Anxious Horse needs help Calming down

So, you can see how uncomfortable she is when she again just left to her own devices. I haven't done anything yet. She's She's uncomfortable, but I I think she's pretty cool. She's smart. Hey everybody, welcome back to another video. Uh, today I'm here with Jordan. Can you tell us a little bit about your horse and some of the issues of why you asked me to come out here today? Yes. Lark is a 10-year-old off the track Thurra that I've had since she was three. I got her directly off the track. Um over the years she's had issues tying um cross tie, single tie where she'll be fine and then fly backwards and rear. She's also intermittently hard to catch. Um and she gets very very anxious and amped up sometimes on the ground, sometimes riding, and there's no correlation or pattern to what causes these issues. Yeah. All right. Well, it's obviously like she's uncomfortable here in the aisle way. So, I think what we're going to do is right away we'll take her down to the round pen and um we'll just mess with her a little bit and see if we can find any uh sticky spots and then I think we'll come back here and we'll see if she isn't a little more settled standing in the cross ties. Okay, sound good? Mhm. All right. So, what I think is a great place to start with a horse is building a connection. Yeah. And so, I want her to see me as the herd leader and to find comfort and relief being with me versus getting relief going away. Okay. Right now, she's getting relief going away from us. And so I'm going to play a little game. Um it's kind of a catching game, but essentially what I want her to understand from this is that I'm the herd and I want her to be with the herd. So um you eventually like and you wouldn't directly use this game out in the big field if she was hard to catch, but indirectly you would if you played this game in here and kept reinforcing to her that you're uh you're the herd. Yeah. So, you can see how uncomfortable she is. Um, when she, again, just left to her own devices. I haven't done anything yet. She's she's uncomfortable. And so, my suspicion would be that once I start giving her some leadership in here, she'll start to find uh more safety safety and comfort with the human. Hopefully, that's going to be the goal. So, I'm going to look for an opportunity when she's kind of fully thinking away, like when she was turning away there. Um, and I'm going to go put a little pressure on that spot that she's at. Okay. To me, this looks a little bit more like habitual, like she's used to doing this. Like this is more of a pattern for her. So, it's it's almost like we're interrupting the pattern. And now I'm just going to stand here and observe what she does. And she's I part of the idea of me standing here is giving her time to process what I just did. And so I timed it there when she was turned faced away and before she kind of she's she's in a like a brain mental pattern right now. That's not healthy. It's it's kind of more of a displaced behavior. Now there's a little change. She had a little connection. She kind of looked at me instead of just being worried. This is like a habit of hers, you know, like she doesn't want to be here. She doesn't want to be like that, but that's that's her pattern. And so I'm changing the pattern. You know, now all of a sudden I'm giving her a little bit more to think about and hopes that she finds comfort with me. And if you would like to have access to my whole toolbox via my Patreon page, I have all my full training videos on there. I go into great detail over each step broken down into a sequence. Um I have a fundamental series on there that is very popular with a lot of people that have a new horse or a green horse and they're wanting to make sure they're crossing their tees and dotting their eyes. That's all on there on my fundamental series. Um it's pretty inexpensive. You can even ask me questions on there about your horse and I can help you out with that. So, you guys are going to love it. Check it out. Now, here she's kind of looking this way and standing still. So, I'm just going to go for a walk and just walk over here. And I like that she then came came towards me. So, we have just a razor thin connection right now. But what I'm one of the things that I'm avoiding doing is putting pressure on her when she's near me. I want to go to where she's at and put pressure. I don't want her to associate that pressure with me even though I'm the one doing it. So, for instance, if she was like right here by me and turned away and I just immediately put pressure on her, she would associate all that pressure with being near me. But if I wait until there's a moment where she's further away from me and then I put pressure on that was a good girl. And so, again, even just waiting, you know, she was able to find find that answer. And so, I'm going to reward her for that kind of by just walking away. But that's part of the strategy behind this. And again, like traditional round petting is I would have just came in here and circled her and chas chased her around. But I'm trying to make this as uh as much of a mental game as I can, you know, where she's learning it's harder to be away from me than it is to be with me. And the good news is she was looking for comfort anyways. And so I just gave her a little bit of uh leadership essentially by interrupting her. And I timed it where she was about to come back towards me, but she was still facing away. and it was enough to interrupt that pattern uh where now she's semicconnected. And you know, again, this is natural to