Ep. 27 More on the Zero toolkit, overshadowing, and the transition from ground work to riding.

Hello, I'm Mary Wanlis, WELcoming you to podcast 27. Last time we talked about what I call the three toolkits or maps of riding and training. These do not negate each other in the same way that maps of roads, rainfall, population don't negate each other. But riders and trainers tend to think that their map is the only map. In fact, it goes further than that. They think that their map is the territory. This reminds me of the story of the three blind men and the elephant. They all get to touch a different part of the elephant and make a description which is different to the other blind men's description. And I looked this up in Wikipedia, which beautifully. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited subjective experience, whilst they ignore other people's limited subjective experiences, which may be equally true. And on the basis of this, the horse world cannot talk to itself. So we could have, for instance, people who are very good at groundwork, let's say, some of the leaders of the natural horsemanship schools. What they may not realise is that they also have really good biomechanics as a rider, but because they don't acknowledge this, they don't see and realise that the people they're teaching don't have such good biomechanics and therefore as riders, they don't produce the same result. They probably tell these people to go and do more groundwork as the way to fix their problem, but this might improve their groundwork, but it doesn't improve their riding. This is a case of mistaken attributions. We talked about attribution in a previous webinar. They're not relating their success to their riding skills, but only to their groundwork skills, which are therefore going to solve all problems. Within all this issue of maps, we have the issue that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Just as there are riders who have really good biomechanics but don't realise what they've got. I've met some elite riders doing groundwork very similar to Andrew Maclean's equine learning theory, but intuitively they haven't put a structure to it and done what I would call coded it. So they don't teach it. This is they're not aware of knowing what they know. But for me, seeing several big name riders do essentially the same thing was a very big sell for equine learning theory. We see a lot of people within different schools who go from the zero toolkit straight to the second toolkit. As if there were no four first toolkit and rider biomechanics was irrelevant. What happens, to use our analogy from the previous webcast, is that the horse may know the grammar, but he's not being well danced. He does the steps maybe in an obedient way, but not in a way that makes him beautiful, not in a way that makes his back come up with him reaching into the rain like the archetypal dressage horse. And he could look like this even if he's somebody's backyard pony. There are, of course, people who just perceive that riding and training consists of the second toolkit. And they may or may not have good skills that they don't realise they've got in the zero toolkit and or the first toolkit. But what tends to happen within the second toolkit is that it's taught as this hand there and that leg there. Yet the truth is that no rider has ever entered my arena, being only a pair of disembodied arms and disembodied legs. And I think we've proved over the centuries that this approach doesn't really work. Jumping over that first toolkit happens. Whether you think of the conventional theory I grew up in which talked about this hand here and that leg there, or, or the more modern groundwork theories, what can also happen is that there can be conflicts between the zero toolkit and the first toolkit. So in the zero toolkit, the horse has learned that a bit of pressure from the reins means stop. But if the rider does that and leans back at the same time, the rider's becoming the water skier to the horse's motorboat, tempting the horse to motorboat, which would mean that he'd just lean into the rain and keep walking. This often happens. And if we can be congruent between the zero toolkit and the first toolkit, we have much more meaning for the horse. Otherwise, he has to decide, am I going to take seriously what the rider's saying through her biomechanics, or am I going to take seriously what she's saying through the zero toolkit and the aids that I learned? And what will happen is that one of those will overshadow the other. If he's a horse with more go, he'll probably just bl and keep going, albeit in a slow motion water ski and motorboat rather than stopping. If he has more woe, then maybe woe will win the day. The zero toolkit is known as operant conditioning, and we'll talk more about this in a few minutes. The first toolkit is classical conditioning, which is the more subtle version that gets built on those basic rules. And beyond this leg here and that arm there, it's about rearranging the horse's body, rearranging where he's stuffed, changing how energy is transmitted from his back to his front, altering his carriage to create what could be the most wonderful dance before between rider and horse. If you've done groundwork and done it well, you're likely to have analysed and understood your horse's strengths and weaknesses, perhaps in a better, clearer way than you would if you were riding. Unless, of course, you've got really good skills riding that enable you to read your horse's body from the feel you get on top, rather than read it from what you perceive on the ground. So let's imagine, for instance, that it becomes clear to you that the horse does not easily want to step his right front leg to the right, but he easily steps his left front leg to the left. Maybe he doesn't easily step his right front leg to the right because he already has so much weight on it that he doesn't want to pick it up. Or maybe you realize from the ground that he always has his hindquarters to the the right of his forehand, and perhaps that would be more apparent to you there than when you're riding just because of your skill set. Just riding in a second toolkit way, you might get seduced into doing the lateral movements that have his hindquarters to the right of his forehand. Because he likes that position, it will be more challenging biomechanically, to reverse this and to focus more on the movements that put his hindquarters to the left of his shoulders, his shoulders to the right of the of