Auditory desensitization work

A good MSAR horse must be desensitized to so many different things: Things like visual stimuli (ie. a tarp or flag flapping in the breeze), auditory elements (traffic, motorcycles, jackhammers, marching bands and bagpipes) and even tactile stimuli (like ropes or tack slapping against their sides).  At times, it can seem overwhelming the amount of desensitization training that must go into these horses, but in the long run, when that bus pulls up next to you and lets out a loud hiss of air brakes, you'll be glad you put the time into it!  Teaching a horse to think, and trust and listen to their rider instead of reacting on their instinct to run could potentially save your life!

So today was spent on auditory desensitization training with help from a very noisy CD entitled the "Mounted Horse Patrol Edition" from Spook Less Sound Conditioning.

I pulled out my portable CD player with two small speakers and set it up just outside the round pen.  My plan was to lunge Bundi first and get her a little tired before I turned on the CD.  The idea being that if she's a little winded, she'll be less likely to want to jump and run from the noise (as it turned out, we didn't have too much of a problem there).  I had the volume turned up full blast on the the little CD player, but overall it just wasn't very loud and Bundi was pretty nonreactive.  I think she took a step back when the bagpipes came on and that was about the extent of her blow up.  Obviously, I need to get a more powerful boombox and turn the volume up a little more, but even so, this was an excellent introductory lesson for her and she did awesome.  It's important that I don't scare her, just desensitize her and now that she's so accomplished at the lower volume, we'll bring it up a notch (or two).

Below are some short video clips that I took of her "reacting" to the various sounds and noises.  At one point, she was so obviously frightened (said with extreme sarcasm) of the chainsaw sound that she tried to eat the speaker (video below)!

Alarms and Sirens - not much reaction to this since she had at our certification clinic earlier in the year and that was at full volume complete with patrol car and lights!

Gunfire!  Also sounds a lot like firecrackers which she's not real fond of, but handled this low volume test well.

 

How about some rattling cans?  Nope, not much of a reaction here, either...

Bagpipes and real dogs!  Bagpipes tend to really freak horses out and inevitably when we ride in a parade, they will put us in front of the bagpipes or the marching band.  The bagpipes was one sound that made Bundi pay attention and step back, but even so, she was very good.  In this video, not only is she being subjected to the bagpipes, but live parking dogs, too (both auditory and visual sensory here). 

More bagpipes and drums

And finally, something that gets on all of our nerves:  Screaming kids!

It's important to note that of the 1.5 hrs that this CD played, I was standing right next to Bundi the entire time.  Not only is it important to desensitize the horse to the specific sounds, but to watch the reaction and adjust the volume if they become frightened.  The point is not to scare them, but desensitize and establish trust.  Also, safety is a huge factor.  At the beginning, I held her lead in a contained round pen to see how she would react.  Where you see Bundi tied, she is purposely tied to a very stout tree and on a special "Tie Blocker" so that if she really spooked, she could easily get away and not pull down and drag any tie posts with her.  But the most important reason for staying with Bundi while the CD plays is to teach her to listen to ME, that she can trust ME and when she encounters something scary, instead of reacting and running away, I want her trained to listen to ME and stay calm.  With each of the sounds that were played, I was constantly reassuring her with, "It's OK, good girl."  Those very words have saved my life multiple times with my old horse, Tina, and our encounters with wild pigs, a mountain lion, loose horses in a parade, and any new scary experience she came across.  She may have been trembling with fright, but she listened to my reassurances, stood quietly and did exactly as I asked her to so we both lived to tell the tale!

Bundi did great with this training and is making awesome progress towards becoming that rock star search and rescue horse!  Now to go buy a bigger boom box...

Bundi has a day off, but not me...

Well Bundi has the day off from training today, but that's not true for me.  This morning I'm going on a 3 mile run.  Thanks to my sister who is a certified Chi Running instructor and who recently did a clinic with me, I will head out and practice my Chi running skills (you can follow her blog at movinginbalance.blogspot.com as she trains for a 50 mile run - and yes, that's 50 miles in one day!) .  As important as it is for our MSAR horses to be conditioned and of sound mind, it's also important for the riders to have some conditioning, too.  Not all of our callouts and searches are suitable for horses so that means that sometimes, we have to leave the horses behind and resort to our own means of locomotion!  ;) 

So today, I swap my riding boots for my running shoes!

Trail day!

