Category: attention

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attention foundations groundwork leadership ten essential lessons

Lesson 4 Energy Is Not Direction

This is fairly simple but something I misunderstood for a long time. When I was asking a horse to move off and they weren’t paying attention, I would swing a rope behind them or do something else to send them forward. If they were getting in front of me I might swing the rope ahead of me to ask them not to run into me. This was logical and easy to understand- I swung the rope to create a bundle of energy ( in this sense energy means movement or busyness )  behind my horse and they moved away from it.

Gradually over the last few years I have come to understand that although this does work and sometimes it is what you need, especially when you’re working with a horse who hasn’t got any kind of handle on the rules yet, there is a different way of backing up your cues where you simply treat energy as energy.

Most of what I am doing with energy is asking the horse to look for something different, to indicate to them that I would like them to try something other than what they are currently doing. Usually, I don’t actually want to have to use a swinging rope or other large scale cue to bring about this change because it is not my goal to always need to do this. What I really want is for the horse to follow the direction I am giving them without needing any further encouragement. So by using energy to direct them, I am excusing them from trying to understand my original cue. Rather than try to figure out what I am asking for in the first place, they can wait for me to change to something easier.

A useful metaphor for the way I prefer to work now is driving a car- if I put my foot on the accellerator it makes the engine turn over faster, but where the car goes depends on which gear I am in and where the steering wheel is pointed. When I’m working a horse I will set up my cue and then – if the horse doesn’t seem motivated to look for a response to it – I will create some energy around myself to ask them to look harder. This has the side benefit of encouraging the horse to try and a lot of the time I don’t need to do anything beyond getting their attention and making it clear to them that I am asking for something.

I think this is easier to understand in the saddle because most of us at one time or another have used a crop or similar to ask the horse for more life while directing with the reins or our bodies, and of course the same principles apply here- unless my horse is really confused about what I am asking and needs extra direction ( maybe we are working on yielding a really stuck leg, for example, when I might use a whip to tickle that area )  I will tend to set up what I am looking for and then put a little more life into my horse if I don’t feel them searching for the answer. It doesn’t matter how I do that, as long as the result is that the horse starts searching, because then I can guide them towards the right answer.

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attention foundations ten essential lessons training

Lesson 2: Be Effective

I was working with my horse on a Steve Halfpenny clinic and he was starting to respond nicely to what I was asking, but it was a little slow. In fact, it was very slow. If I had written my requests down and posted them second class, they would probably have arrived at about the same time. I commented on this to Steve and he simply observed “If you backed it up every time, he’d respond a lot quicker.” As often happens around horses, Steve was absolutely right – I had been asking and then I would swing my rope and once in a while I would get frustrated enough that I might escalate things a little further and maybe let the tail of the rope touch my horse’s quarters and he would move on but then I would be ineffectual again and he would figure out that he really didn’t have to.

By being ineffective I was being unfair to myself and to my horse. I was being inconsistent, sometimes asking quietly where he could ignore me, sometimes being more firm so that he couldn’t, but every time I was ineffective, I pushed the boundary of effectiveness a little further.

A flag is a tool that can help you be more effective, making it very useful when you are finding it hard to maintain a horse's attention or they are trying to ignore you.
A flag is a tool that can help you be more effective, making it very useful when you are finding it hard to maintain a horse’s attention or they are trying to ignore you.

So what does it take to be effective? When you ask your horse to make a change, they make a change. It may not be exactly what you asked for, but something happens. Lets take a concrete example:

I am leading my horse and I ask them to move a little faster, so I pick up my pace and walk more energetically. My horse drags a little behind, so I slap the tail of my lead rope against my chaps, creating a noise which is enough to encourage her to catch me up. She doesn’t hurry her feet so I swing the tail of my rope behind me vigorously that she trots forward a couple of steps. The moment she moves faster I stop swinging that rope.

If she hadn’t started moving I would have quickly escalated the amount of energy I put in until she changed something. I would let the end of the rope tap her on the hindquarters if she hadn’t got to moving before that. Once I have asked for something I have made an absolute commitment to find a change.

