Here is why I love my new and improved Montana system so well:  When my horse is facing a fearful situation… why create more fear/anxiety/frustration?  That’s just going to get in the way of learning.

Here is what Tim walked me through with Caspian:

The only caveat was that I was not allowed to him take a breather in any direction except facing the mud, and  if Caspian showed any hesitation on his own while facing the mud, I was to immediately let him take a break.

We must have done 10-15 rollbacks in a row without a single stop.  That may not be a lot for a well-muscled horse, but it was certainly taxing on Caspian.  They were good rollbacks, too – Big K was giving me pointers on how to get him to follow through, and how to cue him better.  It literally felt like an arena lesson, only it was taking place on a churned-up, narrow cow trail.

And the thing was, with something else to concentrate on, and with the feeling of success on each rollback, both Caspian and I relaxed and unclenched our buttholes (Dude – it’s crass, but you know exactly what I’m talking about.)

“Let him rest now,” Tim said, one or two turns before Caspian was going to become sluggish.

I pointed Caspian at the mud hole, and let him breathe.  He took a few breaths, and then noticed where he was standing, and began to tense up.

“Work him some more,” came Tim’s voice from behind me, a moment before I was going to cue him on my own…. but I guess that’s why one of us is paying to attend clinics, and the other one giving them. On a side note – another interesting thing I learned at the clinic came from listening to Tim and Janet and realizing just how “off” my timing was for corrections and release was.

I worked him again, and almost immediately I could feel Caspian roll his eyes.  Rollbacks? he seemed to say.  Aren’t you tired of those yet? Because I sure am.

We did a few more of them before Tim called for me to stop him.  This time, Caspian stood easily, a bit out of breath, his front hooves actually sinking a bit in the mud without him even noticing.

“See if he’ll go forward – if he starts to turn away, go back to more rollbacks.”

I asked Caspian to move forward with my legs, and I felt him consider it for a moment, right up until he realized he was actually touching the mud with his front hooves.  Omg, it’s gonna eat me!

I used his horror and turned him into a neat little rollback, and went back to work.  I could feel him rolling his eyes as he forgot about the yawning mudpit of doom and became bored and slightly irritated with the constant maneuvering.  Dude.  The rollbacks are getting old.  Why are you so obsessed with this maneuver?

This time, three sets of rollbacks in, he asked to stop.  I felt it beneath me – a slight hesitation as he faced the stream, a questioning slowing of his movement, so I turned him towards the mud and let him breathe.

“Good,” Tim said in a quiet voice, and I found myself feeling absurdly pleased at the small bit of praise.  Caspian lowered his head, sniffing and snorting at the mud, trembling slightly underneath me.  I felt him rock backwards slightly, preparing to flee, and I settled my seat, reaching to gather the reins so I could ask him to do more rollbacks.

Woman, you have GOT to be kidding me.  No.  NO.  No more rollbacks – I am so, SO sick of that stupid thing you’re so obsessed with.  You will not make me do another one of those stupid maneuvers.
Caspian’s a quiet horse, but when he’s disdainful, you can feel it surging up from underneath you in a deafening roar.  Sensing my intentions, he stepped forward into the mud before I could ask him to work some more.  He quivered beneath me the entire way, snorting and blowing and trembling with nerves, but once he took that first step he crossed  it without a single complaint.

I know that may sound overly elementary to some of you, but when I was learning to ride horses, somehow I ended up with the mindset that I had to “win”.  If a horse balks, be more stubborn, and force them over, force them past.  Don’t give in.  Don’t lose.  It’s for their own good.

And the thing is… it doesn’t have to be like that at all. You always hear “Make the wrong choice hard, and the right choice easy,” but to have it work so easily, with so little fight…. for the first time ever, it just really sunk in.

That said, I think a lot of the open communication I’m starting to feel with him comes from the Jedi mind tricks I learned at the clinic.  I’ve owned Caspian for almost a year now, and I’ve never once fought with him.  That is just so weird to me.  And I don’t mean “fight” in the physical sense.  I mean it in the “I will win, and you will NOT win” kind of a way that usually accompanied my approach to butting heads with horses in the past whenever I encountered a problem.

