What you can control when competing with horses are your thoughts and your actions. Through those two things, by default, you have some sort of control over your horse. However, it’s your thoughts that cause your actions, so keeping control of your thoughts is paramount. In this article, I’m going to talk about two different scenarios when getting ready to compete. The first one is about controlling your thoughts when you need to think about something. The second scenario, which is probably more for riders who are quite adept at their chosen discipline, is when you don’t need to think about something. I know that sounds cryptic, but it will make sense when we get to it.

My competition experience is mostly with the discipline of reining, so I’m going to talk in terms of that, but it’s possible to relate this to almost any equine discipline.

When you are getting ready for competing with horses, you often feel anxious because you are worried that something may go wrong. It may be because you are concerned about your horse not performing a slide well, or not getting your left to right lead change. It’s ok to have thoughts like that come up, but what you do with those thoughts will define your success or cause your defeat.

Before competing on the Australian Reining Team at the World Equestrian Games in 2018, my wife Robyn and I received coaching from a fabulous Equestrian Mindset Coach from New Zealand named Jane Pike. One of the many wonderful things I heard Jane say was “You can’t move away from something, you can only move towards something.”

When asked what she means by that, her usual explanation is to talk about a big blue tree. She will say “Ok, I want you to not picture a big blue tree. I don’t want you to picture a big blue tree, and I also don’t want you to picture a yellow bird at the top of that big blue tree. And while you aren’t picturing a big blue tree with a yellow bird at the top of it, I want you to not picture some green grass at the foot of the tree.”

So what are you thinking about now?

A big blue tree, with a yellow bird at the top, and some green grass at the bottom! You can’t NOT think about something, you can only think about something else.

Now I want you to think about holding an orange basketball. I want you to feel the texture of the ball, the weight of it, how tight it’s pumped up, and if it’s a bright orange new ball or the faded orange of a basketball that has seen some work. What did you see? Of course, you saw a basketball, you may have even been able to feel the dimples on its surface or the black lines in the leather, or smell the worn rubber.

What you didn’t see was a big blue tree. You can’t move away or not think about the big blue tree, but you can move toward, or think about, the orange basketball.

This is really about choosing to think about what you want to happen (moving towards) instead of thinking about what don’t want to happen (moving away). In the case of the anxiety over your left to right lead change, when that thought comes up you want to shift your thoughts from it going wrong, to “here’s what do I need to do to make it go right.” This is a combination of having done your homework, trusting your training up until this point, and mentally rehearsing what you are going to do before the show to ensure a clean change. Sometimes even saying the words out loud help you slow down and regain your composure:

“I’m going to get straight a little early in the center, then I’m going to leg yield him off my right leg a touch, keep looking and thinking straight, then slide my left leg back, and when he changes then I’m going to slowly look right and start to steer that direction.”

If you allow your mind to think about what will go wrong, inevitably it will go wrong. Shifting your thoughts to what you need to do to make it be right, will ensure a more successful outcome when competing with horses.

Teaching my mind to think that way is a skill I’ve learned from years of competing in the reining. However, for the World Equestrian Games I learned an entirely new skill with amazing results. The skill of not thinking about anything.

My wife and I decided to qualify for the Australian team for WEG in Tryon after learning that many of the other experienced Australian riders were not in a position to mount a campaign to qualify. It’s a huge undertaking, in time, effort, and finances. We had both been on the Australian team in Kentucky in 2010, and the experience at the time was a life highlight. I listed my favorite lifetime experiences as marriage, fatherhood, and then WEG. In that order.

I had been traveling and doing clinics for the past 10 years, and had planned to take a sabbatical from the clinics in 2018 to focus on some personal growth, so I had the time to do all the qualifiers. However, I had not competed in the reining for 3 years and needed all the practice I could get, so we purchased another Reiner for me to show in the bigger derbies, in order for me to get back in the show ring under some pressure. We also enlisted the help of our friend Jane Pike. Her background in Neurolinguistic Programming and years as a Yogi blended in well with the meditation, yoga, and mindfulness practices I had spent the earlier part of the year working on.

When we arrived in Tryon for WEG, our Chef d’Equipe, Rodney Peachey, asked “given the best case scenario, what do you think you and your horses are capable of?” Both Robyn and I thought that a 217 ½ would be what we could achieve.