If I have to escalate things further, then I need to find a bigger change too – if I have to put a lot of energy in to ask my horse to walk faster, then I would aim for them to trot or canter forwards from that.

There are two general guidelines I use for this:

First if my horse is stuck or leaning on my cues ( by which I mean that they are not promptly and willingly following those cues or trying to figure out what I am looking for if we’re working on something new ) then to be properly effective, I need my secondary cue ( the swinging rope, noise, increase in energy, bump with my leg or on the rein ) to be sufficient that my horse moves their feet. If in doubt I would much prefer to do a little too much with that cue than not enough. Ideally I want my horse to think about what just happened and to look for an easier way to get along with me. As soon as they start searching, we’re going in the right direction.

Secondly I back up my initial cue quite quickly. The time I have heard suggested is 1 – 1.5 seconds between initial and secondary cue. That is time to judge whether anything has changed, but not long enough for your horse to have a snooze while they’re waiting to find out whether or not you mean it.

When I talk about having an absolute commitment to making a change I mean that if I ask my horse for something, I really mean it- I will go to whatever lengths it takes to have them change if they ignore what I am asking for. For me, the really interesting part is this: Since I learned to make that commitment, I have consistently found my horses responded to smaller cues.

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attention philosophy the horse's mind training

How to find the best horse in the world

Every horse wants to be the best horse in the world.

I have argued this case in the past with my people who believe that some horses are just mean and lots of horses just want to survive, but I think better of them than that- I think that every horse wants to be the best horse in the world.

If they could overcome their physical constraints and their emotional concerns your horse would definitely be the best horse in the world. Then you’d be happy because your horse was the best horse in the world and they would be happy because they were the best horse in the world and it would be a very good situation for everyone involved.

So why has this situation not arisen for all of us with our horses? Often I think it’s because we don’t know how to show them what being the best horse in the world involves, sometimes it is because they physically can’t do the things we are asking them for.

Cash having a roll in the snow, sticking his tongue out
Trying hard to be the best horse in the world.

I think there is benefit to taking this attitude- it gives me a very positive outlook on the horses I am working with and helps me stay focussed on clarity in my work and on looking for what is important to the horse I am working with. I also always give a horse the benefit of the doubt as regards their physical capacity- if I think there may be a physical problem I will try to find a solution for it before I push the horse harder to do something they aren’t capable of. That doesn’t mean not working them at all and it doesn’t mean I’m going to stop handling them in the way I always do, but if I suspect they may be being prevented by pain then finding a way of discovering what the problem is and how to resolve it will be my first priority. I would rather have a horse who I had confirmed to be sound and have wasted a bit of money and a few weeks when we could have been working harder than to try and force the issue with a horse who was uncomfortable and risk causing both physical and emotional problems.

There is a difference between a horse trying and not being able to do something that is asked of them and not wanting to- in the latter case the horse has spent too long not understanding what is being asked of them or not understanding why it is being asked of them. After a while the cue is likely to either become something they ignore or it will them anxious or grumpy. If they don’t know what they are being asked for but they are still trying to find it, then you can usually find a new way of making it clearer – break the problem down into smaller pieces and make sure that there isn’t something else which is setting the horse up to fail before they start. For example, if I was asking a horse to load into a horsebox but they didn’t lead up really well, I would need to fix the leading before I started working on the loading. This is usually a case of patience, experimentation and lateral thinking.

It is more difficult to explain to a horse who has given up on searching for an answer why they should start to try again. There are a lot of different ways of explaining the “why” part and  you will have to think through what you are happy with- some people favour a “because you will have a tasty treat” other people feel that “because I said so” is reason enough. I fall further into the second camp- partly for reasons I have explained elsewhere – for a horse I am working with the “why” they should look for an answer is that if they make a try towards what I’m asking  them for ( or in the case of a shut down horse a try of any kind ) their life is going to be very comfortable, whereas if they decide to ignore what I’m asking for, they will probably find things getting quite energetic and hectic and they might had to work hard for a while. Then I will give them some time to think and set the question up again, to see whether they are inclined to try. If they aren’t, then I probably need to do more to make it hard for them to ignore the request or ignore me. I never want to make a horse anxious or bothered, but if it comes to a choice between doing something that gets their attention and makes them a little concerned about me for a moment and not getting their attention, I will always choose the former.

