Under Pressure

Spicy and I were having one of our hour long arguments about getting into the trailer. He had two and a half feet on the ramp and was weaving his head around like an eel while I stood there, tap-tap-tapping his butt with the carriage whip. It's not that hard, I told myself. If you get in, I'll stop tapping you with the whip. Problem solved!

I should've realized then the gaping hole in Spicy's training.

But I didn't. I just kept tapping, more and more insistently, and he got more flustered, finally running me over as he leaped sideways off the ramp. I smacked him on the shoulder for trying to kill me with his escape and looked at him as he stood there, winter coat steaming and curly with sweat, his flanks actually trembling.

Do you see the hole yet? I still didn't.

That was the weekend I realized I didn't like how I was training, and that I wanted things to be different. I don't want my horse to be dark with sweat and terrified I'm going to smack him. I don't want him to run away from me when he sees me open the gate to his field.

I've thrown myself wholly into the reeducation of Spicy and really, myself. I got a new set of training books and I've been committing them to memory, watching videos, and reading articles. They all waved the flaw in Spicy's training in my face but I still didn't see it, so I started from the very beginning as if he were a halter broke weanling and went from there.

Our first two weeks of ground work were fantastic. His attitude completely changed. He's happy to see me - he even nickered at me! - and he's curious and easy to engage. I slowly started to step up what I was asking of him and then one day, in the dark on a rope circle on a fresh track of snow, I saw it.

I saw the hole.

Richard Maxwell, the author of my new favorite horse training books developed his own pressure release halter. I copied it by looking at all the pictures in the book and on this particular day I tried it for the first time. Spicy was out on a lunge line and was supposed to stop and change direction when I signaled. I had done all the homework up to this point so he should, in theory, know what I wanted.

He ignored my first instruction to woah and immediately got frenetic and started running. Max instructed when this happened to start pulling the horse in smaller on the circle until he stopped and faced me. I did so. There was still a lot of overwrought snorting and eye-rolling as the halter tightened on his face with every pull. I took a deep, icy breath and resolved myself to remain 'firm but fair', a mantra Max uses often. Spicy spun around me as I stood there, letting him figure it out. Suddenly I saw it click in his brain: if he stopped when I asked the halter didn't tighten on his face. Back out on the circle he went to repeat the exercise.

I asked him to halt and he did so immediately, swinging to face me. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and we both learned an invaluable lesson. Spicy wasn't trying to be naughty, even though it damn well looked like it. He just had no idea how to give to pressure, or that pressure was even asking him anything. Me tapping him on the butt with a whip meant nothing to him. I was just hitting him. He didn't know to try things to seek release from pressure. I'm not sure anyone ever told him. He's a biddable animal, so most likely people just shoved him around and held him where they wanted him because they could.

For a sensitive animal like a horse, particularly a Thoroughbred, being crushed under constant pressure doesn't make them brave. It doesn't help them learn. It's a quick means to a dirty end. You'll get your results, that one time, but the horse shut down already so he won't be able to access that information. 

I don't think I'll ever make the mistake of assuming that about a horse again. It takes two seconds to check if a horse understands pressure and release, and if it's not something they know it's something they'll need to know if they're going to succeed. I can see that hole in my past horses as clearly as I can see it with Spicy.

Now, instead of getting a view of his back end as he takes off across the field upon seeing me, I'm rewarded with this every day:

I'm chosing not to approach my realization of this shortcoming with guilt, I'm thinking positively of the horses I can help in the future, and the fair and solid relationships to come.