Lena and Bar: Observing personalities

We have always described Lena as our alpha mare--confident and exhibiting "let me handle this" behavior.

We assumed Bar accepted Lena as his alpha as well. He would usually defer to her on the trail if there was something he didn't want to try, look to her when he was afraid or needed reassurance, and stay close to her in new situations.

In fact, we had always worried about putting them out together, mainly over food issues. Lena is very food-focused, and Bar will wander off and leave his food because food is not an issue for racehorses. It's here when they need it and you don't have to fight for it. We were concerned that with her alpha tendencies and his mellow attitude, she'd eat it all, get fat, and Bar would get less and drop weight.

However, we discovered a new dynamic up at Slide.

We turned them out together the last night we were there, just to see how it would go. The first feeding, I was able to spread out the hay piles to keep them apart. When I went out to check on them later, Bar was nibbling on Lena's pile and she was watching him from a few feet off, looking forlorn--even though his bigger pile of hay was sitting uneaten behind her. She did eventually go finish it off, but in the meantime kept a very definite sphere of space between Bar and herself. If he moved, she moved away.

Hmmmm.

The next morning, as I walked up with two flakes of hay, I was faced with both of them coming towards the same corner. As I was trying to figure out how to split them up, Bar pinned his ears and bared his teeth and chased Lena uphill away from where she had been fed for the last four days. And she went.

And the other interesting piece was that Lena--the feeding time stress queen--was calmer with him in there.

There is surely more to this story.

Thoughts on being "the Alpha" -- or not

(Note: photo was taken in early March, prior to the recent rash of injuries.)

Working with Bar continues to educate me about horses, about myself, and about life in general. Working with both Bar and Lena has taught me to pay attention to individual horses and treat them, train them, according to their particular personalities and quirks.

Off and on in this blog, I've referred to myself as the "Alpha" and not thought too much about it beyond my own perceptions as someone the horses turn to for direction and leadership. Then I started reading Mark Rashid's book Horses Never Lie and it made me rethink what I meant by "Alpha." My methods are not what I would consider dominating and I'm usually trying to figure out how to give direction that makes sense to whichever horse I'm working with. Bar takes one kind of instruction, Lena another, but both of them are intelligent, playful horses and respond to making things entertaining and interesting.

Bar responds much more to a calm reaction to his antics than to cracking him on the nose. For example, he settles down faster if I say, "Okay, you want to come around me, then keep going around me. I'll just stand here until you're done," than when I smack the halter down on his nose and back him up forcefully.

With Lena, she needs to stop dancing and anticipating what she thinks I might ask her to do and use her brain instead. Some days that means letting her blow off steam until she can focus on something else besides her own energy level.

Trusting my own instincts about my horses and what they need on any given day has been something I've had to learn to do, and with experts all over it hasn't always been easy. I remember a parenting class I took eons ago where they talked about being sure to pay attention to how you're feeling about what you're asking you child to do. If it feels wrong to you--no matter what the "experts" say--it will come off wrong to your child. The times I've felt most unsure in training Bar and Lena have often been the times I'm doing the conventional things--using techniques and hardware others have assured me are the right things to use to show the horses who is boss. It occurred to me that--much like parenting--my horses can tell when I'm unsure and will have absolutely no reason to feel confident in my decisions.

Not to say I will always make the right decisions, but if I am paying attention to my horses and training from my gut--much as I learned to parent from my gut--it might work out better than simply following some proscribed method of horsemanship.

Bar is not like any other horse. Lena is not like any other horse. To train them with push-button rules does them a disservice. Figuring out how to work with them and teach them is as much a gift as it is a challenge.

That is the kind of leader I'd like to be, that is what the term Alpha has meant to me when I have used it in the past. I haven't decided if I'll keep using it or not. Mostly, I'd rather have a partner than a subordinate, so maybe that's a no.