The question of finding the will to try is so important to realising your horse’s potential- they can’t become light, or soft or willing until they start looking for what you are asking them for and they won’t learn to try harder if you don’t reward the tries they give you. It is very easy to get a really great step and instead of stopping, taking a break and maybe quitting for the day, you ask for just one more step. Then the horse thinks they must have done the wrong thing and starts trying everything else instead. This is, so far as I can tell, something everybody does from time to time and we are fortunate that our horses let us off from these kinds of mistake and keep on working at getting along with us. But it does make sense when you think about it- after all, they are trying to be the best horse in the world.

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attention catching groundwork the horse's mind

Catching a reluctant horse

I had done a few sessions with Cash before I bought him – that was how I knew I wanted to buy him – and I knew he could be a little unwilling to be caught. He was very ear shy and he was also worried about going through gates and being ridden, so there were a lot of reasons that he wasn’t keen to be caught. Consequently he wore a halter while he was out and he was usually caught using a scoop of mix and clipping on a rope when he went to eat it.

When he came to stay the first thing I did when I put him out was to take his halter off and let him loose to explore his new field for a while. Later in the day I came back with a halter and he allowed himself to be caught almost straight away. I was impressed, so I gave him a pony treat and let him go again. After a minute I went to catch him again. This time it took an hour and a half and I had to go through the whole process of teaching him to be caught. As you can imagine, I was very pleased I had decided to test that.

Setting Cash up to be caught.
At least he was facing me at this point- a good start.

What I do with a horse who doesn’t want to be caught is to spend a while following them around. I don’t chase them, but as long as they want to walk away I follow them. If they want to stop I stop, if they give me an ear or look at me I step away. The moment their attention leaves me ( if they start grazing or looking at other horses or whatever ) I start approaching again. As I mentioned previously holding the horse’s attention is the starting point for any work you do with their mind.

After a while they figure out that they can approach me and I move off, which gives them some control over the situation- as far as the horse is concerned there is something going on that they have a part in, rather than me just trying to do something to them. Fairly soon the horse will start coming up to you to sniff you and investigate you at this point and be ready to accept you in their space.

How I progress depends a lot on why I think the horse is choosing not to be caught- as with many situation where a horse chooses not to do something, their decision making is on a continuum between “I have better things to do” and “I am afraid.” My aim is for them to be in the middle, where they are unafraid and want to spend time with me.

With a horse who doesn’t want to be caught because they don’t feel like it, I will tend to push them a little when they decide to move away from me- if they want to face me or approach me, I will back off and take off the pressure, but if they want to walk off then I will perhaps change things so they have to trot or canter instead. At the very least I want there to be no benefit in moving away, so I certainly need to make sure that they don’t get to eat or rest when they aren’t paying me attention. A consequence of this is that if you have a large field and you don’t want to spend a long time and get worn out, you might want to do this in a restricted area at first. You could also do it from the back of another horse, but if you’re placed to do that you probably don’t need my advice in the first place. Likewise it is easier to work on it if they aren’t out with a herd of other horses – you don’t need to do anything different if horses are around, but they are likely to get in the way, try to push the horse you are aiming to catch around and generally make the process take longer.

Cash was afraid, so I worked at the other extreme, trying to set things up so he didn’t feel that he needed to run away from me. I spent a lot of time on my approaches watching his balance and looking for him preparing to leave,  then just waiting on that point so he didn’t have to. By this point I had his attention and he quite wanted to approach me so if he started to lean away or prepare to turn and I backed off a little he would often relax a little and maybe turn back towards me.

When he would stay still when I approached, I didn’t go straight for haltering him. I spent a while walking most of the way past him and just petting him on the rump then moving slowly forwards, rubbing on him. That gave him plenty of space to move if he needed me to and made my approach less threatening to him while also making my company pleasant. The first couple of times I did this, I walked away after I reached his shoulder to give him time to think over what had just happened.

