90% of horse training is knowing when to quit.
Peppy’s day
Background
on Peppy. She is a 6yr old mare that I
raised. Great lil horse but a
firecracker. She is always in a
hurry. She is sensitive and overreacts
to cues. “Clucking” as softly as I can
to ask her to trot or lope is like touching her with a cattle prod. I don’t even own one but she acts like I
carry it in my back pocket. She tries so
hard to anticipate what I want and then gets rattled if she guesses wrong. That’s without me asking for anything. She is a full sister to Cayenne. Their dam was hot and maternal grandsire was
a firecracker so they come by it genetically.
I think I escalated the sensitivity with Peppy because I pushed her too
hard, too early. When I started her, she
reminded me so much of Cayenne only maybe better, that I asked for a lot. Last year, I backed off and only rode her at
a walk and trot, focusing on bending, rating, and building her confidence. I also started doing groundwork with her
after my first Jim Anderson clinic a year ago.
I was helping some but mainly just skirting around the issues of her
overreacting.
I took Peppy
to the last (4th) day of the Jim Anderson clinic to ask him for help
with my lil crackhead. He watched me
send her around at a trot and stop her in each direction on the line. Her trot was voluntary as soon as I sent her
out (with the softest directional cue with my whip that I could muster) and
900mph. Jim immediately said I need to
stop moving quietly around her. He said
overcue her to desensitize her. He had
me cluck repeatedly so she quit jumping out of her skin when she heard it. He wanted it to not mean so much to her. He worked her and had her switch directions
every time she trotted until she’d just walk on the line. It didn’t take long at all, she just needed
to know what to do. He had me use a stick
and string instead of a whip. He did
that because you can’t be as accurate with a stick and string. The cues with it are a lot more random so she
stops thinking that every movement or noise means something. He also had me use a plastic sack on a stick
to cue her with to help her chill out.
She is not afraid of a plastic sack but it helped to add variety and
furthered the idea that “not everything is a cue to jump over the moon.”
The first
thing he tried with her was to have me lope her on the line and then stop and
rest her until her head dropped. She ran
around the small circle completely discombobulated, rushing and tense with her
tail in a kink. He had me do that while
he worked with the other people in my group.
Each time, she scurried around in typical Peppy fashion but she did
learn to relax quicker in between. Mind
you, we were not physically wearing her out, she only went a few laps before I
used any softness or positive change for an excuse to reward her with a stop
and rest session. Jim observed that the
exercise was not working how he’d hoped so he changed it up. This is one thing I admire about Jim, he will
observe and adjust as needed to help each individual horse more effectively.
Jim wanted
to work the tension out of her body and have her bending on the circle. He used a short, blunt stick, kept her at a
walk on only a couple feet of rope and bumped her on the shoulder and ribs any
time she wasn’t giving softly with her head and neck. This seemed to help a lot and also set a
foundation to move her to a trot (and eventually a lope after I do lots of homework)
out further on the line while staying soft and bendy rather than stiff and
rushed. I worked her at a walk with rest
periods in between then moved her to a trot, still on a very small circle. When she stayed softly bent with slack in the
rope, I dropped the stick to cue her to stop and let her digest the
information.
Jim added
another exercise for me to work on after she’d licked her lips between bending
work. Peppy had rattled her nose at him
early on and moved away like she was afraid of him coming up to her. She can be like that. He had me jump around, run at her and then
pet her so she’d stop flying around when someone approached her too fast. She caught on to that pretty quick. That will help with her being so sensitive,
too.
Peppy was so
much better with Jim’s guidance. He said
to just work her for 10 minutes at a time.
As she gets better and better, I can move to a bigger circle and faster
gaits. She just has to stay soft. If I do my homework, when it comes time to
put her back to work under saddle, the softness will carry over. One thing he said about a horse like Peppy is
that you have to work her with her feet moving.
He said you can desensitize her to a plastic bag (for example) while
she’s standing still but once she gets moving, everything will change. Other types of horses carry over that type of
work from standing to moving much better.
I’ve noticed that with Scrappy, my other 6yr old, as well as other
horses but didn’t realize that some types of horses are more prone to be like
that.
Peppy is one
of my “left behind” horses that I’ve not had the time to work regularly. These ten minute groundwork sessions will be
easy for me to accomplish with her. Peppy’s hypersensitivity and tension was not
only a pain in the butt for me, it was unhealthy for her mind. I think that she will have a better quality
of life overall without the worry. She
is a fun horse with a kind eye. She is
an overachiever with endless heart.
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