I don’t have to fight Caspian… and in the 11 months I’ve owned him, I haven’t had a single fight with him.  Not once.   Do you have any idea how crazy that is to me?

I think the mud crossing would have been enough to chew on on its own, but there was this other point in the clinic, where the big arena was muddy so we had gone into the indoor to work the mechanical cow.

We’d been inside for almost two hours before I realized that Caspian was nervous about the entrance to the arena – something about the mix of bright and shadows was making him uncomfortable, and even though he was doing a great job “cutting” the plastic cow on a string, when we would approach that side of the arena his canter would transform from practical into a beautiful, lofty, very high thing.  I’m sure it was gorgeous to look at, it felt really cool to ride, and I’m sure it would have made a dressage instructor drool…. but it made me uneasy.

Instead of turning to follow the cow, I whoa’d Caspian, and turned to face Tim and Mugwump.

“I have a question.”

“What’s up?”

“Well, I know he isn’t really spooking right now, but it kind of ties into that semi-rearing thing he did with me at the mud.  He doesn’t like this side of the arena.  And he still canters toward it, but I can feel him getting really light in the front end because he doesn’t want to be over here, and it just makes me really uncomfortable.  I feel like it’s a baby step in the rearing direction, and I’d like to just make him quit before I even start.  It’s not like I’ve got any real pressure on the reins blocking him.  I’m not sure what the best way to handle it is.”

“Well, do you need to be over on that side of the arena?”

Huh?  I blinked at Tim a few times before answering.  “Uh… I guess not?”

“Well, then, there you go.  Don’t go over there.”  Tim nodded once, as if everything had been answered.

“Uhh…. But….”  But Tim, that’s kind of the most confusing, obviously wrong answer I’ve ever heard in my entire life… “But Tim, doesn’t that, you know, let him ‘win’?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve just…. Well, you know how you’re always asking us ‘how would we do it’?  Well, if I were home, and this was happening, I would take Caspian over to that corner, and just force him to do his work in it until he got over whatever was bothering him.  Just… just kind of make him stay there until he wasn’t nervous anymore.”

“Well, if you don’t really need to go over there, then I say don’t make him.”

“But…. but why?  I just don’t understand how that’s the right answer.  It seems like I would be letting him win – that he would learn that trying to avoid an area results in me avoiding it.”

“If it were important for you to work over there, then yeah, I would say you need to make him go over there.  But you said it yourself – you don’t need to be in that part of the arena.  The thing is, if you come in here, day after day, and just work on the things you need to work on, and ignore whatever’s making him nervous about that area… well, eventually you’ll come in one day, and realize it’s not a problem anymore.  He’ll have worked through it on his own, and it won’t be an issue.  There’s no sense fighting him over something that’s not important – he’ll pick it up on his own along the way.  You’d be surprised.”

Guys, I really hope that makes as much sense to you as it does to me – and if it doesn’t, and if you want to “get it” better, ask me a question in the comments and I’ll try to explain again…. because this has been the most absolutely life-changing thing about the way I’m interacting with horses.

I mean, in the spirit of complete honesty, at the time I heard it, I disagreed with what Tim was saying.  Sure, that method would work, if I was ever going to come back to this barn.  And sure, that might work if we were all on horseback 8 hours a day with a velcro seat, and we didn’t get nervous when horses started to act up…. but it seemed like a useless approach for someone like me.

Still – I paid good money for the clinic, so I wasn’t about to just ignore the advice I’d paid to receive.  I did what he asked – stopped concentrating on that half of the arena, stopped mentally willing Caspian to move into it, and stopped caring when his canter got all airy and lofty and dude-if-my-hind-legs-were-still-this-would-be-a-Lipizzaner-rear.

And you know what?  Somewhere in the  middle of that rainy morning…. Caspian quit caring about the doorway.

