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| Yeserday's ride, almost 9k to go 1k in distance... |
With recent weeks of warm weather I thought I would be spending most of my riding hours conditioning for the 80 k (50 mile) ride at AprilFest, April 29. This started out fairly well, we did a few 16 k (10 mile) road rides with friends. On an aside, the forest trails are still too icy to ride, except at a walk on a good day, so for conditioning we are left with the sandy edges of the country roads for a few more weeks. However, I soon discovered that Sonny has a strong invisible tether to his new barn and Rogan. This was never an issue before because I always trailered out for conditioning rides and he was great by himself and with others in the woods. Leaving from home, leaving Rogan who is continually neighing for him to come home, and heading out to face parts unknown filled with dogs, cows, houses, other horses is now terrifying. All is good if Sonny is with another horse that will get eaten first while Sonny runs away, but if Sonny is the sole prey he is going to make sure he is not going to get eaten by that cow!! So we have changed our plans and hopefully will still get enough riding in for the 80k (50 mile) in April, but if not we will just adjust.
If Sonny truly felt confident in me as his leader and partner, that I would protect and keep him safe we wouldn't have a challenge. So we have to build that partnership and make it stronger. Plagiarizing from Jaime McArdle and paraphrasing -- I have to accept where I am at today and be the best horseman I am today, while at the same time learning to be a better horseman for tomorrow. That is hard, I would like to be the better horseman NOW, lol. I started this particular journey several months ago, using the winter downtime to re-focus on ground work and harmony between Sonny and myself; that is going very well. For the particular challenge of leaving the barn by ourselves I am using the tried and true strategy of approach and retreat. Each day and ride Sonny has confidence/comfort-level threshholds at some undefined distance from the barn and Rogan. In other words, he has a safety-bubble that he feels good in and can relax and when we reach the edge of the bubble he starts to exhibit anxiety; if I go too far past the edge of the bubble his 'lizard brain' takes over, he edges towards a fulminate panic attack and I feel unsafe. His thresholds can change from day to day, ie on windy days with lots of activity his bubble may be smaller initially.
Back to the actual ride strategy. I try to initially get connection with a small amount of groundwork prior to riding. Right now I am playing with yielding his shoulders (he had a pretty sticky right shoulder!), trot circles, and the beginnings of line driving. The goal is harmony and connection, not a number of laps or perfect transition, etc. For example, initially he may trot an 'egg' rather than a circle, looking to the outside towards Rogan; when he connects (which is quicker each session) his circle gets smaller and round, his head lowers, and he stays bent around and focused on me -- it is actually a lovely, engaged, balanced trot. When connected there is no pressure on the line, we are practicing for liberty.
After we connect on the ground we are ready to ride. I start with walking up the driveway, ideally on a loose-rein with a relaxed head/neck. At the end of the driveway I turn around and walk back to the barn, and then repeat the loop going a little further each time. I judge how far to go based on Sonny. Yesterday he was quite spicy, it took a lot of approach and retreat to obtain relaxation just leaving and returning to the barn yard. There were many thresholds -- a black dog that could have been a horse-eating bear, a mare guarding her herd, birds flying out of stored round-bales, snow and ice creaking, and the infamous yearling calves playing. However, after 1 1/2 hours we made safely from the barn to the start of the trails "the rail-trail", taking almost 9k to go a 1k distance, but we returned to the barn on a completely loose rein, head down and back swinging with relaxation.
Today, it was much quicker. Our first main threshold was almost 1/2 way to the 'rail-trail' or over 50% further than yesterday. Sonny was so comfortable I even started to use the 1/2 way point as the 'retreat' area which enabled him to spend more time at the edge of his bubble (squeezed between a creaking snow-bank and facing the carnivorous calves). Once we made it to the 'rail-trail' turn, the tether seemed to snap and he was ok to move on (at least in that direction, continuing straight past the calves might be a different challenge for another day!). We motored down the rail-trail to a yummy field of dried dead grass which he enjoyed on for a few minutes before we turned around and headed home, on a loose rein and mostly relaxed. My plan is continue this when I ride out by myself and if he is confident and relaxed we will head out for some conditioning, but when we reach a threshold we will play with approach/retreat, until we can move out again as partners. (and hopefully I will get in some rides with friends so we don't loose all our physical conditioning while working on the mental conditioning!)
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| Today's ride, almost 2x as far in the same amount of time! The hard part is stretching the tether enough to get to the initial right hand turn onto the 'rail-trail' |
