Will my OTTB leave me at Liberty?

If you've never tried Liberty before, this is a game that you're going to want to try with your horse. It's a lot of fun. You're going to build a lot of connection. Let's get into it. Hey guys, welcome back to another video. In today's video, we're going to be trying to work with Nelson at Liberty for the first time. So it should be a lot of fun. Let's get into it. So why would I want to play with him at Liberty? For me, Liberty is going to help me build connection. Nelson is very easily distracted. I think that's true with quite a few off the track thoroughbreds. And so Liberty is just another way, another angle for me to approach building a stronger connection to me and help him to stay focused. So that's going to be one of the main reasons I'm going to be doing Liberty with him. I also really like it. It's fun. And what I did is I just brought him in and turned him loose in here. He's been in here for like 10 minutes now. You can see he's over there. And so the idea is that I want my horses to catch me and I want them to be connected. So as long as he's looking at me, I'm not going to do anything. But what I want him to learn in this session is that the relief is around me. So if you're new to Liberty, this is where you would start. This is basically, you could almost call it like the catching game with your horse. This is about getting the horse to come to you as relief and then hopefully stay hooked on. Sometimes I refer to this game as the find your herd game, meaning that I'm the herd in here and I want him to see me as the herd and be connected. Like if the herd leaves, like Lambo and Marley is his herd, he would go with them if they were both leaving somewhere. And so I want to build that connection there. So now he's not looking. I'm going to look for an opportunity to put some pressure on where he's at. So essentially he's on hot lava because the herd's over here and he's over there. And so I'm going to look for a moment. I'm going to go in there, put some pressure and he didn't move. And so I'm going to, I'm going to put a little pressure on this spot. Now I, you saw, I did it just enough that it made him uncomfortable, but not so much that it scared him. That's, that's kind of the sweet spot of where you want to be. So you got to adjust how fast you get here and how hard you spank the ground. And the ground that I'm going for is the ground underneath his hind feet. So if he gets out of the way, it'll never touch him. If he doesn't get out of the way though, I would follow through with that. And you can see now he's starting to look me up. That's what I'm going for. So I'm going to go ahead and step off away from him. But after I spank the ground, whatever happens, happens. I give them a chance to stay hooked on. Now you see I'm over here. Oh, and there he hooked on. Kind of. Hey guys, real quick. I want to thank the sponsor of today's video, Montana Premium Forage. 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And so we soak ours just for a few minutes and it starts to loosen up and kind of swell up a little bit as it absorbs some water. And the horses absolutely love it. So if you're in the need for some good feed, check out Montana Premium Forage. So now he turned towards me a little bit and he's looking at me. So now is not the time to go spank the spot. And I call that owning space. I'm putting pressure saying kind of I'm the alpha horse in here. So I'm going to go to this spot. He went to leave. That was perfect timing. And I should have touched him there, but I kind of chickened out at the end and spanked to the side. And now I just hang out here and I just let him process what happened. Like I was over there. He was over here facing away from me and then pressure came on. And so I want him to figure out that as long as he stays hooked on to me, that's where the relief is. Now, because Nelson isn't bothered by this, like if the horse went running around, you might want to give them a little more time. But I'm just going to wander kind of slowly over here and let him. Oh, he decided to pay a little more attention to where I'm at. I do the same game out in the pasture. I'll just kind of sneak up on their hindquarters and try to get them to connect with me. But it's definitely helpful if they've learned at first here. So he's got one ear on me. He's kind of faced away. Now he's kind of just not really paying attention. So I'm going to head to his hindquarters. Now I like that one because that one yielded a little better response and he passed me there. So that's OK. That's part of why I don't like to be right on the rail, because if they want to do a run around, that's fine. He can run around now there. He hooked on. Very good. But my me being consistent and just kind of camping out here and not just doing something over and over again quickly, the pace of what I'm doing this at is important because it gives him a chance to process and kind of be right. Now, horses that are more extroverted, it's going to be helpful. And he's typically a little bit more extroverted, meaning that he likes to move his feet. It would be easier for him to stay hooked on if I go ahead and walk somewhere. But if you have a horse that's more introverted, it would be helpful if you just stand there and let them be right for a little longer. OK, now, same thing. I'm kind of by me wandering over here. I'm kind of signing him up because he either has to commit to looking at me or walking away or whatever he's going to do. So here I'm just going to wait for him to get a little bit distracted and then I'm going to approach his hindquarters again. But I'm going to be aware that as I go to this spot, he's got a choice that he chose to leave. But if he would have chose to look at me, then I would have stopped right away. But because he chose to leave, I followed through with what I was doing. Now he's licking and chewing while he's facing me, which means he's getting relief while he's hooked on to me here. So it's important. And when I'm here, I