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.

On the Therapist's Couch

Saturday morning, Ben and I got to return to the bottomless pit of doom. 

Actual image of the landing side of the down bank

We loaded up quite early to go to the POP schooling day at the horse park. Quite early for three reasons: repeat light from last weekend, less chaos in open schooling day, and weather. 

Given the above weather, we didn't get to replicate the lighting conditions, but no matter, it was plenty scary for Ben. We headed straight over there to make sure we had the time to sort it out correctly. 

The green is the slope up/down from the mound, the grey is the novice, blue is prelim, and black is the training line. First we did green to green and then the novice table after. I could feel him tense even just being up there though I gave him a clear route across. Then we did green to grey at a soft trot. He slammed on the brakes and tried going sideways and backwards. JT led him to the edge of it and then recruited her working student on a sales horse who is a bank mistress to come over and lead us down. He thought harder about going while following her, but still said no. She circled around 3-4 times until he finally decided she wasn't dying and so he could do it too. Then we trotted around and around and around until his hesitation was gone and he was starting to relax. Then we took a break so he could process and everyone else went and did a few things. 

When I picked the reins back up we did green to grey again to confirm it still wasn't shocking, then we did green to down the training one that we had gone up before. And repeat. Soft reins going down, but starting to move with a bit more purpose. I think we took another break and then headed from green to the ferocious training down. He stopped and I could feel his heart pounding still. Enter working student again and this time it only took two loops around before he followed her down. Then we put it all together, up the training bank and then down the training bank. Then we added in the brushy roll top after. The first time I was far too casual about the whole thing and we did the four strides in five and then had a flop of a jump over the roll top. The next time I still was too casual to the up, but got the four down. So we did it one more time, treating the up bank like a 3'6" vertical as JT said. It felt much better that way. 

I definitely had a hard time transitioning from so so soft and relaxed to creating the oomph that the up bank and roll top required and getting the striding done. But with JT's help, we got it sorted. 

We moved on to other things on the property, but added the bank set in one more time with no issue. He very unimpressively jumped a table down into the pit elsewhere on the property, so we had to repeat that. Overall he was definitely back to his former stare, chip, and squat. I found this quite frustrating because he had felt SO GOOD before the bank on the course last weekend. I knew the bank was going to be a thing, but I didn't realize it was going to translate to a knock to his confidence over everything else. 

We ended with the T/P/I ditches in a different part of the property. We tritty-trotted down to one and Ben acted like he had never in his life seen a ditch before. UGH!!! He went after a little bit of debating, and then we circled back and forth and back and forth over those until he was casual again.  

I was messaging JT after asking if I should have done anything differently. She said no, he was lacking confidence and we did a lot to restore it. She continued on to say "He's the sort of person who'd be on his therapists couch three days a week" which is the most true thing I've ever heard

He even trailered like an idjit and sat so hard on the ramp while we were traveling that he bent the latch. WTF dude. He had a friend so was back in the straight load configuration, but he usually likes having a friend enough he doesn't freak out. But I could feel the trailer rocking on the drive down. He loosened up the screws for the latch into the frame, so it is not an at home job. I can't wait to find out how much that is going to cost to repair. The butt bar was up so it is just his height letting him slam enough of his butt over the bar to put this much pressure on the ramp itself. Horses, man. 

It seems it will work out well that my schedule doesn't line up with any January events. We can keep rebuilding confidence with frequent trips to school that month. 

Thoroughbred Transformation Expo - a short day 2

I would walk the course in photos like usual, but sadly we didn't get to do it all. He warmed up great, was jumping fantastically, had not done a single chip and squat, and then we got to the up and down bank, #8. 

The up bank went fine. But the down bank landed in the shadow from the mound itself. And Ben thought he was jumping into a black hole and stopped. The judge in the chase cart let us school down another but then told me to "ride at it like your pants are on fire" and yelled at me that of course it wasn't going to work when I didn't do that strongly enough. The attempt led to him running backwards rapidly, which is really not great on a raised mound. It's also 100% not the way JT has us ride down banks. You don't need momentum to drop down a bank, so we do them in a super relaxed fashion, go off on a loose rein. According to her, and I believe it, this is how you keep them from doing dramatic launches. Sure, if I'd approached it with spurs DUG in the first time, we might've gotten off it, but after that riding it aggressively wasn't going to fix it. 

Sadly then, that is where our day ended. Unlike our run out in April our first year together, this was a legitimate fear. Dude had been DOING IT until that point. He knew his job and was out there doing what we've worked so hard to train him to do. This was just... A spooky horse, an amateur rider, and some tricky shadows. I was half bummed about our score and half bummed that we didn't get to play on the rest of the course! 

We spent the rest of the day just hanging out and watching. Ben is such a pleasant horse to hang out with, he's a bit like a golden retriever. I did tidy up his mane a bit as well to make Sunday's braiding job easier than Thursday's.

I put Ben up and sat in the bleachers for the freestyles. There were some truly incredible performances. One fire fighter themed performance complete with fake smoke, rescuing a dog, pulling a stretcher, and jumping through a "ring of fire" (colored sparkly streamers around a small picture frame jump). Another drove and did flying changes and crossed a teeter totter and sliding plank that rolled forward (in a controlled fashion) as the horse stepped onto it. Overall incredibly impressive. I joked with JT that Goggles would do one next year that featured him as a barber. He's been doing some... Trimming of Waffles' forelock and tail (Sorry Libby!!). We're still not sure how Waffles is letting Goggles get this close...