Once I could stand at his shoulder I would rub on his neck and mane, still facing backwards and reaching under with my left hand to pass the halter up to my right hand without stopping rubbing on him. I was very careful and gentle with this and careful to avoid his ears as any contact with those bothered him. Whenever we made what seemed to me like a significant positive change I would give him a pony treat and walk away. I don’t hold a strong opinion on the use of treats with horses- sometimes with some horses it’s a good idea, other times with other horses it’s a bad one. If the horse is afraid and they’ll take the food then it is probably helpful as long as they are still able to give you their attention rather than obsessing on treats.

A few times during the process, especially as I got closer to having the halter on, Cash got concerned and had to leave but each time it was quicker to get back to where we had been and once he was caught and got treats and came in for his evening feed it was meaningful to him and it only took a few more sessions until I could walk up to him in the field and catch him. He’s still wary if you change anything, though – if I have his leather travelling halter rather than our regular rope halter he’s decidedly sceptical- but in general he’s now very happy to be caught.

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attention the horse's mind training

The Starting Point

As this is my first post on this site, I thought I would begin at the beginning by talking about the first thing I establish any time I work with a horse. This is so important and the source of so many problems that I will doubtless come back to it in future, but I’ll start by talking about it here.

You have to have the horse’s attention.

When I am working with a horse I want to be able to work with their thought, to get them focussed on what I am asking them for so they are able to do it. If they are busy looking out into the distance, trying to see what their buddies are up to in the field or otherwise zoning me out then I’m simply not going to be able to get any sense of them. I need to have their attention from the start and I need to keep it the whole time.

When I am working on the ground I will start this by just doing something whenever the horse begins to tune me out. The minute they start paying attention to anything other than me, I will do it again, the moment they give me their full attention ( putting their eyes and ears on me ) then I stop. What I do depends on the horse- often it is sufficient to just stamp my foot, slap my thigh or kick some sand around, sometimes I might need to pick up my energy a little and perhaps move them around until they are listening to me rather than looking off into the distance.

Cash gives me his attention.
Here Cash is paying close attention to what I am asking him for. Or possibly to the camera. It's the right general direction at least.

Horses can be very determined that they need to pay more attention to what is going around them than they do to what the human handling them is asking them for and it can sometimes take a lot to get them paying attention to you – sometimes you have to be ready to effectively say “you think what is going on out there is scary, check out how scary I can be.” It can actually be helpful if the horse isn’t completely one hundred percent certain that you won’t eat them.

I probably lost a few readers there for being deliberately mean to ponies, but the simple fact is that if you want to see something really scary go to a show and watch the horses who are fascinated by everything around them and paying no attention whatsoever to the human on the end of the rope. Any time I see a human in a situation where they are relying on pure luck to keep them safe with their horse I find that nervewracking. There are also a lot of fairly anthropomorphic ideas about how horses see the world.  As a human in the modern world we are infrequently scared and we find it quite unpleasant. Horses are fear-oriented animals and they spend a lot of their time spooking at things and running away from them. It seems to me that because of this and because they live very much in the present, horses are only briefly affected by most things that spook them and if a horse is determined not to offer me any attention then I am quite happy to use that response to change their mind about that.

There are many ways that you can lose your horse’s attention when you start working with them and it will happen from time to time. One of the most common is where you work on a pattern for a while – either on the ground or in the saddle – and the horse learns the pattern and then doesn’t need to be paying attention in order to perform it. This is tricky because it is often the point at which the pattern starts to look really good and because much like our equine partners, we are creatures of pattern and it’s easy to do the same set of things any time we do groundwork or schooling with our horses.

The best way to avoid falling into these patterns is to be aware of them. Once you have the basic steps of a form or shape then start changing them – can you do it step by step? Can you change direction and reverse it? Can you get half way through and reverse it? Can you change one element of it but leave the rest the same? By challenging yourself like this you make life more interesting for yourself and your horse and you have a much better chance of holding their attention.