast or do anything other than how I want to do it. I get to build a relationship with her, and nobody tells me I’m doing it wrong (or if they do, I ignore it!). And to be fair, I’ve had wonderful knowledgeable people help me, giving me suggestions that have made a huge difference to our ability to progress. But ultimately, everything I do is my choice, and for that, I am grateful. :)