I have had a couple of days to digest what happened with Walker and me Wednesday morning, and it is still difficult to parse all the thoughts I have had about it. Here is how it played out:
I decided that we would ride and focus on my being more particular about how I was asking for what I wanted while riding, especially while turning, since this is an area with which Walker has trouble doing calmly. This decision to be more particular really exposed what I already knew, which is that he turns much more easily to the left than to the right. So we played with riding the rail and doing lots of half circle changes of direction. After doing this while interspersing changes of gait, Walker was much better at turning to the right and being calm while doing it. Now it was time to test this with the cloverleaf pattern, where I could reinforce this exercise and tie it to a different task so Walker could see why I had been asking for being particular about his turns. There was a significant improvement in the way Walker performed the cloverleaf pattern, both at the trot and at the canter. He was able to pick up both leads equally well, so I believe that the half circle exercises helped him bend his ribs, allowing him to pick up his left lead much more easily. Once we had done the cloverleaf so nicely both to the left and right, I allowed him to walk anywhere he wanted to so he could cool off. We jumped a small jump a couple of times, which he did very calmly also. Then I hopped off, took all his tack off, and we played for just a few minutes at liberty, playing with zone 5 driving along the rail, and going sideways around a box, both with the front feet inside and outside the box. Then we combined the two by going along the rail, stopping at cones I had placed in the four ends of the arena, going sideways over those from zone 5 and then trotting on to the next cone. As my son Ben likes to say, we lathered, rinsed and repeated this game four times, and the last time, Walker did it so softly and beautifully, we stopped and I fed him plenty of cookies. I then gently passed my hand along his back and down his tail to release him so he could go roll in the arena dirt if he wanted to do so.
He did! I crawled over to him to feed him a cookie while he was still down, as I am playing with him being more comfortable staying on the ground with me. After gobbling up his cookie, he popped to his hooves, shook and blew. I was thinking, “What a fabulous play session!” when he started to move toward the tall, rectangular pedestal that we have been playing with for the last two years or so. He has had no trouble putting two feet on it, but four feet has been a huge issue. I have attributed this to his general zone 3 fears, which we have been playing with a lot. I was just standing nearby, leaning on my carrot stick and watching him with amused curiosity. He circled and circled and circled around it, it must have been for about a minute. Then he put two feet on it and looked at me. I smiled, but did nothing else. Then he walked/hopped over it, something he has never done. At this point my heart is thumping pretty hard in my chest, because going over that large obstacle voluntarily, exposing his zone 3 to all the danger he perceives it to be is an enormous threshold for him to cross on his own. But I was totally unprepared for what he did next. He circled it one more time, then lined HIMSELF along the long end of the rectangle, He put two hooves straight on it, then casually stepped up on the pedestal with his other two.
He stopped up there. He turned his head and looked right at me. Now I am crying, but as calmly as I could muster, I walked over to him and fed him a cookie. He has no halter and no rope on him. Over the last two years, I must have asked him up on that pedestal with his four hooves at least a hundred times, and he just couldn’t do it. That morning, he was ready, and at that point, he had figured it out for himself: he does not have to be afraid of everything that passes under his barrel. To me, it felt as though the last piece of the puzzle was laid down for him so he could see the whole picture.
It is not enough to say that Walker has been improved through natural horsemanship; he has been nothing less than transformed. And the best part is, the transformation continues…
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