It was the weirdest darn thing I’d ever had happen – and again, I really, REALLY credit my horse and his big, calm brain for allowing me to make all of these mental breakthroughs.  A flightier, stupider horse wouldn’t have taken five giant mental steps for every single tiny shuffle that I made that weekend…. but Caspian did, and because of that, I’ve been able to have epiphany after epiphany with him.

I’ve had a couple of months to chew on what I think Tim was trying to say, and I’ve bounced the idea off of Mugwump and she agrees with my interpretation.

Ignoring the door and Caspian’s lack of forward movement wasn’t “letting him win” – it was just… just not arguing with him over stupid, small stuff.  Did I need to go over to the doorway to accomplish my goals?  No?  Then it didn’t matter – why argue with him unless it really mattered?  Sure I could have made him do it in the end, but I should only “force” him if it really matters, and not fight over useless stuff, just to prove I can “win”.

And the beautiful thing is, CASPIAN UNDERSTANDS THIS PREMISE.  I don’t know when I became aware of it, but somewhere along the way, as we built our relationship – and as I explored this “don’t butt heads” way of approaching a horse… Caspian told me he understood the rules.

It was kind of funny, in a way, because I didn’t even realize I was giving him rules until he told me  he understood them.

A couple of weeks ago we were out on the trails at our new barn.  There’s never anybody there to ride with me, so both Caspian and I are learning how to ride out on the trails, away from any signs of houses or fences or anything, with only each other for company.

Both of us were pretty unnerved by this idea at first, not that we’re 100% comfortable yet, or anything.   I actually tried approaching it in a different way that I got from a book, and it seems to have worked… but that will have to be another post, because this one’s already stupidly long.

Anyways, our new trails are several hundred acres of rolling cattle pasture – and once you “cross the creek and go through the gate”, you are on public land – or at least land that belongs to some giant logging company (or something) who doesn’t mind if we ride on it.

I swear this creek is mythical, because I still haven’t found it yet.  On the day in question I had about three hours before work so I decided to find the creek to see if Caspian remembered his rollbacks lesson.  Despite surviving an entire Oregon winter, he’s still a little iffy about certain types of mud, and I haven’t had any chance at all to work on water crossings yet.

We threaded our way through the hills, him a little uncertain but walking calmly on a loose lead.  We made our way up a hill, then up a road, before we arrived at a flat muddy road-type area about a football field or more in length that was churned up by countless, fresh cow hoof prints.

Well… the road was wide, and obviously well-traveled by cows… and it sloped downwards…. there was probably a creek at the bottom? (Spoiler:  it totally wasn’t.)

Still – I eyed the mud dubiously.  I could feel Caspian underneath me doing the same.  I had no idea how deep it was, but it looked bad, so I decided to get off and lead him through it (it’s part of my “training a solo trail horse” thing I’m doing – lots of leading in uncertain situations until we’re both comfortable alone.)

I got off and began to slip, and slide through a couple hundred yards of the slimiest, suckiest clay ever. At one point I sank down so deep that the pooled water on the top of the mud began pouring down into my boot.  Man, that’s a nasty feeling.  I even lost my boot twice in the sticky, slimy mess and had to take a step backwards for it.

I thought about turning back, but by that time I was more than halfway through, and I figured there had to be another way around this mud pit so I never had to go through it again.

Caspian followed me respectfully as I edged my way through there – the two of us sliding like Bambi as we made our way through, the lead rope loose and his nose about a foot or two behind my shoulder.  He’s good as gold when I’m on the ground leading him, and has been for some time.  We got to the bottom and I began to look around for another way out.

An hour later I’d bumped into every single fence the farmer must have had, some of it serving no other visible purpose than to keep me from getting back to the barn.  I was annoyed, and frustrated, and worried about getting to work on time….

And lost.

