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In any case, asking the mare to move on out in the posture she held would have set her up to fail. Since there was no story of the mare bucking her rider off, one might guess that piling on the pressure right then is precisely what would produce “planted feet.”

Under the circumstances, “planted feet” in this mare might also be viewed as a generous act of partnership in her decision to keep her back feet on the ground, despite being asked to liven up when her front end was stuck. Either way, two things needed to change for her to be able to move out smoothly with ease: a physical change in posture, and releasing her thought to brace. 

Her breathing was less shallow now, and a hint of curiosity had crept into her expression. This is the spot I was hoping to see - a window to her mind and the opportunity to layer in some real change for the better.
I released her up at the wither, to cause a change of posture and shift of her weight up and back onto her hips, then invited her to move forwards, while she was shaped to do so easily. The release at her wither also helped me connect with the instinctive horse in her, and bypass for now the conditioning. She moved up into a nice free trot, with a soft topline, and travelled smoothly on the circle, without a thought to stall out. She hadn’t really had that thought to begin with, I would say, and this response now was just a reflection of her desire to get along, with her body now shaped so that she could.

After that one experience of releasing forward, in a way that did not trigger her conditioning to tighten, she remained available in her transitions, and was responsive to requests for different speeds.
With that sorted out in both directions, I then released her into a turn on-line.

I have heard it said more than once how hard it is to wait like this. I think it might be too, if a person sort of stands there with the clock or a void in which ‘nothing is happening’ on their mind. But it is not a void at all, not in the least.  It is full of promise, opportunity and value: the promise that this will have meaning to the horse, the opportunity to build good feel into the partnership and the value that stems from how this reaches the horse in a deeper place by far, than would moving on at that moment.

Move on at that moment, and you steal from yourself to be sure. The lesson will be short-circuited and evaporate. An opportunity for that better connection to open up between you will be missed.

Still your mind, open your heart up to feel of that horse, let his feel flow right through you and you will notice that you are in fact in a rather mesmerizing moment of togetherness through feel.  Connect with the feel of this and you will no longer have any desire at all to get the waiting over. Instead you will discover the feel of a horse slowly but surely tuning in and then reaching for you, because he enjoyed the feel you just shared. Often, you will feel him open up and plop his heart right in your hand.  Waiting at the right time for the right amount of time is a most rewarding art that will in fact serve to launch things along between you.

It is a spot that fascinates me, both because it comes through each horse a little differently, and because the feel that comes through when it gets worked out is also a spot where, well, you feel of that horse right through to his soul, and he reciprocates. It is moving indeed. Once felt, it is a place that feels so good between you, that allowing the horse to lead you there, along the vein of gold becomes part of you, and part of the flow.
I asked the appy lady a few questions, to help her tune into observing the actual facts about her mare. It also served to offer the mare something of key importance. I offered her only release in my feel, as I remained still. I wanted her to have the time to get sure that the response she offered instinctively through feel was exactly right.  No matter that she got in a muddle and ended up stopped – she had offered a genuine response to the feel I presented, and that was her new job. A new job that was approximately the opposite of the job she had known, carrying children around.

Had I moved or done anything to cause her to think she should do anything other than naturally soak on what just happened would have served only to confirm her confusion and her anticipation of pressure. It took the mare a little while to let go of her expectations around me bringing that pressure.

She stood quietly, as she sorted this out. It might have seemed like a ridiculous amount of time to wait on her, had I not also been talking to the lady, but time at that spot – whatever time she needed –  would be key to getting things smoothed out.

It is the mind we are working with and seeking to access, so we had better allow the horses time to clear their mind when needed,  for the mind to be available.

I noted that she had moved freely in the first stride or two before the tightness came in and short-circuited her flow. I had not directed pressure towards the mare in my initial request, I had just released her forward. When a horse has been taught that pressure of some kind is always in a request, there is often a spot to work out, when releasing that horse without the pressure.  The pressure is still anticipated, but is absent, so in a sense, the expected timing is all off - he is already right and has done what was asked, simply by following a feel of release in the moment.  This can leave him wondering where the pressure went, and you might see his normal, but displaced response to that pressure he is expecting, or a slight concern around his sureness that it must be coming.

