As the mare turned, she buried the inside shoulder and tried to go around her own block into the turn, which resulted in more of a disengaging move, in which she ended up stopped.
Do we have disrespect and stubbornness, or is this an illusion?
AN ASSESSMENT OF LEFT, RIGHT AND STRAIGHT
I had noticed three things in this mare’s existing groundwork that seemed to be coming back to haunt the relationship in these turns.
- First, she had been asked to disengage her hindquarters away from the handler frequently – a maneuver considered in some circles to bring out ‘respect’ because it results in the horse looking squarely at the handler. Horses can also learn that this is a good bet, because it is apt to please the handler, and default to offering a disengagement when unsure about the desired response.
- Secondly, she had been taught that when she yielded her forehand, for example to the left, to plant the left foot and step over it with the right. This widely-used foundation has its purpose for certain maneuvers, but had been built in so diligently by her owner that the mare would do anything to bring her outside front across a loaded inside shoulder. That included in a turn, or related exercise – literally tripping herself up in her effort to be accurate on a number of occasions.
- And third, the owner also exercised another widely-used maneuver on-line when changing directions on a circle, in which the horse ‘jumps’ over his hind-quarters from left to right, or vice versa, in order to switch directions on the circle. While there is value in this, as there is in disengaging the hindquarters, when overused without balance in other exercises, it has its pitfalls. To achieve this maneuver, the handler often pulls the head into the current direction more, while driving the opposite shoulder through in a move similar to a rollback. This means the horse is under pressure not to stay straight in between left and right. When exercised often, this can contribute to the horse finding straight uncomfortable in general, and that can show up under saddle later, when straight has to be ridden as a series of right and left corrections.
In the particular case of this mare, this exercise had also included the handler advancing towards her in her blind spot in that split second where she was straight. I had watched this move a time or two when the appy lady brought her mare out at the start – the mare had quite a look of concern on her face about whether she could operate between these two pressures and also get out the way fast enough, as her handler advanced towards her head, right when she also vanished from view.
When we stepped back and considered these practices, the inadvertent setup for this mare’s lack of sureness about traveling straight and forwards was quite clear, as was her preference for heading left or right instead of taking the risk of going straight.
Unfortunately, due to the foundation for yielding her front-end mentioned earlier, her strategy to move her shoulders left or right was short-circuited by her commitment to be accurate with her feet, in compliance with her training.
Three insignificant seeming things perhaps, but which combined to produce this stalling out in the turn –nonetheless a genuine offer from the mare to do as she was asked. When we observed things from the mare’s point of view – in terms of placement of the feet relative to feel, timing and balance – she could not have demonstrated more clearly why things had got so confused in this partnership under saddle.