Fear management - Part six

Bar says he was good when there were cows involved. No small feat, for sure, let along for an OTTB

Last of the series--but the most important in many ways--exercise six asks you to create an action plan of small steps that are reasonable, that you can accomplish on the way to where you want to be.

The instructions say this is where it becomes personal, where I determine my starting point and how I get from here to your goal.

My here and now is a horse who has scared me and hurt me, but who now works very hard to try to do what I ask. A horse who has sublimated (mostly, anyway) his very nature and has likely bound up his own body in order to comply with my wishes.

My wishes must change or he and I will be stuck.

Where do I want to go? I believe galloping down the beach is my answer.

Small accomplishable steps between where we are and where I want to be are both specific and general:

• Drop into my feet and legs, relax, feel him and our connection.
• Remind him how to move forward with impulsion and give him permission to do so.
• Feel his front legs.
• Practice that one-rein-butt-over move. A lot.
• Get out of the round pen and into the rest of the arena more often.
• Ride in the outdoor arena.
• Get the walk to move right.
• Get the trot to work right.
• Ask for a canter without being terrified. Or if terrified, breathe, then ask for it anyway.
• Get the canter to work right.
• Canter. A lot. 
• Do all of the above in the outdoor arena. A lot.
• Make big circles and small circles.
• Do transitions - walk/trot and trot/canter. 
• Practice lead changes just for fun.. (He doesn't need much practice, but I do.)
• Try new things that make us both nervous and work through the reactions.
• Breathe. 
• Breathe some more.
• Sing to him. He likes it and it helps me breathe.
• Just get on and ride.
• Ride some more.
• Reward him for the try and ask him to try again. 
• Reward him again.
• Reward myself for the try.
• Be patient.

That's a good list to start with, though I'm sure I'll add more as I go along, and I'm pretty sure the last one will need to be interjected here, there and everywhere.

Memories

"Uh, there's a horse running loose through the campground!"

I saw this unfortunate blurb in the local paper (okay, the online version of said local paper), and while the news is a bummer, it brought back what has--with time--become a rather amusing memory. I think I've told this story at least twice here, but in honor of the campground, I thought I'd pull it out again. Besides, it amuses me more each year that goes by.

A month after we got Bar, we decided to venture out on a trail ride. Where should we go? Oh, I know! The beach!!

Can you say rookie mistake?

It was cold. It was windy. Bar had only been with us a very short amount of time. Very short. A blink in horse-human bonding time. We were both uneducated in the ways and lives of Off-Track Thoroughbreds, though Bar had been out on trail rides at this very same beach with his trainer and apparently loved it.

However, I was not her. I was a new and untested human.

We got out of the trailer, got saddled up, and headed out towards the beach, sand and wind blowing in our faces.

Bar took one look at the sand and snorted. "What kind of footing is this? It doesn't look solid and safe to me!" But he went forward, mainly because Lena was bouncing along fine in front of him. I highly doubt I had much (anything) to do with his decisioning at that point.

We got a little way down the trail when another rider crested the hill in front of us, headed back to her trailer. Her horse was blowing and sweaty, which set of Bar's radar a little right there. Then, for whatever crazy reasoning, Steve and I decided to try to pull off the narrow trail and let that rider pass us.

Long story short, I separated Bar from Lena on rather treacherous (in his mind) footing, then pulled on his head. He had one option--go up, and up he went and off I went. I slid right off and right underneath this huge brown frantic horse. Bar must have levitated straight up and off the dune because I saw hooves between the arms wrapped instinctively around my head and then he was gone.

I stood up, all eyes on me--I guess it looked bad, Steve's face was a little ashen--and when Steve asked if I was fine, I said, "Yes," pointed after Bar, and said, "Go get him."

"Please don't head up Highway 1," I thought to myself.

Bar, however nuts he may have felt at the time, kept his head to some extent. He took a tour of the campground instead--probably looking very dark and dramatic on that foggy, misty morning with his head up and wild eye.

"Yes," said Steve in response to the query about the horse dancing through the tents, "I know, thanks."

Meanwhile, I was trudging through the sand worried about my horse, not realizing how lucky I was to be trudging. Several riders came back to check on me and seemed reassured when I spoke in coherent sentences.