horses. Um they get this leadership from, you know, the other horses chase each other around. It's natural for them to respect the herd leader and then if they leave, I got to leave with them, right? Uh from when they're babies. So like what's interesting is I didn't come in here and like give her cookies or talk her into coming to me. Um, I put pressure on her when she wasn't with me. Yeah. And also notice I I didn't I haven't pet her. I haven't done anything. I'm just kind of ignoring her uh to a degree. But I'm signing her up to reinforce this idea. Like there I walked away and she left and then I added pressure so I can reinforce this idea of it's harder to be away from me than it is to be with me. at a girl. A lot of horses are are not as comfortable with humans as she is. And so, you have to be a little bit more deliberate about how you move around them. I don't have to be that particular. What's really important here is that I don't pressure her when she's near me. Only put pressure on when she leaves and goes away from me. So, like a lot of people think they're making a mistake. go fix it like instantly. No, you have to let her get committed to leaving. Let her leave all the way. Like almost like I as much as I can set it up where I'm over here and she's all the way over there. It's more work to get across there, but it emphasizes the point uh more. So, I'm pretty happy. You can see her kind of calming down. She's getting more connected. Now, in my opinion, she doesn't have healthy boundaries. like she's on top of me a little bit too much. And so the first game I'm gonna play with her and why this is going to be important for her, it's not so much for my safety. Like I don't feel like she's not trying to be dominant in any way. She's not trying to be pu. She is pushy, but she's not trying to be pushy. But she needs more boundaries for personal space for our safety. Like if they spook on and they're right next to us, they can jump on top of us. They can step on our toes, you know. Um it's just for me it's good practice to just have some more boundaries. So, if I'm this close to a horse, I want it to be I'm this close to horses all the time, but it's because I went into their space or it's because I brought them into my space, but I don't make a habit of just allowing a horse to just come into my space uh when I didn't ask them to. So, this is going to give her leadership because I'm telling her where I'm actually right now I'm telling her where not to be. But by default, she's moving her feet away from me. And I'm going to show her that she can get okay out there. So you can see like even from the cross how she was dancing around when I just asked her to be over there, she was a little bit like where do I be? Where should I stand here? You know, and so that's that's the game. And so now I'm going to walk somewhere else. And all I'm doing is I'm saying this is my space. And this may not make sense to a lot of people watching, but this This is necessary for our safety and for her well-being is to just learn how to respect human space a little bit more than she does. You can see it's not hard. I don't have to put very much pressure on her to ask her to be away. It's a little bit more of just uh our job. Our job. We're going to address that part next. You're working on your horse's self-confidence when they're away from you, ahead of you, or you're riding on a loose rain. any of those things, that's self-confidence. If she's right with you, right next to you, that's them. They're associating their conf they can be associating their confidence with you um as the leader more. Yeah. So, that was really good right there. I stopped and she just stopped. I like that. So, that was like a little change that I was happy with. So, now we're going to move on to the next thing. So, the next thing is going to be whenever she gets distracted, I like right there, she's looking away. I'm gonna go to her hind quarters and ask her to kind of follow me. And so it's like wherever I go, she needs to come with you on the road. Correct. And so it starts with a hind quart and then it's a walk then it's walk away. And what I'm kind of doing is um I'm just like setting her up to like have a little moment and like if I'm not sure like if she's looking over there and I'm like I don't know if she's with me or not, I'll just go for a walk and if she's not right with me, she would have stood still there. But she came with me and so then I I knew if she winnies then I know for sure she's not with me. I'm going to for sure touch her with the stick then. Does that make sense? Yeah. But again, if you're not sure, just kind of walk away and see what you got. Is she there or is she not there? And I'm also working at this at liberty because they're slack in the line. So, as long as they're coming towards you or or they're with you, but you're not can, you know, you're not pulling on the rope at all, that's li like liberty training. So, in my mind, I'm working at this at liberty. There's goes the head. [Music] because I'm teach you're going to reinforce this hopefully and you're going to reinforce that hey when you're with me here you need to stay stay connected here so there's a lick and chew she just got relief but wa watch here so no stick if I just look at the hind quarters see how the hind quarters just stepped away and the good news is she really wants to connect with you um there's just you just needed to add a few more of these little things to kind of set set her up for success with And I'm looking for that hind quarters to step over. See how there she's walking