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| View from the barn tonight. |
While I did have an interesting ride expanding on the thought process I stumbled into yesterday, tonight I want to write about our liberty sessions, which have been equally interesting and puzzling. We’ve been continuing to play with the “Find Your Herd” exercise, but our connection is such that we don’t spend too much time there. We’ve also been playing with some basic yields and getting into a pattern of having conversations about space. Well, today and yesterday, we started out in the same place… Finn was definitely connected, but happy to follow me at his own pace, no doubt confident that he would catch me eventually.
Yesterday, I decided to experiment with sort of narrowing the safe-zone… When Finn got too far behind, I turned around and cleared the space/sent him to find his herd again. Admittedly, this felt not-great… very disharmonious, because I felt like I was breaking the connection when he was still sure we were together. If you could see the look of bewilderment on his face the first time I did it, you’d understand. It was like a confused “You don’t want me to follow you???” But I gave it the good old college try and after having to get quite loud to get him to understand that he should clear out, it did ultimately result in him quickly coming back with more energy.
After that, I stayed more high-energy and erratic, and he got more enthusiastic about following me… and also quickly more confident about my unpredictable changes of direction. The session ended with this:
I see a lot of good there. Perhaps my favorite part of the whole thing is the first few seconds where he leaves his leaf-snack to follow me without any reminder on my part. For sure he is sticking with me, and putting effort into it! But on the whole I really wondered about the session… did I break the intention of the exercise to get the result I wanted? I’m honestly not sure.
Today I took a different approach. After establishing that we had following going on, I moved onto practicing our basic yields, which went superbly. I then went back to FYH to see if I got any more motivation… the answer was no.
So, I moved onto blending having conversations about space with having conversations about energy, and tried to see if I could clear space effectively enough to have him trot off. I didn’t ask for a circle, but it’s what he offered… I think it happens pretty naturally when a horse is connected like he is. We got some really nice transitions from walk to trot through this, and I was able to send him off from a halt, too. All in all, I was really pleased with this! But when I went back to FYH, he was happy as ever to follow along at his regular amble. Hmmm.
I decided to send him out trotting and then turn and jog the other way… that got him catching up to me at a trot. I jogged around a bit, keeping things much more relaxed and flowing than yesterday, and he kept with me; maybe not RIGHT THERE with me, but matching my path and energy for sure. One thing that was interesting to me is I made a few gentle loops towards the rail to change direction, and he matched them perfectly by making a similar loop and switching sides behind me so he was still on the inside. That struck me because it was a REALLY different feeling that a game of Stick-To-Me, where I’d insist that he stay on one side and hustle to keep up. And yet it felt really… together. Together like a school of fish or a flock of birds. It was a nice feeling.
Eventually I ended the session when I got a really prompt transition to the trot, perfectly matched to the moment I started jogging. We didn’t get anywhere near the exuberance of the previous session, but on the whole today’s experience felt more harmonious. Perhaps because there was never any point where I really sent him off.
All in all, I’m not really sure if one approach was better or worse or more or less appropriate than the other. I’m still thinking about it. Possibly, they were both valid. Perhaps the first day would have felt more harmonious in the end if I had been more conscious to transition back to real peacefulness between our run-arounds. Ultimately the end goal is to have harmony and exuberance, so maybe these two sessions were just a really excellent way for me to practice having one and then the other… and if you transition between two qualities often enough, eventually the horse will offer them together.
Anyway, this liberty stuff is quite an engaging puzzle… especially so since I am trying to piece together a new approach to it from second-hand information. But I remind myself that I can’t go too far wrong if I keep the qualities of the end result in mind, listen to Finn, and keep a light-hearted attitude and an open mind. I also have to remember that perfection is NOT the goal, so there’s no point in fretting over not making mistakes. After all, it is when we fumble, get confused, and then find our way back together that our relationship grows stronger.
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