his hindquarters. He won't like that so much, but then you're training something valuable, although it requires more skill than just doing the easy things. If people are good at more than one of these toolkits, and ideally all three, there's a huge increase in the number of horses they can successfully work with, and that in itself is a huge plus. So let's come back to the zero toolkit and just unpack it a bit more. It starts with asking the horse to take steps back because he's a flight animal and taking a step back involves the same muscles as stop. So you're just kind of finding out what is the status quo and you begin facing your horse in the training position. And there's a particular way of holding the reins that make it easy for you to step back from your horse and step towards your horse. So if you were to rest the buckle of the reins in the groove between your thumb and your first finger, you could be at a distance with the reins like that and move up to the horse and put your first finger between each of the reins, quite close to the bit, and then you could very easily move towards him and move away from him. In doing the steps back, you would use your whip as an extension of your arm to whip tap on his cannon bones. You'd also do whip habituation just moving the whip all over his body, not tentatively, not on, off, not as if you're a fly. That might be annoying, but just in a clear stroke. Head lowering would be another good thing to do because that too head helps to reduce the flight impulse and to lower heart rate. A friend of mine who does a lot of this work works with endurance riders, and this is a skill they really need at the vet gates. Now, if you're going to know that your horse understands the aids you're about to give for stop and go, it has to be set up that the horse does not follow your feet, because this is so instinctive and to people and also horses. So in a go age, you're facing your horse, you have an extra additional aid you wouldn't have when riding, which is a little pull on the rein in the forward direction and you have your whip that you can tap on his side where your leg would be. So when you do that little rein aid and the whip tap, the horse has to step forward before you move, because then we're clear, he's not following your feet. And for a stop, as your hand moves back towards his chest, he has to stop before you stop. So again, you know he's not following you, so you have to move your hand back towards his chest while still walking backwards to the end of the rein. There's quite a lot of skill in this. I hope my explanation has made clear to you the basic idea. There's a lot of skill. It's laid out beautifully on our groundwork certification course on dressagetraining tv. But it's quite hard to get the hang of and to not do what comes naturally of the horse going with your feet. When stop and go are good and light, you add park, which is your horse staying in place while you move around him and he's not tempted to follow you. This is a useful skill to have for when you've forgotten something and you drop your horse and go back to the tacrom. To get it, you then teach hind leg yielding steps where you whip tap on the horse's hindquarter for the hind leg to step under his body, across in front of the other one. One leg will almost certainly be easier. You might find that this messes with your go and your stop and your park a little bit for a while, but you get those back together in time. The next challenge is front leg abduction steps, which are away from the midline. So if you were to face him and tap on his left shoulder, you'd be asking him to step his right front leg to the right. And in the process of that, he really needs to make a sideways step and not barge forward and mow you down. So all of this takes some skill. And once we have hind leg and front leg steps, we do full pass directly sideways. So the horse's understanding of sideways is not contaminated by a forward that barges into you. But this can take you into doing leg yield from the ground, shoulder in and half pass. So all the lateral movements along with turns on the forehand and turns around the hind. Quilters. In teaching this, we make it clear that the energy and stance of the handler are really important, as is her breathing. I like the analogy of a dimmer switch. Some people have to go dimmer switch down because their energy is too high, especially if they're working with a nervy horse. Other people are a bit too much of a steady eddie, and they need to be able to go energy up, dimmer switch up, because they live with it rather down. But being able to change your own energy is challenging for people and important along with that. Being able to go, okay, horse mitazan, come along is different to going, come on, horsey, come on, horsey, come on, horsey, and just not having clout. This training is known as operant conditioning, and it was given this name by Skinner way back in the early 20th century. And it's called operant conditioning because the animal is the operator. He is finding the response that gets his human to stop bugging him, and he learns that response by trial and error. So let's say you, as the handler, are asking for hind leg steps and you whip tap, you keep whip tapping until something happens. And in a first basic attempt, perhaps it's just picking up that hind leg and putting it back down again. After a few repeats of this, you wouldn't stop whip tapping until the hind leg had gone somewhere underneath the body, and then you'd stop and you'd be upping your criteria a little bit over time. That you wouldn't stop whip tapping until the hind leg is clearly going across. Another possibility when you first start is that nothing happens and nothing happens and nothing happens. And you're there whip tapping, thinking, my arm is going to drop off, my arm will drop off, please do something soon my arm will drop off. But you just have to keep whip tapping or you'd be rewarding the non response. The other thing that might happen is the horse might pick up his leg and kick out and you just keep whip tapping and you just keep whip tapping and you just keep whip tapping and you just keep whip tapping until you begin to get a response that's moving towards the idea of that crossing step. Now, if you were riding and you started this riding and he kicked out, you might be very tempted to stop whip tapping because you'd fear the buck that was coming next. In that case, you've backed off for the response you don't want and you've rewarded