I Can Haz Topline?!

It's amazing what a few sessions on the lunge will do to an old horse. I've started working Ernie more in the side reins because A) I haven't had the time to ride this semester (which will be over soon, yay!) and B) because it's a really good way to get this horse to work his issues out on the ground before I ask him to do it with me on his back. He's one of those (oh, bless him) who will shy at the same place in the arena EVERY. SINGLE. RIDE. No matter what.

You can say "Oh, I've been by there 4,592,172 times, he knows nothing will happen."

No, he really doesn't.

So onto the lunge we go. I warm him up on the lunge before every ride anyway to work out his stiffnesses, and I never used to use side reins just because he'd throw his head up and completely avoid the contact. It took him a long time to accept the feeling on his mouth and actually get onto the bit instead of above it. This changed about a year ago, when my instructor Lori saw me have a messy, unorganized, chaotic lunge session with him before a lesson and basically said, "No wonder he's so worked up under saddle!" He'd never been taught that the lunge was the time where he needed to start paying attention, start to work, start to listen to me. If he went gonzo on the end of the line, he's go gonzo under saddle. Somehow, I never made that correlation. Huh.

Thus began the dawn of a new lunging day: rediscovering the side rein. Normally I don't like them; I think they make horses claustrophobic because they don't offer a way out, and if they aren't used right can end up making a horse flip head over teakettle. I was afraid of this very issue with Ernie, who can get very claustrophobic (hence the stall weaving). However, Lori suggested I try them anyway. The theory was that Ernie needed to be given something to focus on when he was being lunged other than everything in the arena that could possibly eat him. If I gave his mind something to play with, he wouldn't be able to focus on the scaries and would get much quieter without tiring him out. We also tried something I was a little unsure about at first, but have had great success with: running him into the wall.

Yes, I ran my horse into the wall. Not for just any reason, mind you. When Ernie gets apprehensive as he approaches something, his reaction is to get quicker, veer away, do whatever he needs to do to protect himself. In other words, he stops listening to me. Lori demonstrated one day and within 10 minutes, Ernie was going quietly in a large circle with not even a sideways glance at anything but her. Basically, as soon as he started to get faster or become unfocused near the scary places, Lori cut him off by moving quickly in front of him and forcing him to run himself into the arena wall. It's what you'd call "self-teaching". Ernie learned pretty quickly that if Ernie didn't want to run into the wall, Ernie had to focus on the person holding the line. Self-preservation is a wonderful thing.

I'm all for alternative training methods, so long as they are safe and effective and cruelty-free. A few people have questioned and even objected to the aforementioned technique when I've done it, but it works for this horse, who, quite frankly, is more horse than most of these people deal with or would care to deal with. A couple reminders if he doesn't listen and he's back to behaving.

Anyway, the point of all of this is that now that Ernie has a job, Ernie has a topline (sort of)! He's got a developing crest, (no more pencil neck!) is starting to fill out over his shoulders and is slowly losing his ski-slop butt. I will never get a normal, raised back on him, nor will he ever have well-developed back muscles, but I've definitely felt moments when I'm riding where he lifts his abdominals under me and I can feel him round. It's never for very long, but he's trying.

Yay for progress!