don't touch him. I don't look at him. I mean, I kind of notice him out of my peripheral vision, but I don't try to turn and face him. I try to just be really consistent, really predictable about this. Now I'm just going to go for a little walk here. And again, I'm trying to sign him up. He's either got to turn and face me and hook on or he can stay kind of turn faced away from me. Ah, he made a good choice there. Now here I don't love the angle. I'd rather be kind of completely behind him, but let's just see how this plays out. If I wanted to make this easier for him, what I could do is kind of do a half circle around him to the other side. And he would probably hook onto me, but I think I can build a little bit more depth of understanding by signing him up to this. Cause I don't think he's very committed to this yet. And I don't want to like beg him to come to me. I want him to make, make a choice to come to me. Okay. So I kind of gave him a moment and I'm going to walk over here. Ah, I like that. He was pretty hooked on right away. And again, I'm just going to wander all the way over here to where I'm kind of in this zone and he's got a choice. Ah, so he chose to kind of trot over there. No big deal. But then he hooked on afterwards. So because he got to where he's facing me again, I'm going to sign him up again. I'm going to go for a walk again. But what, what I like about this is all the processing. Now there he chose to leave. And so when I take off on the line, I'm going to the spot where his hind feet were when I left the line. Now I've also been going to the right pretty consistently here. So I think I'm going to start turning to the left, probably not this one, but maybe the next one, but you can see he's gotten closer to me and the connection came, came through a pretty strong, pretty quickly. So you can see here, he's got a choice. He can hook on and follow me and I'll leave him alone. And we got a couple of steps that time. So this time I'm going to circle and do what I was telling you earlier is the easier approach. So I'm going to circle this way and see if he wants to stay hooked on over here. And the reason this is a little easier is he does know hind cordy yields. Now there, he made a choice to leave. So I'm going to, so I let him leave. He got to the other side of the round pen. And then I added pressure because he's got to figure out that leaving me is not the right answer. Being connected to me and staying hooked on. And that's why this important and really why I wanted to do it with him. When we have a halter and lead rope on, it's really easy to like, kind of have a false sense of connection with the horse. Like they're connected because they're physically attached and they know they're physically attached, but are the, is the horse mentally connected with you while you're handling them and leading them around? And so that's what we're going for in this game is to build that mental connection where without a halter and lead rope, he would still be with me. Now there, he chose to leave. Let's just see how this plays out. So you can tell he's pretty, he's kind of unsure about this. So because he came back to me there and got closer, I'll just walk away. So I've only put pressure on him when he was thinking about leaving. I've not put pressure on him when he was in a mindset of being connected to me. So there he knew kind of what was coming. And so he decided to hook on a little bit there. That was really good. And that was kind of the moment that was kind of the breakthrough spot right there. And you just got to kind of let the pattern do the work. Kind of trust the process. And, um, this game, this game works really incredibly well. I wouldn't, the only horse that I maybe wouldn't start this game is like a feral horse, whether it's a rescue or a Mustang or horses has not been handled. This game might be a little too advanced for that type of horse because they're just scared of people in general. So he made a decision to leave there. And so he came over to here. And the other thing that you have to keep in mind is he's going to And I'm trying to communicate to him that where he thought the relief was over here, there was actually hot lava. There was pressure here. And then when he hooks onto me, that's where the relief is. And so there's no, no spanking, no running around when he's connected to me. Now, of course, a person could give their horse a bunch of treats and they'll follow you around because you're, you're a Pez dispenser, which would be okay. It may be applicable for some horses, but for Nelson, I wanted to build his quality of attention that he has. I wanted him to have a little more attention on me because riding him groundwork, he just tends to be a little bit distracted. He still, what's interesting about him is he kind of goes where I want him to go, but he'll be kind of looking somewhere else while he's doing it. And so this will just build that attention span. And I like to think of the attention span as kind of like a muscle that the more you exercise that muscle, the stronger it gets and the quality of the attention can be better and the endurance or the duration of the attention can be stronger. So this was it. He's hooked on now. And, um, this is, this is a place where I would quit doing this exercise. So that didn't take too long. It's just that fun little game. It's one of my favorite games to play with him. Really like this. So that was a little test right there to see if he could stay hooked on through that turn. He made it. And, uh, now I'm going to halter him back up. And that was his training session for the day. So thank you guys for tuning in. Hope you enjoyed this video. If you want to follow Nelson's whole training series, I'm posting all the training videos on Patreon. So go check it out. I'll leave a link in the description and in the comments. So if you're new to Liberty, this is a great place to get started with it. It's a lot of fun. You're going to build a lot of connection with your horse. Make sure you give it a try.