Bridleless Rides!

Pixie during our first bridleless ride

Pixie and I hit a milestone in our partnership that I thought was still so far away...we rode bridleless for the first time on 2/11/2014 :) She was outstanding for the whole ride. She listened to all my cues without a second thought. I did have the neck rope on and our next goal will be to ride without that, but for now this is awesome. Yesterday we were able to enjoy two more amazing bridleless rides in the arena. Once without other horses and one with another horse in the arena.

In August of 2010 when I set out on this journey of finding another way to train I knew that one day I wanted to ride bridleless. I wanted to find a partnership so trusting I didn't need equipment. There have been many bumps in the road that lead us to here. And I can't say I never doubted myself and didn't go back to traditional methods, because I did. But every time I went back I never saw the end results I wanted. Did I see immediate results, sometimes, but they were never there without the aid of equipment. Take for example my getting collection in a bit. She can do it, yes, but its not real. It's forced because the bit causes pain, she is in no way offering the behavior because she wants to work with me as a partner. Thankfully Pixie is an amazing teacher and forgives me for all my inconsistencies. She showed me that slow and steady is by far the best way to go! I can't remember the last time I rode her in a bit, and I hung up my spurs well over a year ago! I could not have ever rode bridleless though without all my liberty ground work. We fine tuned our ground work so much that she watches my every move, and she is always rewarded for watching me and working with me. It is the same in our riding. I reward her every time she makes the choice to pay attention to me instead of the distractions. I could correct her for trying to go see another horse, going to gate, etc... or what I do instead is go back to a cue I know she won't ignore and reward her for doing it. Such as stopping. My cue is a deep breath. So yesterday when she wanted to ignore my leg cue for turning because she wanted to go see the new horse in the arena, I cued her to stop so I could reward for the correct behavior. After getting the reward for stopping she was focused on me again, so we could proceed with our ride without argument over going to see the horse.

When discussing my ride with friends the comment was made "wow, you really do trust that horse" and while it is true I do trust her, but more than that I trust my training. I have worked countless hours over the last few years fine tuning our trust in each other.  

What do we want from our horses?

Last night I had a wonderful dinner with friends. Now of course these are horse friends :) We were talking horses and 2014 goals. Any time you talk goals you have to talk training too. Training can be a very contravesal subject, no matter what animal you are dealing with. When I was training dogs, we always joked that if you have three trainers in the room you would get three different answers to one question. Isn't that the truth though! Even trainers that train the same way have different opinions about what the right answer is. I think that is a good thing though in many ways. No one animal is the same, and it might take 5 different answers to find the one that works for that one animal. Which brings me back to the title of this post. When we are training, since there is so many different answers I feel we need to step back and really ask our selves what we want from our horses. And that will point us to the right answer.

So what do I want from my horses?

Pixie-
With Pixie I want a relationship that is so solid that I can trust her and she can trust me, no matter the situation.  I want liberty work that is breathtaking and beautiful, but in no way forced. I want her to truly choose to be with me. And to me her choosing doesn't involve her getting punished if she leaves my side. I want her to seek out a relationship with me, not be forced to be with me. I want her to have practical skills such as loading in trailers, opening gates, ground tying, etc. In truth I want all those things with no ropes attached. Why do I want all of this at liberty with no halter, because to me the truth comes out when you remove the tools.If I have to rely on a bridle, halter, spurs, etc. to control her what will happen when those tools break and we are out on a ride in the middle the mountains. Then what control do I have?? Of course no one plans for something like that, and it will probably never happen to me. Which is good, because the type of training I am talking about will take me years to achieve and I don't want to wait years to trail ride :) But every day that I work with her we are closer to our goal. I made my mistakes with her in the beginning, and lucky for me she has forgiven me. I am not sure I would have the horse I have today if I hadn't changed my training methods though.

Navi-
I want all the same things for Navi that I want for Pixie. The difference is is that Navi and I are at a completely different stage of life and partnership. For us right now I am focused on safety and trust. My plan was to get her under saddle this winter, but winter is on its way out the door now and while she can be saddled I have yet to sit on her. There is more than one reason, but in the end she just isn't ready. Both physically and mentally she isn't there yet, and why rush it. Her ground work is getting better. She is getting her backing, side-passing, and yields down to an art. She is consistent at walk/trot on line. She loves attention and likes play. And that is why I don't feel she is ready to ride yet, her attention span is that of a peanut. She gets bored quickly. So for now I focus on the basics of pressure and release training with positive reinforcement mixed in of course. All I want from her at this point is to be safe and mentally be ready for a riding partnership.

Char-
My plan for Char has been to get her under-saddle and lease her out. Things were going great and to the "normal" trainer things probably could still be tracking right along. I however, always rethink my plans, lol. And while we have had 5 good rides I have not been back on her since before Christmas. Now for a while there where outside reasons, but now as things have settled back down I have made the choice not to ride her. Will I again, of course! And hopefully it will be soon. But our last accident made me think and realize we were taking the same path that we did with Pixie in the beginning. It would go well until something scared her and then she was gone! So how do you fix that, you go back to the beginning and just hang out at liberty with positive reinforcement training. Because again it goes back to the fact that tools and equipment will only control so much! If I can get the flight response down to a min, then I have a safer horse to ride. Char needs to find that trust in me. We did all the traditional ground work. She was sacked out, has both yields, and can flex both directions. She is very light in hand. She will respond to very light pressure. She doesn't buck or rear under-saddle and will stand perfect for mounting and dismounting.  So a lot of people would just continue with the same training and ride more. Not me....She showed me that day where the holes where. She proved to me once again that control never comes from equipment. Just as Pixie taught me, Char taught me that there is so much more required to have trust. So what do I want from Char. At this time my plans for her have changed. I do not feel I will have her riding consistently by spring, so that rules out finding her a leasee. I think right now I am going to focus on our relationship. It would be amazing to see what she will offer me in the form of liberty. And after we figure that out we will work on our riding relationship! 

