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Post by horseguy on Aug 15, 2016 15:55:53 GMT
Definition of ritual ˈri-chə-wəl 1) series of acts that is always performed the same way 2) done as part of a ceremony or ritual 3) always done in a particular situation and in the same way each time Horses have rituals. They like rituals. We can use their impulse toward ritualistic behavior in training. For all the crazy stupid things Pat Parelli did and still does, he got rituals. His "games" are rituals and they address a horse's need for them. I don't call them games because I think they are more serious, deep down in the essence of horseness. All horses have an urge to follow rituals, some more than others. The ones that love rituals the most make great dressage horses, assuming they have the athleticism. We had a horse named Chief at the farm that might have been one of the most ritualistic horses I ever rode. He had athletic talent but not much of a work ethic, therefore we had to rely on the comfort he gained from rituals. He would do 20 meter circles and he improved slowly over time, but when you took him out on the cross country course he got flustered.  On the other hand, Riley had a very low impulse toward ritual. We used to joke about how he'd do a repetitive task like a gymnastic grid of jumps. The joke after several times down the line, each time differently, was saying what he was thinking "Would you like to see me do it backwards?" Assessing and using your horse's impulse toward rituals is helpful. |
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Post by horseguy on Aug 16, 2016 14:21:18 GMT
In a way, rituals are habits but a little different. Something as simple as a canter lead can be habit or ritual. In an non-athletic horses a preferred lead is probably a habit developed from what was the easiest lead to take. But in my years training very athletic, quick footed horses for polo, I began to notice that even an ambidextrous horse has a preferred lead. Mocha, the mare I am writing about in the horse trained topic is such an athlete. You put her in the woods with icy footing and she will change leads as quickly and smoothly as a Mercedes 8 speed automatic transmission. But put her in an arena with perfect footing and you'd think she was athletically challenged and only able to do a left lead. That's not a habit, it a choice of a ritual. It feels good to do it over and over.
My point is that as much as ritualistic behavior can be exploited in things like reputations of the 20 meter circle for a dressage horse, they can also be an obstacle. Sometimes we must disrupt or break rituals. Here is what I think is an interesting point. If I were given a choice to train a left leaded NOT so athletically gifted horse with a left lead habit or an gifted horse with a left lead ritual, I'd say it is easier to train the non-athletic horse to do a right lead on cue.
With the horse doing the left lead out of a habit because it's easier I can make it physically easier to do the right lead with my balance and timing. I can help the horse develop the muscles to do both leads equally well and I can change the habit born out of convenience. Bu the horse that persistently takes the left lead as a ritual is less flexible in their mind. If I use my body weight and balance, by timing and other skills to help the horse do the right lead, their response is "I don't need you help". So what do I have to offer to get his ritual addicted horse to change? The answer is context. The icy footing is one context. Another is tricking the horse into thinking we are staying in a left circle as we approach the arena fence and as the fence get closer, using my timing and skill to give the horse the choice between changing to a right circle right before the fence or crashing into it if the horse sticks with the ritual. My go-to method for braking rituals is a quick context change with consequences. If you do this enough, the horse begins not to trust you in a good way. They believe you are unpredictable and if the horse doesn't make the called for necessary change in time, it will not be good for the horse. It instills in these gifted "I know better" horses that the rider knows better. But to accomplish this level of horse training you actually have to know better and that takes years.
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Post by jimmy on Aug 18, 2016 22:10:29 GMT
This is an interesting topic. Horse do establish their own rituals. Elimination rituals especially,(pooping, for those low voltage readers). I see a lot of rituals at feeding time.
There is another aspect to this ritual idea.
That is, where the human ritualizes the horse.
Here is an example that has stuck with me over the years.
I went to pick up a mare for training. The owners, who were dressage trainers, said they used to have trouble loading this horse, until they figured out what worked. They insisted that it was the only way to load this horse, since everything else they tried was a catastrophe.
It took two people, one at the horse's head, and the other with a longish dressage whip would walk around the horse, then reach under and tap the hind hoof with it. When the horse lifted the foot, the header gave a little tug, then the whip holder would tap the other foot. This was followed by a tap on the hip, then all of this was followed by a verbal cue, which was so silly to me, I think I have blocked it out of my memory. There were a couple of variations to these things.
I watched them do this a couple of times. Sure enough, the horse loaded every time. But watching the horse leading up to the trailer, there was no fear, no hesitation. She was in my view, ready to load mentally. But they would not let her. She would stop. Then they had to perform the ritual. It became painfully obvious to me that the horse was not loading only because it had to allow them to perform this ritual first, which is what they spent all that time doing. It had not much to do with actually getting in the trailer. The ritual itself had no bearing otherwise on causing the horse to want to get in or not. The horse knew the procedure. I imagined her saying to herself, I walk up, stop, then these silly persons walk around me and tap my feet and my but and say "load" and then I can go in.
When I got the mare home, I loaded her myself without them several times. The first time I did not stop, but she did. I said no we are not stopping. That at first upset her, made her mad, the change of the ritual. But most people would have figured, see, its the trailer that is the problem. When she figured out I was not going to do the ritual, after she stopped being upset by that new idea, she walked right in. And every time after that, I just walked her up, got out of her way, and let her load.
I see spoiled horse like this (smart horses) get really mad when you break the ritual they are used to. As long as you can figure out it had a ritual that you were interrupting. IN this case I knew, because I watched it. But many times we get a horse in that seems really cranky and spoiled at first, because the things it was inadvertently habituated to are not happening.
But it doesn't take them long to break free of that.
I learned a long time ago with livestock, routine was an important element of control, because the results were as close to predictable as you could get. But with horses, it seems keeping things a little unpredictable is what causes them to stop and feel of us, and for us, and ask first, instead of a rote response. There are times that works for us, and times it doesn't.
