Wow, has Ellen been doing great in her battle with her anxieties. A few weeks ago, she rode up to the trails by the show ring for the first time in several years. Kevin came with us, and all three of us, (I mean 6 of us--we have to count the horses,) had a wonderful time. The horses were all great; especially Dante. You would think that he would be excited to be on less familiar trails, but he took it all in stride. Our only regret was that Shari and Bella weren't with us. Maybe next time.
And there will be a next time. Ellen now realizes how much she blew the whole thing out of proportion. It is an easy ride in reality.
The other thing that has happened involves that river crossing that she has struggled with the last few years. Dante would play his little games to put off crossing; causing Ellen to get very nervous. Now she knows that if she demands that he step into the water, he does. Once he gets in, she will click and treat him--and then demand that he continue crossing--and he does. He is now crossing like a regular horse. She still doesn't like crossing that river--or any river for that matter--that will probably never change--but she can do it. Now, even on work days when she doesn't have that much time, she will sometimes cross that river and ride for a while on the other side.
Since those bigger problems are out of the way, she is now focusing on the smaller problems. Dante is a naturally slow, quiet horse. That isn't such a bad thing, but he usually doesn't keep up with the other horses. This frustrates Ellen. Kevin and I have both ridden him on the trail, and he does a little better for us. He tends to stall out and be slow on his upward transitions, but just for Ellen. It's all about habits. When Ellen was anxious, she didn't mind it so much, so she allowed him to do it. She doesn't like it now.
When he was slow on his transition for me, I observed that Starry got very far from us in that 5 seconds, and Dante never could regain that ground. When he did a responsive transition, we were able to keep Starry in sight. When the other horses go out of sight, Dante doesn't care. He just goes slower. If she could promptly get him to trot and keep him trotting, they won't get so far behind.
Another thing I noticed when Kevin was riding him was that Dante trotted in a different manner than he did with Ellen. (He probably did the same when I was riding him, too.) Much of the time, when Dante trots for Ellen, he goes into his slow, collected arena trot. Ellen is a very good rider, and she easily brings all of it out of him. These days, Dante defaults to that trot out in the park. Kevin was just riding--not asking for anything at all. For Kevin, Dante was all strung out--but taking much longer strides.
Ellen's latest project is to find a way to get a ground-covering trail trot instead of a collected arena trot on the trail. She is going to try to put it on the cue of "regular trot." Cole has a cue for "regular walk," too. What is wrong with our horses? (Cole always wants to do his "silly walk.")
We are thinking that Dante will actually prefer traveling in a "regular trot," and once he figures out what Ellen wants, it will be self reinforcing. That is how it is with clicker trained horses. They often do what they think you want them to do. That is great if that is what you really want, too. Sometimes it is, but when it isn't, you need a way to explain it to them and convince them to do what we really want.
I think that Ellen might find that retraining her mind to restrain her anxieties will be the easier task then retraining Dante, but at least retraining Dante won't be so scary.
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