Pixie Learns Back up

Pixie has known back up under-saddle for a long time, but now she is able to back up with a cue so small that most people don't know that I am asking her to back :) It has taken us a long time to get this far in our riding partnership and we are still not  done growing as partners. For the last few months I have been working on getting her to back from the ground with me standing behind her asking her to target my hand. She is perfecting that and now we are transferring it to our riding. I ride her bare back to allow my cues to be felt easily. This is big for us because I do not punish the wrong answer, I simply ignore it. I will even reward her with a "good girl" if she is offering me something even if its not quite right. We started this back up with out any fear based training, now I will pick up the reins for steering purposes as we are not to bridle-less riding yet and I have to make sure I am not being unfair in my requests.  It is my goal to someday ride her without a halter, and we will get there, but it is a slow process for us. We have already come so far I could not be more proud of her. We very rarely ride in a saddle or bridle. Usually we are bareback with halter and lead rope. Yes, even on trail rides! I personally find arenas boring, so we are outside every chance we get :)

 Besides our riding work, our liberty work on the ground is growing by leaps and bounds too.  We have mastered our basics at complete liberty and our more advanced cues we are using a neck rope only. No halter required for ground work at all! ( No stick and string required either) I have decided I use a variety of methods, and while I have taken some great things from the "natural horsemanship" style, I hesitate to call my style of training by that name. Natural horsemanship training is nothing more than Negative Reinforcement training with sometimes positive punishment methods thrown in. I really rely on Positive Reinforcement/ Negative punishment training once safety is no longer an issue. The truth is we always go back to what we know and understand best and for me that is clicker training (which is always Positive Reinforcement). In my dream world I would become a clicker trainer instructor for people and their horses. I just don't feel the horse world is ready for that change overall. While there are a few big name trainers(which I love and follow) who clicker train, it just isn't the norm in the horse world, because people most times want faster results. And the sad reality is positive punishment training will almost always yield faster results because you have a animal that is scared to try anything new. Also with positive punishment training you will always need the equipment to control because horses are smart and they learn really fast that without the equipment you do not hold the power. I do not want a relationship that is only there when I have equipment, I want the trust all the time. In my humble opinion it makes for a safer horse when you don't rely on equipment to control, but instead have a trust in each other and clear communication.

Big Changes!

I waited to make this post until I knew things were official. We have been super busy at the barn because we are in the process of changing management. And the reason we are so busy is because we are the new managers! It is proving to be a lot of work...cleaning, changing things around, and getting the new paperwork in order. All while taking care of the horses that are still there. Some have left, but most stayed. We are looking to take on new boarders too, but that isn't until Feb 1st. Technically, we don't start until the first of Feb, but it seems we have started early because as of Monday the barn was turned over to us and the other manager. We will be working with him as partners. It takes more than one person to run this big of a barn, and we will all have our different jobs. We are the day to day taking care of the horses, and Bill will be the labor and money person. It will be a challenging new adventure for all of us!

The link to my website :)

http://livininadream79.wix.com/swiftriverranch

Show Me Your Barn- Blog Hop

   Share with us the following 5 photos:

1. A View of the Barn
2. Your Horse's Living Space
3. The Tack Room
4. View of Where You Ride
5.  Your Favorite Feature of Your Facility 

I love my barn for many reasons, but the biggest reason is because it is only 5 miles away from my house! The fact that it sits on a river and has super nice facilities is just a bonus :)

 The Barn...A huge indoor, 16 stalls, 4 tack rooms, 2 offices, and a viewing area above the indoor!  And its all heated in the winter :)

I love my pasture! It's plenty big and has lots of trees. 

My tack room (which is kinda messy right now because we are in the process of moving stuff around) We share this room with other boarders. I might have my very own tack room soon though :)

 The front half of the indoor arena.

This is the view of my outside riding! We spend most of our time outside during the nice season and enjoy the indoor during winter :)

This is my favorite thing about the barn...The trail riding! We don't have to leave to take a hour + ride some where pretty! We can cross the river and get lost on the island :)

Changes....

There could be some big changes on the horizon for us! It is not something I can go into as of yet, I want all the details worked out first. Hopefully things will calm done soon, and I can get back to regular posting.

Char gets more time off

Just as my life is starting to slow down and I was going to start riding Char again I get hurt :(  My lower left arm got bit pretty good by a dog at work. It's bad enough that my whole lower arm hurts and I can't risk a fall on it. Oh well...at least I can still ride Pixie, Willow, and Jess :) Pixie and I have been working on steering without reins! Slowing but surely she is getting it. Lots of treats and time and she will have it down. I am off this weekend, which means lots of time with the ponies :)

Here is my bite :(

Back of my arm

Front of my arm