Most members of my herd are rescued from a situation of abuse, abandonment or at least maltreatment. Those horses suffer from trauma in certain degrees and while living in a herd has brought all of them back to normal horse behavior, some do get triggered in training and especially when ridden.
My lead horse, Flamenco, is a beautiful Andalusian who had a short career as a bullfighter which left him dealing with stage fear, general nervousness, a hollow back, tense neck and unpredictable outbreaks of panic. Of course, that combination made him a bit dangerous under saddle. However, because of starting him from 0 again without a saddle or a bit, I was able to re-program most of his behavior, by introducing new cues or in new combinations.
But some of his triggers are still on his – and my mind. And while re-programming from the ground has been a doable challenge, I was more reluctant do work on mounted issues.
One problem was sideways, away from “the bull”. That took time but was relatively easy to retrain and never dangerous. It’s a relatively slow movement.
Another problems are snappy departures, with “the bull coming from behind”. Those are per se fast movements and therefore more dangerous.
There is the canter from a halt, canter from a backwards and even the roll back on my to do list for a long time now. So, eventually I had to start doing it, right? Circles are easier for a hyper forward horse than straight lines, so I decided to train it on the circle.
For two weeks we worked on refined, small and collected canter circles, in the pattern of Parelli circling game: Four cones in a square. Rest in the center. Then backwards, a quarter turn and out on the circle, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left.
We learned to be doing this calmly in a lovely canter, both leads. Some 3-5 laps, then back to the center. That is already a canter from the halt and it worked out just fine on the circle, so I took it to canter departures from halt to a straight line, fine. His backward movement was fluent, the departure was fluent, so after a whil,e I felt ready and pulled the trigger. First some of the old patterns, and then I asked for a canter departure straightforward, right from the backwards.
Flamenco shot forward as if the devil himself was after him. I got him on a big circle, and he ran frantically in a half circle towards the gate. There he stopped nervously, I asked him to turn around and walk back to our set of cones.
He was clearly afraid of a repetition. It took me about 10 minutes to calm him down enough for a repetition of the old pattern, just in a walk. I stopped the session when he was calm.
What did I learn? Triggers are deep. Prepare well. And be prepared.
I am glad I did pull the trigger though. I will practice the same transition at the same spot from the ground, work some more on the initial pattern, and then try again in a couple of days. I am sure that he can learn, eventually, to see the fun in a snappy backwards to canter transition, when there is no bull around of course.
And why I want to repeat it anyway? Because I am convinced my horse will be braver and calmer and happier once he is set free of his triggers. Each one counts.