During the year, Jane had coached us on our mindset and had made us some homemade audio tracks to listen to. Right before WEG she also taught us some breathing techniques she had learned as a yogi in India. These came in handy in the days leading up to the competition at Tryon. Any time I got nervous (which was my mind thinking ahead to future events and not being present), I would employ the breathing techniques Jane had taught us, and my anxiety would disappear. At this point in time, our horses were solid and this was a time for not thinking about what we were going to do.

The first round of individual competition came and it was the most relaxed I’d ever been showing a horse, ever. There were a couple of times in the warm-up pen I felt anxious, and as soon as I did, I’d do the breathing technique and a clear, calm focus would come over me. Robyn had the same experience, and she marked a 218, I marked a 217. We showed as good as we’d hoped. What we hadn’t hoped, or even considered, was to make the individual semi-finals, to possibly make it back to the individual finals. But after the first round, both Robyn and I had made the semi-finals the following day. The top 15 went straight to the finals, and 16-35 would go again in the semi-finals with the top 5 going to the individual finals.

The next day went pretty much like the first round, any time I felt anxious, I focused on my breathing, which took my mind off the competition, and helped relax me. I had drawn up first, and Robyn fifth.

There’s such a thing in sports as being in the zone. I’d read about it, heard about it, but never really experienced it until then. My horse, Plenty Of Guns, and I scored a 220, which was a personal best for me. Robyn came in 4 horses later and went around me to mark a 220 ½. We were both looking like making the individual finals at WEG, until the last few horses went. Robyn end up in 6th, one spot out of the finals, and I ended up tied for 7th, 2 spots out of the finals.

It certainly was a testament to the mental side of competing with horses, as I was still a bit rusty after not competing for 3 years. I like to tell people that my physical game was not as good as it had been, but my mental game was at a much higher level, thanks to Jane’s coaching and my newfound ability to not think about anything. However, it did take a lot of work outside of the show pen to ensure that whenever those moments of anxiety came up I had mentally prepared to bring myself back down into a calm and present state.

This article about mental preparation for competing with horses is a web exclusive for Horse Illustrated magazine brought to you in partnership with Warwick Schiller. Click here to subscribe!

The post Competing with Horses: Mental Preparation with Warwick Schiller appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

Then along came a horse named Sherlock. My wife had bought Sherlock to show for the upcoming season; he was an amazing athlete but had some odd behaviors that I wanted to unravel.

Changing Techniques

If a horse has an issue I usually go back to the very beginning and retrain them from the start, ensuring each step along the way is good before continuing. As I began working through the process, I found that Sherlock was more shut down than any other horse I had encountered before. He was quite obedient, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He’d do the work but would always pretend to be in other places. He was holding back—almost frozen. His tenseness did not result in explosive behavior; instead, he would retract inside himself. None of the things I tried seemed to relax his tension.

Sherlock is the main reason I began to look outside of my established methods of training to find different ways of working with horses that didn’t cause them to shut down. To give him a different perspective on being asked to do things, I began using clicker training.

However, he still knew it was training and didn’t want any part of it. Clicker training was still me asking for something and expecting some sort of outcome. After I had given clicker training a break, I read some articles about how small facial expressions and head movements can tell us how our horses are feeling. It turns out the tiniest movements have a large mental association, and, to better gauge how your horse is feeling on the inside, you must be keenly aware of what they are doing on the outside. This requires listening to the horse.

Listening Breakthrough

Soon after reading about these micro-expressions, I was doing a clinic in Texas. In the morning group, there was a nine-year-old mustang who had an issue with bolting under saddle. During the groundwork portion of the clinic, he started to block out his owner with his head whenever she walked down beside him trying to get him to step over behind.

Usually, I would have suggested she just slip her hand under his jaw and move his head back in front of himself before walking down his side, but I wanted to experiment. I took the lead rope from her and went to walk down beside him. He turned his head and blocked me. Instead of doing anything more, I stopped and stepped back as soon as he tried to block me out. I then stood still and waited for him to process what had happened. In all honesty, I didn’t fully realize what I had just told him, but he knew what had happened. Instead of correcting the behavior, I acknowledged his tension by releasing pressure (stepping backward). I tried again with the same result. He was beginning to realize that I was listening, rather than demanding something of him. Initially, it took him a little while to process.

This advance-and-retreat went on for about 15 to 20 minutes until eventually, he didn’t block me out when I went down that side. I could then disengage his hind end, walk back to the front, and then back down his side with no worries. He seemed to be fine now, so I handed him back to his owner and said, “Let him stand there for a while, don’t ask for anything.”