forward. That's that we're not going to count that because that's what would happen in the pasture, too. Now, I'm just going to shorten my rope and I'm going to keep adding pressure until there. That was full commitment. And now, she can see me out of this eye, too. So, anybody paying attention? If you do hind quarter yields, you got to do it right because you can do this and only get a small percentage of what it's worth or you can get 100% out of it. I'm getting I'm asking for 100%. I'm not accepting, you know, 20% out of this. So, again, watch it again. I'm going to ask her to yield her hind quarters. I'm looking down, putting pressure here. Now, the stick's coming up because she wasn't moving. And then I tapped her because she didn't do a hind quarter yield. She she trotted off that way. That if I was at liberty in the pasture, that's exactly what would have happened right there. Okay. Now, I'm just going to walk away from her to reinforce this a little bit. But that that little move right there is really important. So that's fine. Now I'm going to ask for it. And I like that she's been respectful of my space here the whole time. Look at the hind quarters. Ah, really good. So I'm signing her up to like, no, I want I want a full commitment from you, not half in, half out. Give her that little Yeah. Very nice. Good. Then I'll just walk away. Now I'm going to switch my focus to now working on building her confidence. So this game is now switching to her understanding the difference between energy and intention. Okay. So right now the stick has some energy in it, but my intention is not for her to move. Okay. So right now the stick has a lot of energy in it, but my intention is not for her to move. Now my intention is for her to move. Do you see the difference? So, she's very sensitive to this and so this will work really well if you leverage it. So, everybody would love the idea that if you're calm, your horse will be calm. But they don't come out of the box that way. You have to train them to follow your intention. Okay? So, if my intention is for her to move, I want her to move. But if my intention is we're just hanging out talking, that was really that was better. So, there the energy didn't influence her. This could be another horse getting stirred up. This could be a noise, a tractor, the dog running. Anything that's commotion, energy around. I'm just instigating it as a as a starting point of using the stick and string. Then I'll use a flag. I'll use the rope. And I'm going to instigate this idea of energy versus intention. And so anytime that she's minding her own business, not doing anything wrong, and I want her to move, I have to first change my intention. And so the principle of horsemanship that I follow is I'm always going to do less first. So that's my intention changing. So I'm not The first cue isn't the stick coming up. The first cue is the little head nod. Okay. Now because my I've changed the lesson here. We've moved on to working on energy versus attention. I'm not going to even though she didn't yield her high quarters when I looked at her there. I'm going to let that go because that's not the focus right now. The focus is her standing still with energy happening around her. But again, if my intention is to uh have her be comfortable like here, she's afraid of the stick. So there was an example of she didn't read, she's reading the energy, not my intention. So notice my stance. I'm really upright. And now I'm going to keep going and the pressure is not going to go away because that wasn't the right answer. Now she's standing still licking and chewing. That was the right answer. Now the pressure can go away. So that's that's why I'm saying this is like fragile with her, but this is one of the most important things she needs to get better at is reading the human's intention versus the energy. Now also you need to look at this as like a muscle. The more you get her in this frame of mind and the longer she stays here, it's like exercising that muscle. She will spend more and more time there. Then there's like intensity level. A horse can be like surface level chill and then one little thing happens and they lose it or they can be like they're really chill like it would take a bomb going off next to them for them to really be bothered, you know. And so right now it's a bit surface level, but you know, we got the we got the light kettle bells going right now, okay? But eventually you want to graduate to the heavier stuff and and and build more depth of understanding to it. Let's get this a little harder. Would you mind handing me that flag? So this flag, the stick is a good tool if you need to touch the horse to kind of correct something. The flag is a great tool for exposure to read this like energy versus intention. Now she's not afraid of it. So that's good. A lot of people I think might think that what I'm doing would be hard for a horse to understand. And it could be just slightly confusing, but overall it's not at all because it's natural to them. Yeah. They are designed to read the en the intention of the herd. Can I are we all drinking? Are we all eating? Are we all okay? You know, somebody on the lookout for danger. And then when the when one horse's head elevates and their heart rate spikes, it goes through the rest of the herd and now they're all there. And so it's very natural for them to come in and out of this. So even for us, it might be like, well, that's kind of quick to change from getting her confident with something and then all of a sudden you're asking her to yield to it. But for her, it's not