I mean, don’t get me wrong.  I could point which way the barn was, but I had no idea how to actually get back there.  I’d criss-crossed so many times I couldn’t remember the way I came in.  Every hill I climbed seemed to dead end in barbed wire.  I was hot, and sweaty, and really out of breath, because somewhere along the way I’d gotten so involved in searching that I’d literally forgotten to mount back up on my horse.  Caspian follows on a completely loose lead, so several times I actually forgot I was even leading him and would spin around and almost bump into him as I marched back down the hill, frustrated and muttering.

Eventually, I gave up.  I knew where home was.  I knew where we were.  I just didn’t know how to actually get back there.

“Alright,” I said, as I led Caspian over to a stump and heaved myself back up into the saddle.  “Your turn.”

It took only a few steps before he realized I was letting him decide the path, and he turned around and made a beeline straight for the barn.

“It’s not going to work,” I said in a sulky tone.  “There’s a stupid fence up there.”

Either Caspian didn’t speak English or he decided to ignore me, because he continued marching on, with pricked ears and a happy expression.  Hooray!  We’re finally going home, where there are other horses and no mud or wolves lurking in the shadows.

He reached the top of the hill and stopped short, staring intently at the fence in front of him for a few moments as he flicked his ears.

“See?  I tooooold you there was a fence.”

Proving once again that he’s more mature than I am, Caspian ignored me and turned around to head back down the hill in another direction.

A few turns later I recognized where he was taking us- we were heading straight back to the ugly mud pit.  I hadn’t wanted to cross it again… but I’d told Caspian he could choose the route home, and he probably remembered what lay there, so I decided to let him. Besides, I needed to be in my car in 40 minutes if I was going to make it to work on time, and we were rapidly running out of time.

He walked calmly to the edge of the stretch and stood for a moment, catching his breath from the long trek up the hill.

I sat quietly on top of him, to see what he would do.  After a few moments he lowered his head and blew on the mud, nostrils flaring as he snorted quietly.  And then he just stepped into it.

I mean, to understand what this really means, you have to know that I never once worked on Caspian’s phobia of mud.  There were a couple of times I had to lead him over a small patch at his old barn, and each time I did it was a barely-controlled, frantic skitter.  But I never worked with him.  Old-style Becky would dragged him over to every single patch of mud she ever found and forced him to cross it, time and time and time again until he got over it.  And in the end I would have had exactly what I trained for:  A horse that didn’t like mud, and tensed up when he saw it, but crossed it because he knew he had to.

But New-Style Becky… well, I just worked on other stuff.  And if mud happened to be in the way when we had to go somewhere, then so be it.  The only time I’d ever deliberately walked him over mud had been about an hour before, when he’d followed me willingly and without complaint over it the first time.

And now I had a horse that could feel me wanting him to go forward, and knew it was important to me…. so he did – because he trusted me, trusted that I wouldn’t ask him to do it unless it mattered.

I sat as still as I could on top of Caspian, doing my best to keep out of his way as he skated and slid and dragged his legs out of mud that made a deep, sucking SCHLOOOOOP noise with each step.  At one point he stopped, catching his breath and eyeing the chaos in front of us, trying to figure out which way to go.

Since I had a better vantage point I decided to chime in.   You should maybe go that way—over to the left, right around that big mud puddle…. oh, never mind.  Because even as I began to softly touch my request with my calf I thought – he’s doing great.  Why are you micromanaging, Becky?  Let him figure it out.

Except….as soon as I said something, he listened, even though I was just mumbling with my legs.  Oh, left?  Through the big mud puddle?  That way?  But there’s a huge puddle.  Well, I think that’s a stupid way to go, but if you think it’s the best way, then I believe you.

And without a single hesitation Caspian continued forward, splashing calmly through a deep puddle that sprayed up dirty water over my boots and his belly, willing to trust and completely in tune because to him, I made sense.

“Well, we can probably handle that.”

Honestly?  Not having an agenda really left me open to learning some truly awesome things…. But in the future, maybe I should sit down and think about my goals ahead of time. 

Tim flat out refused to tell us “his way” of doing things.