About 15 minutes later, as I was helping another clinic participant, I heard a collective gasp from all the spectators. I turned around to see the mustang had buckled at the knees and dropped to his belly. He was fast asleep, snorting little dust clouds in the sand. He then had a roll, got up, shook off the dirt, buckled at the knees again, and went back to sleep. I asked his owner if that was normal behavior for him. She said she’d had him for six years and had only seen him lay down once, and on that occasion as soon as he saw her, he jumped straight up. He continued to sleep for an hour and a half. When it was time for the afternoon group to come in, we woke him up and he went back to his stall.

The next day when the morning group entered the arena, his owner asked what I thought she should do. I suggested she stand with him and see what happens. After 15 minutes he laid down and went to sleep, sleeping for four hours until lunchtime. He slept while horses cantered past him, through the blaring loudspeakers, and the energy of six horses in an arena with 50 spectators watching.

Upon returning from that clinic, I looked at scientific research into the sleeping habits of horses. I learned that although horses can sleep standing, they need to lay down for about 30 minutes each day to get the restorative REM sleepthey need. If they don’t get that sleep, they can be nervous, and that nervousness can cause all sorts of issues, including bolting. It has been over three years since that clinic, and the horse has not bolted since.

This was a watershed moment for me. It was the first time I had solved an issue by simply listening to the horse’s concern. There wasn’t any training, I just communicated to the mustang that I was aware of his concern, and I gave him time to process that concern. Over the past few years, I have really made listening a big part of what I do. Personally, it’s not easy. You really have to change your judgments of every situation, and you also have to be able to lose your expectations. The only goal is to have your horse feel as if you’re on their team, so they know you can recognize when they become concerned and help relieve that concern. In order to listen fully, you must also be more present, and just from that mindfulness, I have seen a huge change in horses that I work with.

Listening to the Horse

It’s common knowledge that horses often feel unsafe when removed from their herd. However, very few understand exactly why they begin to feel unsafe. It’s not the physicality of the herd, as horses don’t fight off predators; they run from them. What makes them feel safe is the collective group awareness of the herd. The more horses, the more sentinels they have. This is where being aware of those little signals horses give us a double benefit. When we notice those subtle signs of tension, we tell them they are being heard, but I think a larger benefit is we are conveying to them how aware we are. That awareness gives horses the same sense of safety as the herd, and that causes relaxation. When we can prove to be trustworthy, horses such as the mustang in Texas will finally give up their constant one-man alarm system and hand the reins over to us to keep a lookout for danger. This in turn provides them the ability to get that REM sleep and come back down to the rest-and-digest state of homeostasis (as opposed to always being in fight or flight).

A couple of years ago, I was able to work with some Barb stallions in Morocco. Almost all of them were distracted, unsettled, pushy, and even a bit nippy. When I worked with each of them, I turned them loose in a round pen. I didn’t want to be close to them due to the fact they displayed some bad habits that could easily place me in danger. All of them ran to the fence whinnying at the other studs back in the barn. All I worked on was attracting their attention with a flag. I didn’t drive them, nor ask them to move their feet; I just got their attention.

As soon as their attention moved to me or the flag, even something as small as an ear flick, I would take the energy out of the flag and put it down. All of them soon became very relaxed and settled. Once they were settled enough to no longer pose a major threat, I allowed them to come up and engage with me. The distracted, pushy, and nippy horses became connected, respectful, and calm.

I even joked with the Moroccan trainers that I had invented an invisible halter and lead rope. I tied the fake knot, picked up the fake lead rope and those Barb stallions followed me around like a well-behaved horse on a lead. I think the humor was lost in translation (we had a professional translator with us), but they were all impressed by the rapid change they had seen without any forceful methods. Now, I try to plant the seed in people’s minds that there’s a different way to do all this horse training stuff. It’s respectful, peaceful, and powerful. It produces horses that are relaxed, willing to do the work, and connected to us.

However, listening to the horse is harder than it sounds. We have to swallow some uncomfortable truths. Maybe your horse isn’t ready to hit the trail without another horse. Maybe you need to work on separation anxiety on the ground before attempting to move on in your training process. Refocusing your priorities to put your horse’s mental state first takes some adjusting, and your horse will be unsure of it initially, as well. When you start having the breakthrough moments that I’ve now been having for the past four years, you’ll soon realize that there’s no going back. You’ll end up listening deeper and deeper. You’ll become deeply connected to your equine partner, and who knows, maybe it’ll end up improving your human relationships as well.

This article about listening to the horse is a web exclusive for Horse Illustrated magazine brought to you in partnership with Warwick Schiller. Click here to subscribe!

