True Courage

Ben and my husband and I went to Majestic Oaks on Friday. I warmed up over the warm up jumps and then went out and did the training course. We had a couple of slighty sketch wiggly jumps and then he put in many more strides between the roll top and down bank, but he went. I swapped out the training line for the novice line to add in the second down bank on the property and then finished up the course with the modified table instead of the shared N/T table. The last half of the course felt great and like he had fully gotten back into the groove of things as opposed to the unconfident, nervous feeling he had the whole time at FHP. 

My goal going out was two fold - I wanted to make sure that the next time we encountered a down bank on course, neither one of us had doubts about whether or not we were going down it. But I also wanted to get his confidence back up again. Mission accomplished on the second, and deposits made in the confidence bank on the first. 

After we finished the course, my husband looked at me and said "you didn't want to use the dirt I got?" and explained the reason he had borrowed a bucket from the trailer and scooped up some wet mud - to add a visual question to the down bank. It was another grey day, so there were no shadows to play with. Although the Majestic down bank is set up oriented east to west as well, so on a sunny day the shadows might be similar to the horse park. But my husband's aid worked just as well. I untacked Ben, threw him on the lunge, and then we headed back out to the first down bank. We all walked down it, with Ben pausing at the top and looking quite anxious before popping down. Repeat over and over again until he was dropping down and then immediately dropping his head to eat grass. Add some of the wet mud and we got a pause again and then a move a bit sideways so that he didn't contact it on landing. I had jumped down it before him and felt that ominous feeling when you're about to get crashed into by an 1100 pound animal from behind. Fortunately Ben's cautious nature also keeps him from bowling over humans, double edged sword I suppose. He would be so mortified if he had run into me, good boy. I walked him up to it from the down side and let him sniff the wet mud. Then we tried again. This time I kept him straighter and he jumped out past the edge of the mud. Okay, that works. 

We then moved on to the other down banks. My husband threw his jacket on the landing side of one. Ben jumped out past it. Good boy. Insert another crumble of a german horse muffin.

Based on his response in hand, he went down the banks while we were on course not because he was confident in them, but because he knew he was supposed to and got what I was asking. What a dude. It is an interesting thought that most of Ben's life is doing things that he is afraid of. Which would make him truly courageous. 

The day was another deposit in the confidence bank. I plan to head out with Ms. GY and/or my husband once a week or so over the next few weeks to different venues in the area with the same plan, approach for the first time like we're on course, and the correct answer is to GO DOWN IT DUDE. But then revisit and break it down so that he truly becomes confident. Based on his XC trip at Stable View, he CAN generalize, but I do think he is one of the 33% of horses who are near-sided and so he struggles with visual changes in the ground (he's never met a patch of dead grass he doesn't jump and/or squirt sideways to go around). If we give him enough positive experiences at slightly different questions, maybe he can stretch that generalization out even more broadly.