Report_Alexandra_Kurland_clinic_Ireland

Rua and I did quite a bit of work on the cone circles. Rua is very large and a bit like an awkward teenager who has not quite grown into his body yet . We worked with a very small circle with a mat just at the side of the circle so that he could (in theory) walk around the circle and end up on the mat. Here we were trying to teach a concept, which is ‘horse stays outside cone circle’. We set up the circle (about 5 feet in diameter) with a mixture of flatish cones (more like slightly raised discs) and some 9” tall cones to make the circle more visible and encourage him to stay outside it. The object of the exercise was to have Rua circle outside the cones and return to the mat while ridden. Well initially we walked through them, tried to walk yards away from them and I had to use my single rein riding to try and keep him on track. Word of warning here – Rua upturned one of the 9” cones and stuck his foot in it ...fortunately he is steady enough that there was no panic and I just hopped off and took it off. We replaced the cones with bigger buckets but he managed to get a foot in one of these too, so we then changed to filling the circles with the flat discs to discourage him form walking through the circle. This worked a treat! We also had a second mat in line with the first mat and again about 5-6 feet away. To change rein we went from mat to mat then back to the circle. After a few sessions, Rua was able to negotiate both the cone circle and the change of rein very nicely and looked much more elegant.

This single circle can be expanded in size and also become part of a figure 8 which allows for an easy change of rein. Once the horse has the concept...keep outside the cones...then the rider no longer has to worry about geography and can concentrate on riding style, the movement of the horse, changing gait etc all the while knowing that the horse will follow the circle and stop at the mat.

We also used larger circles in a figure eight with the mat at the crossover between the two circles of the 8. While standing on the mat for both ridden and in-hand work, we had to pick a cone to round. This meant that the horse had to step off the mat in 3-F-3 balance and move to the correct cone, turn around it and was then released to the mat. Marte and Misty did some lovely ridden work using the figure of 8 in this way. It takes a lot of focus and control by both rider and horse to get to and round the correct cone. Alex went on to suggest other ways we could use these circles rounding one cone on the outside and the next on the inside of the circle before returning to the mat. Rounding the cone bent away from it etc.....Lots of challenges to be completed!

Newbie, who has been my no. 1 horse for the past few years became lame a couple of weeks before the clinic and despite having him looked at by a vet, equine physio and chiropractor he was still complaining a few days before the clinic. Alex used her wonderful new camera to video him walk away and back to her and then got up on a height to look at his back, shoulders and the alignment of his vertebrae in flexion. It was amazing to see the detail in slow motion. Newbie has done a good bit of clicker training and is very well balanced working in walk and trot. We could see the power in his walk and the forward and up movement of his hips. We filmed Rua in the same way the next day and were amazed by the difference in his walk...Rua sashayed along with his hips going from side to side. He had lots of free movement but none of the power of Newbies walk. So, on my next ride, Alex had me first simply follow Rua’s movement and ‘see’ his walk kinesthetically. Then she asked me to continue to allow the freedom of movement but to ride Newbie’s forward and up feel on Rua. Just thinking about riding Newbie brought a change to Rua’s walk almost immediately. CT. Pretty amazing!

We could also see minutiae in flexions - exactly how the horse aligned his jaw before giving us a soft bend. We could then take this to working with the horses in-hand and watching the jaw we could see when the horse was lined up corrrectly at the poll to allow him to give correct bend. By clicking and treating the jaw flexion soon enough, we could say 'Yes - you're right' sooner and therefore get more consistently good bend.

All in all we had a wonderful clinic. We all made great progress and have lots of work and fun lined up to keep us moving forward - until next year when we have Alex back in the Kingdom of Kerry again!

So what did we learn?

We looked at component parts. In order to teach a complex behaviour we need to look at the components within that behaviour and break each of those parts down in turn. For example, we looked briefly at teaching Rua to ground drive. He leads nicely and is light turning etc but all of these behaviours occur when I stand at his shoulder. How could we get these behaviours if I stand at his hip. We started by asking him ‘Can i walk down to your hind quarters while you stand still?’ CT. ‘ Can I slide my hand along your body as I walk back and have you stand still?’ CT. ‘Can I turn and face forward and have you stand still?’ CT. ‘Now when I put my hand on your hip with intent, can you walk forward?’ CT. So getting a walk forward was the first component for this behaviour. We then moved to asking him to follow a feel to the side from the lead rope. Then follow the feel back to me as I backed up away from him. CT. Putting these behaviours together built a short chain.

With Miro, Veronique reviewed targeting and also grown-ups are talking as two separate behaviours. When he was comfortable with both, Alex had Vero ask for a chain whereby Miro stood in GUT for a few seconds, then got to target and CT. I was amazed at how quickly and how well he responded to this short chain. Over the next few days, Miro had several behaviours in a circuit. He had an area where he did GUT a few times, then moved on to stand on the mat, then to a target. Because he’s young Vero didn’t spend a lot of time at any one behaviour – 3 or 4 requests – before moving on to the next. This kept him very interested and yet each of the behaviours improved with each trial. After a few sessions, he was comfortably standing on the mat for several seconds before CT and then moving off nicely in response to Vero’s body language.

Aoife and Prince used a large circle to ride WWYLM for the first time (Prince can do WWYLM beautifully in-hand, but Aoife had only just started doing ridden work with him). Initially, Prince was wandering about a lot. He fell to the inside of the circle and Aoife set him up in 3-F-3 balance to ask him to step out to return to the circle. Lots of CT on the way. When he wandered too far off the track she lifted the outside hand to have him turn more back into the circle again. Very good efforts were rewarded with a trip to the mat in the centre of the circle and this was followed by a change of rein. On the first day , Prince was resisting Aoife’s request to soften into a nice flexion but a session on Hector allowed Aoife to ask with finer motor control and in the next session Prince was much softer. Gradually, Princes wanderings began to look much more like well balanced circles. Finally when Aoife started to get really nice clickable moments, Alex had her pick up the outside rein just where she would have otherwise clicked. Aoife and Prince floated over the ground!!! What made that very noticeable was that the arena was quite dusty....when Prince was not in balance, we, the observers, could see dust rise with each step, but when it was just right – no dust!