Nenemi reminds me to deviate
I just returned from a fabulous week teaching at a Starting Young Horses Clinic with Linda Tellington Jones and her sister Robyn Hood. The horses at Bitteroot guest ranch are all started using Tellington Method- TTEAM training during these week long clinics.
As one of the teachers working with small groups under Linda and Robyn's supervision, I was assigned to a 3 year old quarter horse mare Nenemi and her students for a couple of days. Our task was to try to prepare Nenemi for being saddled for the first time. We were at a point where we wanted to begin the process of ground driving to help her learn to respond to signals and to improve her balance. As we moved forward with the next step, we went into a round pen to work with her and her anxiety mounted. I was "on a mission" to continue and she reached a point where she reared up. We immediately released pressure and took her out of the situation and backed up a step, ending by soothing her and asking her for an easier task.
That night at our debreifing I realized that I had felt pressured by the situation to continue within a time frame towards saddling. The next day I decided to deviate from my"goal" and my "system" and took Nenemi in the catch pen again with my students. At the beginning she could not stand still and was looking everywhere else, not present, not wanting to be with us, nipping, barging and leaning on her handler. Instead of taking up with the previous day's lesson we did bodywork and balancing work. By the end of our session she was standing quietly and totally present. She had stopped nipping and leaning on us, and walked quietly on the lead to pasture with the rest of the horses.
At "graduation" ceremony for the horses next day, which is a walk across a one lane wooden bridge over the raging Wind River, Nenemi successfully walked quietly beside her handler without leaning, freezing, blowing up, or nipping. Great progress! My lesson learned was don't escalate. Deviate!
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