Me:  “What’s the best way to cue for a stop?”
Tim: “Well, how do you like to ask for it?”

The downside is that it’s also left me a little bit lazy.   How do I cue for a stop?  Uhhh… I dunno?  However you want me to?

But right then, on the first day of the clinic….   I was in the mood to be spoon fed, darnit, and apparently everyone expected me to chew for myself.

Tim didn’t expound upon much when he explained things, but there was theme he kept coming back and repeating over and over throughout the weekend – there is no magic “method”.  If you had a way of getting things done, there was no reason to throw that just to adopt “Tim’s method” simply because he was the clinician you’d paid for.  At the end of the day, that was just going to confuse you more.

Instead, he wanted to help us be more effective with the tools we already had.

The goal was to lope your horse in a couple of big, fast circles, and then slow your horse down and lope several smaller, slower circles that fit inside your bigger circle.

The trick for the circles was that you had to touch the same beginning point on the circle each time, whether it was big or small – in other words, if you were going to do a figure eight (which we eventually did), you started at the very center, and you needed to touch the center point of the 8 every time, whether it was a big circle or small circle.

For those of you who do reined cowhorse, you’re probably wondering why I’m bothering to explain this.  It’s pretty elementary stuff.  But I know that somewhere out there there’s someone just as ignorant as me who might go to a future clinic, and now that person doesn’t have to lean over and whisper “What the heck does ‘Go do some circles’ mean?” 

Anyways, after a little glancing around to see who was going to go first, Summersmom  volunteered and headed out to the middle of the arena…..

And that’s where I’m going to break in and say that it kind of sucks for you guys.

The problem is, I learned most of the cool stuff by watching other riders – seeing what they did right, and what they did wrong, and how they used (or misunderstood) the directions they were given.  In other words, I learned a lot by watching other people learn…. And with a few exceptions, I’m not going to write about most of those lessons.

The problem I’ve run into is that I don’t feel comfortable critiquing other people’s riding, and some of the strongest lessons came from seeing someone do something, and thinking, “Well, if they just did ‘X’ like he told them to, it would work so much better,” etc, etc.

That said, here is one lesson that I saw that did kind of stick – I’ll call it the “Ten/One Rule”:

Gtyyup was far and away a much better rider than me.  She knew what she was doing, and you could just see the partnership between her and big bay gelding,Colt – long hours spent with each other, and a solid understanding of where they were, and where she wanted to be with him. 

“Tim, when I ask him to blow bubbles (or whatever it was), he braces, I correct him, he does it for a bit, and then he quits as soon as I release.”

“That’s because you’re not really correcting him. You’re nitpicking, and then never really releasing.  Here’s what I want you to do – think of correction in terms of 1 to 10.  When you correct him, I want you to correct him at an 8.  Really get after him –  and then as soon as he responds, release him down to a 1.  Right now you’re just doing more of a 4/3, 4/3 – you’re never really getting after him, but you’re also not really releasing him.”

And so off the two of them went again, Colt loping smoothly under a morning sun that was gradually getting uncomfortably hot.  As Gtyyup rode, she corrected him – harder than she was before, but, honestly, it wasn’t anywhere near an 8.

Twisting in the saddle, Tim looked over at us.  “So, what do you guys think?  Where do you think she is on the scale, correcting vs releasing?”

None of us really wanted to venture a direct opinion, but after a few moments and a little murmuring, we finally came to a conclusion – instead of the 4/3 she had before, now she was more like a 5/2.

Tim nodded, and we all went back to watching the pair lope their smooth circles in the arena.

When she came back, Gtyyup was all smiles.  “Boy, that made a huge difference – thank you!”

Tim nodded, and then looked over at Summersmom.  “So, what did you see with her out there?”

“Well, you weren’t really getting after him.  You didn’t really step it up like he said.”

“Really?”  Gtyyup looked shocked.  “I felt like I was really getting after him, and then throwing him away.”  She looked at all of us, but all of us were kind of shaking our head.  