Bar circled the parking lot once, then allowed a woman on a different spotty horse to catch him. Went right up to her, as a matter of fact. Which, of course, is what one does when one is a racehorse--you go to that pony horse for safety.

It's been nearly three years since that attempt, and we have yet to go back there. It's not even really that I'm afraid of it, but it's quite a slog through the dunes before you even get to the beach, and then--unless it's a perfect day--once you actually get to the beach, you are often hit with stinging sand and cold wind.

But I would like to go back some nice spring day, so it is unfortunate that the California State Budget is such that this hugely popular campground has to close so many sites. Poor Bar won't get nearly the audience this time.

This is from the trail ride we tried after the one described above--when we figured out the beach was not the best place to start. After the fact, of course.

Katie is already wanting to see how Forrest does his first time out on the trail, and smiled wickedly as she suggested the beach. Honestly, Forrest might be fine wherever we take him, but it might also be good to start somewhere with a slightly less sensory-overload possibilities.

We'll just have to see. Of course, we'll also have to get both boys in the trailer, but that's a whole other blog post.

Beach ride

Northern California got a break this weekend and Steve and I took the horses out to the beach to celebrate. Now, we haven't had our two at the beach together in over two years because our one and only beach attempt with Bar ended badly--though not as badly as it could have considering it was one bad decision after the other.

Bad decision one was going out to the beach for a first trail ride experience only a month after we brought Bar home. The beach is great place to ride, but it's better to know your horse a little more than we did at that particular time. For example, it's sort of important to know how they feel about wind blowing sand sideways into their face and how they react to bunches of other strange horses.

Bad decision two was the two (er, four) of us deciding to get off the trail to get out of the way of the lone horse and rider coming back from the beach.

Bad decision three was me taking Bar up a dune and too far away from Lena--who was then his safety anchor. (Luckily, it's me now.)

It escalated quite rapidly to me hanging onto his head too tightly, him rearing, me sliding off and landing underneath him, and Steve and Lena having to chase him back to the parking lot. Luckily, all ended well, but you can see why we've been a little hesitant to try the beach again.

As it was, we chose a different beach today, one that doesn't go through a maze of claustrophobic dunes first. Actually, we went to that one first, but there wasn't room to park the trailer, so we opted for Doran instead.

Even with the constant wind, Bar and Lena were calm and curious. Both were very glad this was not an arena day. "Finally!"


Doran isn't very long, but the waves aren't huge and crashing, either, so it's pretty easy to get close to the water onto the firmer sand. The wet, packed sand is great footing for letting horses go, so we did.

It was the first time I've let Bar really run in way too long and I'm happy to report we stayed under control--me guiding, him listening, me breathing. It was glorious. He and Lena do like to race, that's for sure.

We went up and down the beach a couple of times, with people snapping pictures and cheering at us. Bar always seemed to know when someone had a camera pointed at him because he would swing that big brown head towards them and prick up his ears. Ham.


Bar's first (as far as I know) encounter with salt water went pretty well, though he could not necessarily see the point of water that tasted that way. "What good is it if you can't drink it?" he said with a snort. Then the water had the audacity to chase him! It did not, however, stop him from being terribly curious about it and figuring out rather rapidly that it was much easier to work on the sand closer to the water.

Lena has met the ocean before, but had a tense-though-thankfully-brief encounter with a loose black lab puppy. It kept coming at her legs and Lena kept trying to dance away from it while the pup's owner struggled through the sand to get to them. Bar was very concerned and kept trying to head towards them to assist, but he listened and settled down when I told him no. Finally, the owner got to the puppy and apologized--she thought the pup had been tied. It's a good thing Lena (and Bar) are both so dog-savvy or that could have ended very badly.

We got back to the trailer tired and sweaty, but feeling good about a good ride on a glorious day. Such a gift to be able to let him run today, to feel his power and his joy in his own movement. Yeah, I was pretty proud of myself, too.

Of course, no day would be complete without one tiny non-horse-person annoyance. We have cones in our trailer to keep people from parking too close behind us but have really never had a problem. Apparently, the owner of this lovely BMW does not know that the big door back there is where one loads the horses into the horse trailer.


Oh, well. It wasn't nearly enough to destroy the glow of a great ride.