it's not that bad. And I think you can kind of see that based on how quickly I could touch her with the flag and then I could go right back to doing this without her being scared of it the whole time. Now, if I, you know, if I put too much pressure on, then then it would have a negative effect. But even right there, I went from energy to intention of like, nope, you're not going to focus on those other horses. Now her, so this all everything I'm doing here will help with the catching and will help with her standing comfortably in the cross ties. So I would say she's probably learned to pull back and push through things. Okay. So that's going to be a hole. But I would say what led to that happening was her not being okay by herself. So it started with I'm uncomfortable just being here by myself and then it led to all of a sudden we have like a pullback issue. But do you see how they're kind of separate? Yes. Cuz like you she stood in the cross tie or she was in the cross ties but she wasn't standing still. She's moving around where a lot of horses have a pullback issue. They're just as soon as they feel something connected to them, they're pulling back on it. And maybe if there was nothing there, they would stand there just fine. So, do you see how that horse is comfortable there until there's pressure with the steady pressure feel where her I would say if we get her in this frame of mind to stand there? The pullback or her pulling and breaking something is kind of secondary to her being comfortable there. So, from now on, the last thing I would do is catch her and take her to the cross ties. Okay, I would bring her down here and get her get her into a good frame of mind. So, I'm going to put her in a couple of binds. Now, these are what I would call simulated got to situations. When you have a horse tied like in the cross ties, even though there was twine where it could break, that's a got to because like when she feels it, it comes taught and it's taught until she breaks it. Yeah. Right. That's a got to where what I'm going to do is I want her to feel like she's in a got to, but it's not really because I'm the one controlling the rope so I can drift with it. But I'm trying to recreate that feeling of when she pulled back because I have to I have to talk to her at that level of pressure. You can see how well she like understands following the field as long as she's not panicked by it. Um, so this is what I would call putting them in binds. I see this like it's my job as their coach. Like I look at myself as their coach. It's my job to prepare them to handle situations that you might put her in, right? Like cross ice, just something as simple as that. A horse trailer, uh, you know, in the wash rack to hose them up. any of those things um can be a very scary scenario to a horse. And so a lot of people don't like to bother their horse when everything's going well. It's like she's standing here just fine, everything's going well. Why would I bother her? But from my perspective, I would rather be prepared than lucky. So I would rather prepare her now when the conditions are all under my control. We're in sand. We're in a round pen. I'm not on concrete aisle way where it's like, oh crap, if something goes wrong, it it can go real wrong. But I but I'm going to challenge her um in a situation. She may be bothered by this, she may not. We'll see. But what's nice about when I do it myself is I can set the situation up for success and I can let everything go if it goes wrong, you know. So, I'm just going to pull on this rope and she's going to feel a bind around her leg and from the halter and we'll see what she does with it. Most horses that have a pullback issue will panic like right there. So, there's a little panic and I'm drifting with her. So I maintain there she gave to it and that's where the relief is. But what's cool about that is she got bothered but it was just enough. It was 10 seconds 15 seconds and then she thought her way through it and she got relief. But when she panicked and went ran kind of ran sideways I maintain the same pressure. I didn't lock down. And so that's where it becomes more achievable. Imagine if I was actually tied to something hard and she had to give, right? That would be like too too much. But essentially that's what we're doing when we we're tying them somewhere, you know, for vet work, frier work, for cross ties, you know, horse trailers, any of that stuff. So it's long story short is it's really important for a horse to understand this this pressure. And the good news is she actually understands pressure quite well. She does not want to not want to argue with it. If they fail this test, um like she failed it in a really good way. Like she got through it very quickly, but she still failed it. like she still reacted to it. If she had been tied to something solid, even if it's like she was tied somewhere and got a foot over the rope, you got a wreck. Like she would have been in a wreck, right? So the whole point is like preparing them where you have control over the situation. So I have this rope on in case she tries to whirl away. Most horses kind of run backwards. She she's actually she's a quite a very cool horse. like she has like just she's very sensible in terms of wanting to understand things. Um, and she's very sensitive to pressure. But that's what that's also what makes her sensitive to all the other things going on. And see, it's not about her coming forward. It's about her softening. There's not like an exact right answer to this other than soften. like she could put her head down, she could