My trainer, Clinton Anderson with Downunder Horsemanship (more on him in another blog later), has made it clear that in order to have a well balanced horse, the horse must get an equal dose of long rides (many miles out on trail), wet saddle pads (lots of cantering to make them work and sweat hard) and concentrated training (bending and suppling exercises, teaching the horse to move the 5 different parts of his body, etc.).  The previous two training days this week focused on concentrated training and wet saddle pads so today is a long ride day (or as long as I can make it since I don't trust Bundi to ride out alone and will instead lead her out in-hand).

So I don my rain boots (it's so foggy out there it's nearly raining), grab my training stick and most importantly, remember my leather gloves (I once got second degree rope burns on my hand when Bundi copped an attitude and pulled the rope out of my hand when she went balistic) and head to the ranch...

 To the right is  a photo of my training gear and necessities - my gloves ( no more rope burns), my fanny pack with camera and cell phone, my training stick and string and Easy boots for Bundi.

Bundi is barefoot (that's another thing I'll blog about later) so when I go out on trail, I always put on Easy boots to protect her front feet which carry 60% of her weight.   I also use splint boots on her legs to protect them from stepping on herself or getting cuts from rocks or logs.  The photo below is Bundi dressed and ready to go.





We spent about an hour and a half out on the trail as I hand walked Bundi.  I don't lead her because I want her to build some confidence being the lead horse herself.  I stand next to her so that her head and neck are out in front and she gets the feeling that she is leading.  Also, the funny thing about horses - when they spook, they see that you are OK and since where you're standing is safe, they have a tenancy to want to jump on to you and take your spot - I try to discourage Bundi from jumping on me!

Once we get to an open area on the trail, we do some lunging work and get a sweat up.  The video below is of me lunging her out on the trail.






We're very lucky that we have a cross county course, albeit a little rustic, but still usable, out in an open field.  It was a great sensory experience for her to look at all the different jumps and to walk over the smaller ones.  She was a little snorty at first, but she's starting to realize that when I ask her to do something, I mean it!  So I'm getting fewer fights and balks from her now and as she does these things, her confidence grows and her fear is becoming less.  Wish I had some photos of her and the cross country course, but the battery in my camera died.  Next time...

I think we'll have a rest day tomorrow, but she sees the vet for her Fall vaccinations on Saturday and I'll trim her hind feet afterwards.  I'll write more then...

Riding day

So today is a riding training day.

Every time before I ride, I get butterflies in my stomach and feel nervous.  Why?  I'm sure it is fear driven and my body's way of saying, "What the hell are you doing?"  Why is it that something that I am so drawn to and love so much can scare me so much?  Well, horses are one of the most dangerous hobbies to partake in.  There's no less than three very serious horse related injury accidents that are used as examples in my "Manual of Clinical Trauma Care" book for training nurses.  As I write this, a friend of mine is in the hospital after a recent horse related accident that has left him temporarily paralyzed from the waist down.  He's currently in rehab and with a little luck, he might walk again in another 6-8 months.  I won't even go into my own horse related injuries, although fortunately, there aren't too many and none that were too serious or lasted for longer than a couple weeks.

So here I am, climbing on to the back of a 1000 pound animal with a mind of its own and because of the horse's very nature of being a prey animal, tends to be more reactive and flighty when unsure or frightened of something.  While in flight, the whole purpose is to go as fast as possible to escape the scare without much regard to cliffs, tree branches, jumps, holes, etc.  Now throw in the fact that horses have quite an arsenal of effective defense (and intimidation) tactics including bucking, rearing, striking with the front feet, kicking and biting.  Below is a video of not only what a horse can do, but specifically, what Bundi can do.  Outside of the general sassiness (head tossing, threatening to rear and racing around), note the initial buck and then the deliberate kick at the handler a few seconds later.  This video was taken when I first went out to look at Bundi and AFTER she had settled down a little bit - I didn't get her first bucking spree on tape - she was a real rodeo bronc then!

(Even after that display of attitude, I still got on her back and she was great  - the proof is the photo at the top of this blog).

Now top off all of the above with the fact that it is a riding "training" day.  The word "training" implies that this horse is not fully trained and therefore could potentially do anything or everything.

Gee, I wonder why I get those butterflies...???

So, anyway, how did my ride go?  Well I lunged her for 10 minutes to do an attitude check and she didn't buck so I took that to be a good sign and climbed on.  Bundi tends to be very lazy in the arena so the brakes work really well (almost too well because if you sit deep, she will stop so fast you'll nearly fly over the handlebars), but the gas pedal is sluggish and slow to respond and sometimes backfires.  So we worked on stop and go today.   The backfires tend to occur when I ask for the canter and she responds with a "crow hop" which is a small buck in protest to my request.  Fortunately, it is small enough that it is easy to ride out and all it earned her was a sharp smack on the ass.  Sometimes that will elicit another buck, but fortunately, she didn't feel like doing that today.  That's a game that I must ALWAYS win - you buck, I smack you on the ass, the game ends so just don't buck in the first place - she's still learning the rules to that game, but the bucks are happening less frequently now.

