Stand!

I've gone from feeling pitifully helpless this week (there were tears) to being excited about teaching a horse to stand still. Its' soooo cool, what I found today.

Oddly, the best information I found online was through carriage driving trainers. Well duh. They can't skip that lesson, their horses are out in traffic and must stop at red lights. (I've driven horses in traffic with red lights and not all of them wanted to stop and wait on red, that is a pretty sick feeling with cars zooming by.)

So first, from a riding perspective, and then I'll share the good stuff.

Laura Crum (remember her?) blogged in 2013 about her "perfect" trail horse, and she thanks the Mexicans. She learned that in Mexico, her horse was taught patience in a pretty extreme fashion. They tie up all the horses overnight where they cannot see each other. !!!! They either survive it and learn patience, or they don't, I guess. She's grateful for that most unpleasant training, because her horse is truly patient. She said these horses learn how to "self-soothe."

It's logical to me that starting at home is the first step - tying your horse up and leaving it for at least an hour (with hay or without) is the "easiest" step in the process.

As good as a horse can get at being left tied at home, doing so in the woods is challenging.

Today Mag surpassed my expectations - J and I went back to "that spot" for J to try to find the hide. I tied Mag to that tree and as we moved around in the woods, he never fidgeted. He stood like a (very alert) statue, only moving to keep his eye on us when we got too far away. At one point a forest ranger drove right by him, which Mag ignored. (J found the hide in less than 5 minutes, he's WAY better with a compass than I am even though I did CMO for 8 years and J has only done it once. I've got to make it harder for him.)

So, so proud of Mag today!

The traditional solution is to make the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy, so, move the horse until it wants to stand still.

And it works in many cases. (Chilly the QH. I asked S2 how she got him so perfect. She said, "Every time he was bad, I made him canter off. He prefers saving energy.")

I want to be open to anything that might help, so, even though I feel this is “tricking” the horse, I would apply itif it helped. So...

Where to trot?

Long trot, I mean. There's nowhere. The longest stretch of trail I can trot is about 3 minutes before I hit a town/street. I live in the most densely populated state in Germany. I don't have 9 miles around Lake Youngs where I'd try to beat the one hour mark, the Cedar River Rail trail that goes on forever. An entire mountain with only logging roads, no pavement. *sigh* 3 minutes of trotting/cantering is not going to make Mag want to stand still. It will make him more fit.

I enjoyed this article from Cooperative Horse. It's funny, he admitted how he realized that his highly trained dressage horses are not capable of stopping on the street to chat with a neighbor (though they understand the concept of halt at X and salute the judge). He did what I do. He halts on trail, waits, and then offers a treat. And then increases the time until the horse can stand still on trail/street under saddle more than just a flipping second without rearing up and dumping its rider.

On HorseAdvice.com, I read, “Make moving YOUR idea – if your horse wants to move, make him move until he wants to stop.”

(I'm curious if reverse psychology really work on animals.)

In response, another trainer said, "Keeping a horse moving until he wants to stop can result in very bad habits. Your horse needs to trust and respect you. Communication (cues) are to tell a horse what you want after he has learned what the cue means. When he does that, then thank him (loving tone, pat on his neck or a little treat can all say Thank You."

He continued, "You don't want your horse to think that the whole activity of moving and stopping is ONE thing. Move is one thing. Stand is another. You need to teach your horse what both mean as separate activities*. Then when you ask him to stand, he stands. No other actions. Just stand."

(* - separate activities - interesting, we'll come back to that)

A couple others,“He needs to be made tired, even exhausted. Then standing will be a relief not a punishment.”

“Make sure he sweats and gets tired. Then he's happy and you ask him to stand.”

I want to stop, Mag wants to move. He fidgets around, so I make him move to show him stopping is better than moving. I see it as rewarding the fidgeting because all he wants is to move, and I'm giving him that. It also seems dishonest. Why not just ask for what I want, and reward him for any effort to actually hold still when he'd rather move? Good thing Mag likes cookies - it's the perfect time to use them.

My horse at this point understands stopping and standing on the trail/street, under saddle, to let people pass, let Mira catch up, take a cookie, let a dump truck go by. These things make sense to him. But I really want to take a photo of some odd mushroom. He doesn't see the sense in that now.  Stopping OFF trail?  No way. Would I take off at a trot and try to exhaust him, and then come back for the photo? Or would I find a way to convince him that this is yet another reason to stand still on trail?

Then I found a couple of trainers (both male) who specifically teach standing as a skill, because they are both carriage drivers. Of course. It's not optional, it's a critical part of teaching a horse to drive, the standing and waiting part.

The first guy really stresses me out. I admire him so much but his YouTube channel shows some pretty hardcore methods. His method: move the horse back to where you originally asked it to stand, as long as it takes. 2 hours in the pouring rain, until the horse finally cocked a hoof, and then was allowed to go inside and have the harness taken off and eat his dinner. I say, when that pony was dancing there in place, I was thinking this is gonna be bad, he's gonna lose it and destroy the cart....but as hard as it was to watch, I think the guy was right. If the pony can't stand still in his own driveway, he won't stand at a red light.

The first part is pretty boring because the pony really is just standing there, but then he starts to fight again. What was interesting to me was the fact that the pony was blowing hard the entire time. The pony had obviously been worked. I wonder if it's as hard for you to watch as it was for me.

The second guy expects me to pay money to read his article, but then he pretty much gives away his secret in a comment, "No, I don't advocate circling a horse, it's not always practical, so I just ask the horse to stand, and put him back in that spot if he moves, repeatedly."

But check out this article! 5 Reasons your Horse won't Stand.
OK the first part is not very interesting, about the show horses and grooming (and I don't expect my horse to stand perfectly still for grooming, but I also don't tie him up and he stands for me anyway cuz there's nowhere to go). But if you read on it gets really good.

I love it: If your horse is ever going to learn to stand, you must put it in your mind that standing is, in fact, an activity. Just as with all of the other movements, it’s a skill that has to be practiced, repeated, honed, and perfected.

Standing is the activity of not moving. Walking in a circle is an activity of movement. You can’t really walk in a circle without moving. So by asking a horse to circle because he’s not standing you’re trying to train a horse to not move by telling the horse to move. I can’t imagine why that doesn’t reconcile!

I just cracked up remembering a scene from one of my favorite movies of all time, Raising Arizona:



Looking forward...