So out she went again – and this time, when she corrected Colt, she corrected him at an 8.  His head flew up and his eyes bugged slightly, but the second he did what she asked, she laid the reins completely down on his neck, and gave him miles of slack in the reins.  Before she’d even finished her second circle, even I could see the difference.

And that was the beauty of the clinic – learning from other people’s mistakes, and then making your own.

Speaking of my mistakes…. In my nervousness at Caspian’s nervousness, I had decided to leave the spurs behind at the trailer.  During his skittery warm up it had seemed like a good idea, but after more than an hour of dozing in the hot summer sun, both of us were feeling really lazy. 

Of course, even though I’d relaxed as I watched every other person ride, the second it was my turn I felt my stomach go all cold and nauseous again.  I’m sure there are some people out there who enjoy people watching them ride, but not me. There’s something about riding with eyes on me that makes me freeze up.

Caspian stepped out in a big, smooth gait (at some point I’m going to have to figure out what he does – is it a running walk?  A foxtrot?  A pace?  Eh.) Whatever it was, it wasn’t a lope.

I cued him harder – pressing my heel into his side, and gave a long, loud kiss.

He gaited faster.

I kicked a little harder.

He ignored me.

I twisted my toe out so I could really dig my heel into his side, and kicked him. Hard.

He ratcheted his head up into the air, and broke into a hard, jouncing trot. 

Anyways, I’ve figured out how to sit his trot now, but on that particular morning, with  only three or four rides on him under my belt, and with me sitting all stiff and awkward in the saddle under the weight of all those stares ….

I tried to sit my way through that trot so I could push him past into a lope, but I felt like I was going to fall off at any second.

So I stopped him, collected myself, and tried again.

 I made it again to that hard, jackhammer extended trot, right to the point of feeling like I was about to fall off/be bounced out of the saddle, and I quit. I couldn’t even post to it, because every third or fourth stride he would break into a pace before going back into the trot, so I was forced to “sit” and bounce on his back while I tried to convince him to lope – flopping about all over the place like a five year old on her first lead line lesson.

Caspian’s best gait is by far his lope (canter?  Eh, whichever.)  I’m pretty sure he invented the term “rocking horse” canter.  I’d only ridden it once before, the first time I met him after my parents bought him, so when he finally transitioned from that teeth-rattling trot into that smooth, controlled motion, it felt like I was flying…. Unfortunately, it still felt like I was about to fall off.   His canter was so big, and so up and down that I felt like I was slipping and sliding all over the place. 

When I mentioned it to Mugwump later on in the day she said I looked fine, but I sure didn’t feel like it.  I really was just one small lean away from completely falling off, and it was completely disheartening.  Had I completely lost my ability to ride a horse?  Was I too fat?  What the heck was going on, that I couldn’t even sit on a horse without almost falling off?  

I’d kick him into the lope, he’d comply, I’d start squeezing to avoid falling off, he’d go faster, I’d check him….And that’s the way we went around the arena – a few strides of loping, then trotting, then loping.  

Tim nodded.  “Sure thing.  Do you guys wanna break for lunch?” 

It actually sounds kind of gross when I describe it like that, but believe me, it was incredible.

I’d like to say I knew I was relaxing because I felt my shoulders muscles loosen, or something like that.

I knew I was relaxing because I began to burp. Apparently my stomach decided that since I wasn’t going to die, it should actually begin digesting all that food that was just sitting there, and the best way to do that was to make me burp.  A lot.

How does Becky Bean relax?  With great big belches that would do any 12 year old boy proud.

It was really hard trying to muffle them, too.  I mean, it was almost a shame.  These were epic belches, and I kept having to hide them behind a hand, or an elbow, lest I become known as “That Burpy Blogger” in everyone’s write ups.  I

Still, gross as it was, with every burp I felt better.  I’d gotten the worst out of the way.  I’d survived the drive up, my battle with nerves, the fear of failure, and the first ride.  It was Friday afternoon, and I was finally ready to get down to the business of learning.