The mare was in that spot: a little confused about the change in feel and timing. She had instinctively followed a feel and was already right. The normal reference point of a release of pressure marking her correctness was 'missing' - as was the pattern of "wrong" until you find "right" sequence that accompanies it. This actually caused her to be unsure about whether she was right. Since a lack of sureness in her understanding of a request was normally associated with a judicious and therefore predictable increase in pressure, this caused her to stand tight as she anticipated the pattern of pressure. Yet all the while, the pressure anticipated was not forthcoming.

For all these reasons - or particles of feel - it is also characterizes a golden moment in process if the handler can offer the feel and timing to ALLOW it. What does this mean? We have reached a moment in which the horse is right on the line between flight (or fleeing inward) and curiosity about this change in feel and timing. It is a delicate spot, where instinct is heightened. It is also a wide open doorway to that horse and the opportunity to for a connection of a very different kind. We just need to learn how to be invited through that door - through feel.

The common temptation would be to have the so far incomplete circle I had planned drive our next move. I could have done that, as I surely would have at one time in this journey, and she would have made it somehow - BUT I would also have confirmed and built on the established awkward staccato of misunderstandings, manifesting in misinterpreted brace. ANY suggestion that she ought to be doing more (towards that circle I had in mind), no matter the presentation, would have carried a feel of pressure at that moment - and slammed the door closed, by adding to her brace and sending her (in this case) inward, back to a quietly closed state.

The alternative would be to support her sorting through the shift to release her curiosity. If I am able to feel of a horse to achieve this, he/she will invite me right through that door, and I will find myself in that magical spot where we are together in lightness through feel - and it weighs nothing, becaused it is offered and received. A golden moment to be sure, and that is why I call this "The Vein of Gold".

“What does her expression tell you right now?”  I asked.

This mare held such a desire to do right. She had been accustomed to requests for upwards transitions being initiated with a feel of pressure, followed by a swift escalation of pressure if she were not responsive.
When an escalation of pressure suggests she is “not right yet” and that more try is expected, then the meaning in the pressure is that her response is, to put it another way… “wrong”. This can be a source of confusion when the initial request is also made with a feel of pressure. It was a lose-lose for her, because she did not have the chance to do right before she felt wrong. On top of that, she knew to expect an escalation of pressure when she was not right. This had translated to a slight, but habitual tightening in her back as she moved out. A tightening in her back, is indicative of a tightening in the base of her neck, which in turn pulls her wither, and therefore her shoulders down.  In other words, she effectively ran herself into her own brick wall, as her hind feet advanced into a buried front-end.

She had frozen up now, in her anticipation of an escalation of pressure, but her expression was not one of resistance. It was one that suggested she was used to a wall between herself and her handler, through which she could not ask for help.

This had appeared to the appy lady as stubbornness, disrespect and lack of try. In fact, the mare had almost literally tripped herself up in her concern about and desire to be accurate. It is not always so easy to observe some of these smaller things that matter to the horse, from up there in the saddle.

If we could reshape things a little, for the mare to stay soft in her initial response, there would be real potential for these transitions to be worked out.

The appy lady and her mare had been experimenting in various ways with many moments of notable connection and successful presentations through feel.  Much progress was made, but with a kind of staccato in which the moments did not flow together for the whole to be seen.  One afternoon is not so much time, when you first dive into this. I wondered if the appy mare could help me help her owner see the bigger picture a little better, before we finished. 

I simply asked the appy mare to go out onto a circle. Then I released her to a trot from a spot on the wall 15ft behind her. She moved off willingly for a stride or two. . . as she also shifted her weight down and forward in the transition, and ultimately stopped her feet within the next few strides. I could have added some pressure, and she may have kept going if she could, but her posture did not support that. I asked the appy lady why she thought her mare had stopped. “Does this look like a spot where your mare plants her feet and says ‘no’, as you described?” It was. Could she see that the mare was standing downhill with a slight tightening in her back and base of the neck? This was a new level of observation for the lady, but she could see it now.