it. It's much easier from the ground to stay really clean and really clear in that and also to be able to just be unemotional about the whole thing and go, okay, horse, that was the wrong response. Try again. If you were on top, you might conclude, oh my goodness, he's a bad horse. And that would just escalate the mire that you could dig yourself into. So the horse is learning by trial and error, experimenting, finding out what response gets you to stop bugging him and just step back. And quite often you need to just step back and give him some processing time to work out what just happened. As Ride with youh Mind Coaches, we want our riders to do the same kind of thing to by trial and error, be searching for the response that has us. Good fix. That's right, keep doing it. You're on the right track. We don't want riders who are just trying to be obedient army style, rather than riders who are experimental in the same way. We and other skilled riders don't want automat horses, but a lot of riders do because they feel safer. Most riders ride in mistake prevention mode. It's like they're going, keep your head down, keep your head down, keep your head down, horse, keep your head down, keep your head down, keep your head down. The horse doesn't learn anything from that and he might well get claustrophobic and upset or switch off. When the horse makes mistakes and you correct the mistakes and he learns from his mistakes, he's active in the process and he has a totally different understanding. The horse that's ridden in mistake prevention mode is much more likely to end up in learned helplessness. And if a horse is in learned helplessness, this is where the groundwork coupled with clicker training can begin to give him an interest in life and a reason for doing it and a way out of that learned helplessness kind of impasse. So the horse is training you just as much as you are training him. Equan Learning Theory Andrew Maclean's approach for groundwork is not just on the ground. It transfers seamlessly to ridden work in young horses, especially if you have a handler who can be with the horse when the rider's first on and the rider is just passive and the handler does a go and a whoa like you've done on the ground and over a short time, that gets transferred to the rider who uses a light leg aid before the whip tap and a light rein aid before the handler stop aid. And the horse gets it. Horses really do get it. I helped a rider recently. Her horse had got that, but she hadn't done such a good job from the ground to riding on the front leg abduction steps. And in the riding, the horse was jackknifing on a circle and it was getting a little bit, not unruly, but I could see it could go wrong. And I did a little work standing in front of the horse, doing the whip tap on the shoulder. And then she added an opening rein before my whip tap. And then when she was there without me, she was able to use the opening rein, have the whip by the horse's outside shoulder if she needed it. And she changed that steering really beautifully and the horse really got it. And I think we might have saved her from a lot of problems. But I remember clearly with my horse Disco, the first time, having done groundwork with him and set up these responses really well, I was riding and we halted and I put my reins in one hand and I put my whip by his hindquarter and started to whip tap as we had done for hind leg crossing steps. And he went to rear and leap. Now I was able to abort the leap. It didn't turn into very much, but I suddenly realized I had a big problem. And the truth is that his history as a ridden horse overshadowed his new learnings. So that's a great term from Andrew. The old learning overshadowed the new learning, and I needed a helper on the ground for quite a while before he went, oh, it's just those steps we did. Oh, nothing to do with that old stuff and getting that seamless transition or getting help if you don't get that seamless transition is really worth it when you're riding and you don't get the response you'd want. You'd whip tap in the same way as you did on the ground if your horse didn't listen. And over time, the hind leg steps that we've done with the whip tap on the hindquarter become your leg a little back and the whip tap a little further back than it would be for a normal goatee. I can remember riding another horse of mine who is dead now, sadly. He didn't like mud, he didn't like things on the ground. And we were on a hack down a grassy path with trees on each side. And there was a little branch across the path. It had a smaller diameter than a jump pole in front of. It was a little bit muddy. He was horrified. We reversed about 60 meters between these trees, and I was quite grateful. There was no other direction he could go in. We with me whip tapping, and after 60 meters, he walked forward. I immediately stop whip tapping. We get to within a few meters of the branch and he goes, oh, no. We back up 40 meters. I start whip tapping again. My arm feels like it's falling off. I'm praying, but we just keep going. After about 40 meters, he changes his mind and walks towards it. We then do 30 meters and 20 meters and 10 meters until he walked over it. I went back about three days later. We walked straight over it. That was just a lesson in just hanging in there, being in place, holding my ground, just whip tapping until I got one step forward, then stopping, rewarding him. And it became no deal. The change from operant conditioning, that initial go, stop, yield, the hind leg, move, the foreleg, to classical conditioning goes from those basic aids to something subtle and magical in the way the horse is danced and how his body changes. It's so much more than this hand there and that leg there. If you work from that principle and you go from the zero toolkit to the second toolkit, you have a horse that knows the grammar if you like, but doesn't really dance. And I think most people look at the horse's body and goes, well, that's just how he is. But he could be coming up through the back, reaching into the rain, looking a million dollars, even if he's a backyard horse, if he was well ridden. And yet the understanding for me of the zero toolkit and the second toolkit, which I had a fairly good understanding of anyway, but now, see in a somewhat broader light, gives you so much more to bring to the table and so many more ways to relate to your horse and solve problems if you get stuck. Meanwhile, enjoy your horses. Have fun riding. I'll be back again soon.