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Post by horseguy on Aug 23, 2016 18:15:37 GMT
It's hard to say what percentage of rituals in horses are the result of humans, but I feel that it's a big percentage.
The important distinction between a habit ands a ritual is there is pleasure in a ritual and unconsciousness in a habit. People use horses for all kinds of pleasure like feeling good as a horse owner by spending money on the horse for things it doesn't need. That's a ritual I see a lot. The loading one is interesting and common.
The fact that he loading ritual you describe took two people is interesting. It has an element of "togetherness" to it. The poor horse just has to put up with it not understanding what is going on. Horses are so good at reading what people want and they do it well whether it makes sense to them or not. One I remember is of a vet many years ago. She was scared of horses and ultimately opened up a small animal clinic. He fear ritual entering a stall was not unlike a baseball batter getting ready to enter the batting box.
I once tried to "just do it" and intervened about getting the horse ready for an exam. I went past her into the stall to grab the horse. I didn't have time to waste. Well, you'd think I did the most dangerous thing imaginable. She yelled at me. I suspect there were plenty of her clients horses that learned their part of her ritual. I was not about to let her teach mine.
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Post by jimmy on Aug 24, 2016 0:14:14 GMT
You have to wonder when ritual is simply an obsessive compulsive behavior. It isn't about pleasure, but something you must do, before you do something else.
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Post by horseguy on Aug 24, 2016 14:38:22 GMT
You have to wonder when ritual is simply an obsessive compulsive behavior. It isn't about pleasure, but something you must do, before you do something else. They say that OCD sufferers do get relief for repetitious ritual. The baseball player is preparing as were the people loading the horse. But I think horses don't prepare like humans. I observe their rituals as being more in the moment, which I think makes the rituals more useful to a trainer. I always go to the type of horse that loves dressage tests when thinking about this. They memorize the test before I can, and then "tell" me my mistakes as we do it. "Normal" horses need the tests to be broken into pieces and practiced in segments that are often worked out of order from the test's sequence to prevent them from souring. |
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Post by jimmy on Aug 24, 2016 21:29:43 GMT
Before a horse does something, he gets ready first. That is something Ray Hunt told his students many times over.
Observe, remember, compare, was another one.
If we can observe closely enough, we can see the horse get ready. That is when we can ward off trouble, before it begins.
Horse would be poor poker players. They tell.
The other side of that is when we have trouble getting a response, or the response we would like.
That is because the horse isn't getting ready, and maybe we do not see that the horse did not prepare himself.. If you can recognize when he isn't getting ready, then you can do things to get him ready. But you don't do it for him. You ask, then see if he is getting ready. You get him to get ready, then he can do it, whatever it is, all on his own, within his capabilities at the time. Because if he gets the idea in his head, he will get ready, and at that point you could help him do what he was about to do anyway.
This has helped me a great deal.
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Post by horseguy on Aug 25, 2016 3:13:22 GMT
Jimmy, I could not agree more, "getting ready" is where horse training happens.
The sub point I am trying to make here is in the process of getting ready, OR NOT, Some horses cannot avoid a ritual that is useful in very specific kinds of training like dressage tests, but not in polo, by contrast.
I am trying to explore the requirements of different jobs. Ritual prone horse seem to make good dressage horses. Horses who don't like ritual seem to make good polo horses. The distinction between ritual (pleasure) and habit (unconscious repetition) is what I am thinking about.
I always complain about today's horse sorters but the good trainers need to sort too, but not in the "in or out" way so many do today. Today I see trainers making the distinction of trainable or not. I never did that. I always looked at a horse's athletic potential regardless of trainability. I always felt that if I was a real horse trainer it was up to me to train and not to sort out challenging horses as too difficult. Too many good horses are sorted out today as unattainable when they are the best prospects. That horse Shadow is one example.
I am trying to explain real training based on a horse's ability not their trainability.
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Post by jimmy on Aug 25, 2016 3:33:25 GMT
Most of the best horses I rode had been sorted out discarded types. Labeled untrainable.
Some of them were difficult for sure. I couldn't get them "broke" in the traditional sense. They weren't good for the general public. They didn't like people, in general. You had to behave in a very specific way to get around them, for a while anyway.. Maybe I wasn't a very good trainer, because I worked around some problems. Those horses worked for me. I didn't try too hard to change them. Heck, I couldn't change them. I just wanted them ridable. After a while, they turned out okay. But they had to have a job, something to do. You had to work them. When all else fails, tired looks good on some horses!
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Post by horseguy on Aug 25, 2016 9:37:55 GMT
Most of the best horses I rode had been sorted out discarded types. Labeled untrainable. Some of them were difficult for sure. I couldn't get them "broke" in the traditional sense. They weren't good for the general public. They didn't like people, in general. You had to behave in a very specific way to get around them, for a while anyway.. Maybe I wasn't a very good trainer, because I worked around some problems. Those horses worked for me. I didn't try too hard to change them. Heck, I couldn't change them. I just wanted them ridable. After a while, they turned out okay. But they had to have a job, something to do. You had to work them. When all else fails, tired looks good on some horses! "Most of the best horses I rode had been sorted out discarded types" Me too. Another polo story. I always had an extra horse tied to my trailer at a game or practice. People knew that, so when they had a horse lame up they'd ask to borrow one (good way to sell a horse). One time a guy asked if he could use one and I said grab the gray at the end. The horse was at that stage of , "You had to behave in a very specific way to get around them" but it was my only extra horse that day. The guy played him in a 7 minute period and when it was over brought him to the trainer and said, "How on earth do you play that horse"? Like you say, " After a while, they turned out okay". That horse just wasn't there yet. |
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