Just for fun, I decided to video some of my ride from the back of Bundi.  This is riding a sitting trot, progressing to a posting trot and then practicing an emergency one rein stop.

I rode for 45 minutes and any ride that you purposefully dismount of your own accord is a good ride.  So I would call this another good ride and I walked away with my spirit and confidence buoyed.  I love riding and I love being around horses (until just before I ride again and those butterflies reappear...)!!

Tomorrow?  A trail day and all those scary things associated with that...

A week of training begins...

Being a full time mom and self employed, my time is limited, but I'm determined to train Bundi at least 3 days/week.  Essentially, the training schedule is:

Day 1 - Round pen work to release built up energy, review lunging skills, build respect, trust and confidence.  After round penning, she stands tied for about 30-45 minutes while I do barn chores.  This teaches her to stand quietly and patiently (something we're still working on since she does a lot of pawing at the ground).


Day 2 - Riding in the arena.   I always lunge first to do a quick attitude check and get out any bucks then hop on and immediately go to lateral flexion exercises so she doesn't learn to walk away when I get on.  When we start moving, we're currently working on emergency one-rein stops, flexing with the bridle and the cruising exercises at the walk, trot and canter.  At the end of the session, she again stands tied to think about things and learn patience.


Day 3 - Trail day.  It's important to take your horse off the ranch and expose them to new things, but doing this by yourself isn't always the safest thing.  Right now, I'm leading her out on the trail and while we are out there, I still make her work.  By moving her feet, I'm asserting my dominance over her and teaching her to respect me out on the trail, too.  Eventually, we'll get to riding more out on the trail, but for now - safety first.  At the end of the trail ride/walk, we always go to the arena and do another 10-15 minutes of lunging or riding.  This helps keep a horse from getting barn sour.  They quickly learn there's no rush to get home when getting home means still more work in the arena.  After all of this, guess what?  She stands tied for 30-45 minutes!

So today was a round pen day.  She lunges at liberty, but when she turns, she must turn towards me, not away.  Showing me her butt and heels is a sign of disrespect.  Right now she has no problem turning towards me as she moves to the right, but for some reason, the other way is more difficult for her - something we're working on.  A lot of what I do in the round pen is ground work exercises and desensitizing work to teach her to not be afraid of the tools I'm working with and to use the thinking side of her brain.

Below is a video with an example of how I'm desensitizing Bundi.  I'm whipping the ground and the air around her with a whip, but she has been trained to stand quiet, calm and still despite all the noise and movement - that's exactly what I want her to do.  It also helps to instill trust in me that despite all that is going on around her, she must use the thinking side of her brain (as opposed to the reactive side which says "run away") and realize that I've asked her to stand still and she is OK and not being hurt by obeying me.

And one last video - I'm using the same whip to "flog her with kindness" as my trainer calls it.  This gets her used to the whip touching her and she learns that the correct response is to just stand quietly.  This is a great exercise for real flighty horses and head shy horses to build trust in the handler and learn to relax with their head.  You'll see that I can "flog" her with the whip all over her body and she doesn't mind at all, even when I accidentally lay the whip across her eye and pop her in the nose!   Good horse!

The background

Athena's Victory, aka "Tina", was a beautiful bay, Morgan mare with a thick neck, athletic body and rock hard hooves.  I bought her when she was 13 years old in 1997 from a Morgan breeder that mostly used her as a brood mare and as a secondary horse that could be ridden when visitors came.  Over time, Tina and I did endurance riding (NATRC) and then eventually found a mounted search and rescue unit to join.  When I first got her, she was afraid of her own shadow since she had only been used as a brood mare, but with lots of miles and time, she became very solid and confident and one of our best MSAR horses participating in parades and many different kinds of PR events with lots of sensory.

On April 14, 2010, at the age of 25, I had to put Tina down due to health issues.  Two weeks earlier I bought another horse and brought her home the same day I put Tina down.  It was as if Tina had waited for me to find her replacement before her health got really bad.

My new horse was a beautiful, 5 year old Palomino Quarter Horse with a good mind, but very, very green.  This blog will act as a log as I work with and train "Docs Patti is Playin", aka "Bundi" to become another rock star MSAR horse like my Tina.