LBE Playoffs, Round 3

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Walker and me at Christi Rains' place recently. What a nice shape he is getting freestyle

LBE Playoffs, Round 3

As I was driving to the barn yesterday, I was pondering the idea of “bubbles” after watching Kalley Krickeberg’s 3^rd DVD in her new Sport of Liberty series. I didn’t think it would apply to what I was planning on doing with Walker, riding out in the park, but I was so wrong. What ended up happening for us was the merging of two concepts: harmonious bubbles and staying on the pattern until you get a change.

It is hotter than the Devil’s griddle in Houston now. The heat and humidity are taking their toll on horses and humans alike. So I decided I would wait to saddle up until after 6 pm. It was a good choice. The breeze from the Gulf was steady at about 10-15 MPH, so the heat was bareable. And as the sun started to set, I didn’t feel like we were getting baked by it. I still had my sunglasses on though!

Walker felt pretty good as we walked out of the turnout, although he needed a good brushing after sweating all day. I got him tacked up and we headed out to the park. He was very happy to stop for a few moments to eat grass, as the park across the street from our barn has really lovely grass right now and besides the two of us, there are very few people out there using it.

Walker and I playing at Liberty in the open on a recent visit to Christi Rains' place

I headed out to the far side of the trees that separate the area across the street into two sections of park. Near one of the lakes that borders each side I have hidden a pole that I use as a visual guide for me for putting us on patterns like the figure eight. Yesterday, I put the pole in between two small trees that are about 120 ft. apart. They help me create a very nice, large figure eight.

I wanted to concentrate on relaxation at the canter freestyle and then the same with soft feel or contact, all depending Walker’s state of mind. I knew he might be a little fizzy with it being later at night than we had ridden in awhile and there were all kinds of distractions around the park.

People were fishing and playing around the lake to our west. In addition, the city is cutting a very wide trench on the far side of that small lake to connect it to an adjacent lake. They are using a crane with a big bucket shovel for the job, and it stood tall in the sun, casting it’s shadow eastward towards us. Finally, the trenching has resulted in the accumulation of a huge mound of dirt about 4 to 5 stories tall and 100 feet long, all things Walker has not see there before.

So, as I thought might happen, Walker was pretty concerned with all those things happening around the lake. But I started with a strong, though brief, online warm-up, then circles first under saddle and he quickly settled into a nice walk, then trot, then canter on a loose rein. I then played with finesse, and we made some lovely trot and canter circles. His self carriage just gets better and better. When I was at Christi Rains’ place last week, she commented on how far Walker has come. We took a break, Walker eating grass and me watching the sun setting. We then began the figure eight pattern, and the concept of bubbles really came into play.

I dropped my reins over the saddle horn with a twist, and I realized that Walker was really not listening to my leg. First, as we went on our right hand circle away from the western lake, and then as we made our left hand circle towards it. But what I realized for the first time was that it really felt like a dominance game. He wasn’t just ignoring my leg, he was leaning on it.

He was pressing into my bubble, the sides of which were at that moment represented by my leg. Game on! So each time he pressed into my bubble by leaning on my leg, I tapped him progressively harder on his shoulder with my kid’s carrot stick (the new version, I like the stiffness of it) until he got off of my leg, my bubble. When I felt him harmonize with me, when I felt our bubbles side by side on the pattern, I told him what a good job he was doing. I did not get any stronger with my leg. He knows what it means, and the last thing I want to do is push back into his bubble and start a fight. Picking a fight with a 900 lb. LBE Arab is a bad idea! What I’d really like him to think is that I’m just as smart as he is and the leader of this small herd of two. With Walker, that is no small feat.

At first, he tossed his head around, offended? Surprised? Maybe a little of both. If you could have seen us from 100 ft. in the air, I’m sure our figure eight would have looked like some crazed moebius strip. I thought to myself, “We’re not getting off this pattern until I get a change, Lord, please have it happen before the sun sets on this park!”

As we made somewhere about the fifth turn around the figure eight, the head throwing stopped, but the pattern was still cattywhompus. Couldn’t stop yet. About the tenth turn around the figure eight, he starts to blow several times right after I bump him on the shoulder. Wow, I realized that he likes it. He feels better because I’ve become a stronger, more CONSISTENT leader. As an extrovert, consistency is not my strong suit, so I feel good about myself that I persisted until I felt him change.

At this point, I felt that he was in a really good frame of mind for learning. But not learning what to do. We have done hundreds of figure eights over the years. This was about obedience and willingness, something we have really struggled with from the beginning after he had been made to distrust humans from an early age. My instincts told me there, in the park, we must persist on the pattern, we were on the verge of a real break through. By the 15^th figure eight, the crazed moebius strip started to feel much more like a snowman figure eight, but I was still having to tap him regularly, though much more softly now. Interestingly, his energy had not lagged despite the number of figure eights. Was he feeling the same thing I was feeling? That we were becoming a real team?

At somewhere between the 19^th and 20^th figure eight, he did the pattern virtually by himself, with me as a passenger. I asked him to stop as we went over the pole. He came to a graceful, framed stop. As I hopped off, he gave me a very loud “get off nicker”. He ate the cookies I offered him with gusto. There was no doubt, not only did I know that Walker had made a real effort for me, but more importantly, he knew it, too, and he felt good about it. Developing my feel of bubbles, and staying on the pattern until I got a real change had paid off huge dividends for both of us.