Mandi is a truly incredible horsewoman and I am so lucky to know someone who is so experienced and talented. She trained for years in Texas in horsemanship, and now runs a natural yard on the Ashdown Forest. She also gives lessons in groundwork and riding at her yard and elsewhere.
The first time she saw Bracken, she read him like an open book. He was just tied up with a hay net, but the way he was interacting with me and his surroundings told her that, even though he appeared confident, he was actually quite insecure with me and needed me to become a decent *leader before he could truly trust me.
The first thing we worked on was personal space. Bracken was completely unable to stand on the end of the lead rope for longer than about 5 seconds, unless you spent the whole session working on it. So Mandi got me to ask Bracken to follow me at a walk around the arena, and every time the rope dropped to the floor, I would stop and ask him to stop too. At first, he would only stop when he got right up to me, but by the end of our lesson he would quite happily stop whenever I did, no matter how far away he was from me. We also looked at working in the "driving position", which I had never done before, and he took to that super quickly as well. This is where you stand parallel to their shoulder or a bit behind, and use the tail of the rope to "drive" them on. I'll explain this better in a video on my instagram @howtospeakhorse for all those interested in the finer mechanics of it.
Thank you for reading, I'll try and post a bit more regularly than I have been!
I'll catch up with real time and what I'm working on at the moment with Bracken in the next blog.
*Leader. This term is often misunderstood or taken the wrong way. I fully do not sign up to the "you have to show him who's boss" or "he has to know you're in control" belief system. However, a horse needs you to be grounded and strong in yourself to feel comfortable around you. If you are the one making decisions, the one moving his feet, that immediately puts you at the top of the pecking order of the herd, so you have to act like a clear and confident leader. If you behave like I was, which was, "sometimes I'll ask you to do something, but I won't really stick with it so you're basically on you're own here", that puts your horse into a state of unease. Every herd (including you and your horse) has a pecking order of some kind, so the horse takes it upon himself to be in charge, which also means he can never really relax in your company because he feels he has to be on lookout all the time. So when I managed to become a leader, Bracken started feeling much more comfortable, confident, and relaxed around me, which is ultimately what I think all horse owners want.
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