The post Listening to the Horse with Warwick Schiller appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

These days, many trainers find that using Least Intrusive, Minimally Aversive (LIMA) protocol, is acceptable. It seems they’ve discovered scientific terms for what offering a soft feel and rewarding the slightest try actually mean.

A New Desensitizing Method

In the past few years, I have vastly changed the way I train horses. I now choose to focus on building a relationship before attempting any sort of training, which I have heard referred to as “connection before concepts.” In the past, I managed to build trust and relationships because of the consistency of the training I was implementing, but now I focus on the connection first. The results have been nothing short of amazing.

While trying to understand why this new way of training was working so well for me, I came across something called Poly-Vagal Theory (PVT). Poly means more than one, and vagal refers to the Vagus Nerve, which is the information superhighway between your abdomen, heart, and brain. PVT gives us a much better understanding of mammals’ Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), which consists of the Parasympathetic Nervous System and the Sympathetic Nervous System. The Parasympathetic is the system that slows down the heart rate and keeps your horse in the rest and digest state. This system is comparable to the brakes in your car, bringing you safely to a stop from an otherwise dangerous high speed. The Sympathetic Nervous System is all about activation and is comparable to the accelerator in your car. It’s the fight or flight state that allows mammals to effectively use energy to get out of dangerous situations. I used to think that one was on and the other one was off, but PVT has helped me realize there’s much more to it. Don’t be daunted by the scientific names—the concepts are simple yet illuminating.

Poly-Vagal Theory states there are two branches of the Parasympathetic Nervous System. They both help slow down the body, but they serve two entirely different functions. The Dorsal Vagal Complex concerns itself with immobility and could be compared to the parking brake in your car. It should only be applied when your car is already stopped, but it can also be applied forcefully in an emergency. Your horse uses this brake when he’s standing around dozing, grazing, or hanging out with his mates. In those cases, the brake is applied gently. Your horse can also use this brake to go into freeze mode. When your horse becomes highly worried and their other survival options, such as fight or flight, are not available or haven’t worked, he will initiate a freeze response.

The other “brake” is the Ventral Vagal Complex, which pertains to relaxation brought on by social engagement. It’s about something called attunement which trauma therapist Sarah Schlotte describes as, “Being seen, being heard, feeling felt, and getting gotten.” Horses naturally share this attunement when in a herd. When this brake is engaged, a horse can be active and have energy, but also not be in a worried state. This is the state we’d like to have our horses in when we are riding. Whether you are headed out on the cross country course, setting up a passage during a dressage test, or in my case running wide open towards a sliding stop in the reining arena, your horse should be able to stay physically active while remaining mentally calm and connected to the rider. If we can use the Ventral Vagal brake in our training program, we create a horse who responds willingly.

Of course, all this training starts long before you begin riding your horse. First, we have to make the horse safe on the ground and desensitize them to sight, sound, and sensation. Horses that don’t receive much desensitizing and have an anxious personality tend to be labeled hot, fractious, or downright dangerous. All dangerous behaviors occur when a horse is in a high state of arousal, which means their Sympathetic Nervous System is running unchecked with no Parasympathetic brake to help bring them back down. Many horses like this end up with bigger bits, draw reins, an endless stream of calming supplements, and sometimes even sedation to slow down this activation. All these tools are replacements for a faulty Parasympathetic Nervous System. If we can strengthen and train the PNS to easily relax our horses the moment they get too uptight or tense, we can bring them back down to the rest and digest state where no dangerous behaviors occur.

When we work with our horses, we constantly use some form of the brake. I’m going to go through some common and some not-so-common desensitization techniques and describe which of these brakes is used in each instance. I’ll also describe different ways of desensitizing a horse to a flag (a piece of cloth or plastic bag on a stick), and in this case, we’ll assume the horse is sensitive and a little flighty. In a real scenario, how the horse has been handled up to this point makes a huge difference. In order to catch the horse and get the halter on, there would have been some form of brake applied, but we will just focus on the desensitization part for now.

Method 1: Old-School Desensitization

I’m going to start out old school, with the “tie them to a post, spider hobble them, and bag them down” trick. This technique, which is rarely used these days, involves tying a horse to an unbreakable post with an unbreakable halter and lead rope, and putting on a set of 4-way hobbles so the horse can’t move. Next, the handle would begin flapping a flag all over the horse, not stopping no matter how they reacted. Even when the horse stops, the handler continues flapping the flag all over them. The result is a horse that will stand still while you flap the flag all over them.

