AN IDEA TO SOLVE FOCUS ISSUES IN HORSES
AN IDEA TO SOLVE FOCUS ISSUES IN HORSES
A common issue that people have with horses is a lack of focus or a horse being easily distracted. Horses become distracted for a number of reasons and these include:
a. They are not motivated to focus as they perceive direction from their trainer an option and opt not to engage
b. They feel so uncomfortable and negative about the situation they are in that their fear centres in their brain have been triggered and they feel their life could be in danger so they become hypervigilant
c. They have lost their try because they feel no sense of control of what is happening to them in the training situation that they attempt to focus elsewhere during training in an attempt to block out (dissociate) and cope what they are enduring during training – this is technically called "learned helplessness"
d. The interaction with their trainer has become such a routine pattern for the horse that they can do everything with little conscious thought and perform on automatic pilot and don’t need to focus on what they are doing
There are many times when I will start training a horse to perform the simplest task that I will start training them to look at me or just simply not to block me out and dissociate from the situation. Once I have this attention I will use it to teach the horse something because it is the horse learning to follow our direction successfully that allows them to perceive that therapeutic sense of control over what is happening to them that will solve most of these problems and dysfunctional ways of coping.
But it is here where some people get stuck and focus so much on focus they can end up either not solving the cause of the focus issue or can even create more problems! This is because people become reactionary and demanding of the horse’s focus as a “behaviour” instead of it resulting as a consequence of the horse being engage in “following the feel”. In fact, some people can spend excessive periods of time demanding their horse stare at them, instead of converting this attention into learning to follow their direction and progressing with training. Humans and other primates are the only animals that stare at each other without the behaviour necessarily meaning conflict like it does in other species. Therefore, insisting horses stare is not necessarily putting the horse at ease and doesn’t set up a positive connection between you and the horse!
Therefore, how do you get a horse to become engage in you and focused as a result? Interestingly, you do it by shifting your own focus to YOURSELF. What you want to do is get the horse connected to you by encouraging it to follow your feel and the BEST way to do that is to present to them your BEST feel…your best ground work, your best riding…..your best pick up of the reins or the rope, to move with flow, ride with balance and to concentrate on being consistent with your presentation of cues and reliable with your pressure. You have to give the horse a comfortable place so they can fall into sync with you so that everything you present to the horse from the rein to the rope to your presence is comfortable. Whether I am in the round pen, on the end of the rope in ground work or in the saddle I work with the objective of getting the horse to connect to me and being patient about it instead of being reactionary to micromanaging the horses focus. Instead, I present my best and I wait and normally I don’t have to wait long.
My advice to everyone who is having problems with a horse’s focus is to experiment with these ideas. What I mean by “following my feel” is that the horse responds seamlessly to any request in a soft and easy to direct way. So, if I am on the ground I can send, turn and move the horse around and it is smooth and the horse flows with good rhythm….we work in sync. I remember when I first discovered the impact of shifting my focus off the horse and instead focusing on presenting the best of myself and my skills to the horse with the objective of getting the horse to follow my feel. I was working a very distracted worried horse that was worried about certain areas of the arena and reactive to any movement or noise or distraction in the environment. Although the horse was responding to all my cues he was rushing away from the bushes on one side of the arena, worried about a person walking down the road and it was windy. This horse was multi-tasking me on about 10% of its attention and the rest of his focus was scattered all over the place. So I shifted my own thoughts and started paying particular and deliberate attention to everything I did presenting the best of my skills. After a short period of time I become aware that the horse had relaxed, it was flowing better and had stopped scooting away from the bushes at the side of the arena. I turned my attention to its head and noticed that its eyes where not flicking around but soft and focused on me. Finding this interesting I proceeded to take the horse all around the arena and still it remained focused and relaxed. In my mind I worked with the thought of “follow me, connect to me” gone were my frustrated thoughts of its wondering eyes and tense behaviour.
So if you are out there with a horse with focus issues try adopting these 6 characteristics next time you work your horse:
1. Present the best of yourself and your best skills
2. Be conscious and deliberate in your actions
3. Flow in your movement and be balanced in the saddle
4. Let go of frustration and don’t be reactionary to fluctuations
in a horse’s focus
5. Think only of connecting to the horse
6. Wait for the horse to fall in sync and follow your feel
Finally, Buck Brannaman has a quote: “Horses are very keen on body language, and what I refer to as “presence” and expression. They know quite a bit you before you ever get to ‘em. They can read things about you clear across the arena”. Therefore, I guess what I am advocating is to step into that arena and work a horse with presence, with the best of your skills and the best of your thoughts and see what eventuates.