stand still, she could bend her leg, but if she's just mentally in a soft frame of mind, relax, which is relaxation, um that's where the relief is. My assessment is it's way less about her understanding pressure or the pulling back in the cross. It's way more about her emotional state. So, we need to do more things that develop her emotional fitness. like for example. So I ask her to go on a circle and now I'm asking her to understand this energy of the flag even though my intention is still calm. But by adding that speed to it, she got emotional and I'm just kind of putting a feeling releasing on the rope. And I'm going to do this until she either comes to a soft jog or a walk and then I'll get quieter with it. So that exercise is an emotional fitness test. Okay? It's like, can you handle that pressure without being bothered by that? It's the exact same game I was doing with her at a standstill. It's just now the relief is, see there, she challenged it. I started working the flag and she's like, "Wait a minute. You're trying to bother me. You can't bother me." Like, "You're right. You win." So that's how smart she is. Like she catch she catches on super fast. So yeah, let's um we're going to go try to release her to the cross ties now. Okay. Sound good? So, first we'll try it just here at at kind of I'll kind of drop the rope and expect her to stand here. Now, she's being good, but we're still going to do that. We're going to go out there and I'm going to reinforce this is where the relief is. Okay. Okay. I'm just going to communicate to her by doing something out here. It's going to communicate that it actually was better deal in there. There's no rush. There's no big big hustle rush to anything. I'm just going to ask her to kind of walk a little circle. And I'm going to be picky about her bending her ribs around me as she walks this little circle. [Music] [Music] So now I'm going to leave my lead rope on, but we are going to clip her up. I'll position this where I can grab it on my way out. And so you can build how long she stands there for. You can build how far away you go from her. But this is where it's tricky. It's like how much of a mistake do we let her make? And for me, that's big enough right there. [Music] Now I'm kind of doing this until she tolerates it a little bit. So, right now, she's being very responsive to me touching her. I'm going to kind of wait until she doesn't quite want to move around so much when I touch her. I'm going to get her to be a little bit dull to it, okay, on purpose. So, if I stop now, I would have just made her more responsive to it. But, if I keep going here just a little bit longer, she'll start right there tapping her as hard. And she started to wear it. So, now I'll bring her in here. And I'm going to get a little bit creative with how I do this. I want to put it in reverse [Music] and then we need her to make the like right now she's in the habit of fidgeting it around in here and so we just need to get it to where she goes wait a minute when I move around but this is where it's really subjective because it's like two steps But it's like I honestly I think she'd still rather be out there. [Applause] But we're also gonna let the pattern do the work. Like if we do this a few reps, she should start to see the pattern. Cuz again, I think as much as I'm doing out here, I think she still would rather be here right now than in there. But you do this enough times in a row, she'll start to say, "Okay, she'll start to get like more leftrained about it, like, okay, I don't really want to go out there anymore." So this is a part where I would say let the pattern do the work. [Music] [Applause] [Music] To be honest, I think I would be happy with that. We got a leg cocked standing still. The feet moved a little slower. Like again, you could drill for oil and be really super picky, but like she's trying. I feel like she's trying, you know? Like it's not great, but she's trying. So yeah, I think I'd be happy with that. Not bad, huh? No. All right. So Jordan, what do you think of that training session? I think it went well. She seems calmer. She's standing now. So there's that. Anything that you saw me do that you're like, "Oh, that's really going to help and make a difference." Um, I think the first game I haven't tried that with her before, so that'll be interesting. It'll be, like I said, I think my timing is going to be a little hard to get good initially, but I haven't done that one with her before. So, I think that'll be really helpful. Yeah. The big thing, take your time. Don't rush. Don't like, oh, I got to correct her now. There's no hurry to it. Let her get fully wrong away from you, looking away, or just as more as much wrong as she can be, and then go add pressure to it. That's the big secret with that. A lot of people like the horse is by them, and the horse just starts to leave and yeah, the horse is leaving. Let it leave. Let it get committed to going all the way over there. So, the pressure is over there, not by you. Um, the other thing I want you to be picky with is the winning out to the other horses and keeping her attention on you. So, we're going to start doing something about that every time she gets distracted and building her attention spans. It's like a muscle. You keep flexing that muscle. And the more she stays there in that good frame of mind, the easier it'll be for her to stand here and chill out. Oh, there we go. There's a nice let down. How what did you think of it? Pretty good. All right. Well, thanks for having us out. It was a pleasure working with you and your horse.