When a horse feels rising concern, they will immediately search for a friend before enacting any other response. If they are unable to find the herd security blanket, they will go into flight, fight, or freeze mode. As there are no friends in this situation, and the horse is unable to run away from or fight what is happening, they slam on the Dorsal Vagal brake and freeze. The horse is no longer present. They go internal and their body is flooded with chemicals that would allow them to be eaten alive with no sensation of it actually happening. This is also known scientifically as Learned Helplessness or Tonic Immobility. While the horse appears calm, they are not. They are beyond fear, beyond reactivity, and at the ultimate level of shut down. Many times, these horses later come out of that state with disastrous consequences resulting from trauma stored both in memory and the body.

Method 2: The Common Understanding of Desensitization

The next type of desensitizing I want to discuss is one that I am quite familiar with because I used this technique for years with great success. This technique works best for horses that may have multiple riders or handlers and just have to do their job. It involves having the horse in a halter and lead, holding the lead with the left hand about half a yard from the halter, with the flag in the right hand. You bring the flag around towards the near side of the horse and allow him to move if he was concerned. If the horse moves, keep the flag the same distance from him as it was when he first started to move, following him around until he stopped. Then immediately take the flag away. The flag may have been only one or two yards from the horse before he started to move.

In this method, the horse tries to run away from the flag, but that doesn’t work, so the horse stops in a freeze. So, the hand brake is applied, but not very forcefully because the social engagement brake is also engaged. The social engagement brake is engaged because as the horse gets concerned about the approaching flag and moves, you don’t bring it any closer to him, but instead follow him with it. This gives him a sense of being seen. The same thing happens when he stops, and you take the flag away. That also communicates that you are aware of what’s going on, as opposed to the previous method of flapping the flag no matter what happens. Taking away the pressure of the flag as the horse stops is also rewarding them for finding the right answer. Like in the first method, the horse will eventually not care about the flag, but in this case, you have built some trust. However, you can continue to break down this process to become more refined and more empathetic towards how the horse feels.

Method 3: The Empathetic Approach to Desensitization

The third method takes a slightly different approach. It starts off the same, bringing the flag towards the horse. If they felt the need to move away, you allow it, but at the same time remove the flag as soon as they begin to move. This process communicates to the horse that whenever they start to be uptight about something, you will be there to help dissipate that tension. You communicate to them that you are aware of their sense of security and are willing to take the steps needed to make them feel safer. This activates the social engagement brake, and, as time goes on, they allow the flag to get closer and closer. Usually, this technique replaces fear with curiosity, and the horse will actively seek to engage with the flag. This is the unintended benefit of this method: you can stir up enough curiosity to create a draw out of the same tool usually used to create drive.

Method 4: Using Subtle Signs Of Tension

The final technique is even more refined, and in my experience, works the best. In this method, you will closely observe the horse’s eyes, ears, and head posture before you do anything with the flag. It’s important to have that baseline established, because anything that varies from that behavior should be noted. As you approach with the flag, watch to see if your horse’s eyes stop blinking (as tension rises in horses, their rate of blinking slows or stops), the ears fixate backward, or the head rises. All these are signs that your horse is heading into freeze or flight mode. When you notice one of these changes, pause and keep the flag in the same place in relation to their body. Wait for some sign of relaxation, such as a return to blinking, ears changing focus, or head lowering slightly. When you see some form of relaxation, take the flag away. These signs of relaxation are all very subtle. Many times, an observer will not notice those little things and are amazed at how relaxed the horses get just by me “doing nothing.” However, what I’m doing is rewarding the horse’s relaxation. You’ll often see my horses yawning or licking and chewing during training sessions. The Vagas nerve runs all the way down to the horse’s mouth, and when there is a big letdown into relaxation, their mouth will loosen up, a small amount of dopamine will be released into the brain, and the horse will yawn or lick and chew. This signals to me that they are ready to move on and have fully processed what has just happened.

Additionally, you have communicated how aware you are of the small things. This activates the social engagement brake by giving your horse a sense of “being seen, being heard, feeling felt, and getting gotten,” which also allows you to develop trust with your horse. That trust will get you through more scary situations than any amount of desensitizing ever could. If your horse feels that you are a part of their herd security blanket, the moment something arises and you are there for them, they don’t have to engage in the other forms of brakes. Being aware of how the Parasympathetic Nervous System works allows you to choose which of your horse’s brakes you engage. It always helps to remember the saying “obedience is quicker, but the connection is better.”

The post Desensitizing Methods with Warwick Schiller appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.