Natures Horsemanship: Just call me crazy

Well, that’s what life with Milo has been like. His pinned ears, swishing tail and constant biting, his rearing and dragging me around the paddock, his bucking under saddle and loud opinions….you’ll forgive a girl for not thinking too fondly of the fellow. I’ve had a good few conversations with Anna about Milo. I wanted answers. I wanted to “fix” it. I cared for this horse, I did; after all I’ve spent hundreds on a variety of different things trying to fix him. Ulcers, dentist, feet, grass issues. But he never got better. His ears remained firmly pinned and I remained firmly resentful. I finally managed to get an amazing chiropractor out to him the other day and she promptly popped his hips and ribs back into place and the pinned ears were suddenly no more. Of course, so simple, he was in pain. With hia body back in line, I was able to hop on for his first ride in a long long time (almost 18 months). He did pop in a small half hearted buck at which I got off immediately and calmed with him on the ground before getting back on and finishing our ride calmly. This incident lead to interesting conversations with my partner who believes you should never get off a horse when they buck. For me the idea is simple, if my friend tells me to stop doing something that is upsetting them, I stop. Why would my horse be any different? I believe it is important to listen to the horse so they can build trust in knowing their opinions matter. That evening I went out to feed the horses and I rested my hand on his shoulder. I found myself becoming profoundly aware of him. His coat felt softer than ever before and I rested my cheek on his shoulder while he ate. And in that moment I realised that suddenly, I loved him. Like really loved him. As deeply and purely as I love Redemption, a thing I never believed possible. It was soul shaking, this awareness that I really did love this horse so much. I had another ride on him this morning. I am so grateful that Anna has taught us about voice cues. In his confusion in these new learning experiences, Milo becomes frustrated and sometimes aggressive. Have you ever met those kind of people who, when they get scared they get aggressive? Almost like they’re trying to scare away the scary thing. Yeah, that’s Milo. And understanding this has been key. When he swings around to bite or smashes his tail, I talk to him and reassure him and he calms down. I guide him through ridden work with verbal cues to provide clarity, and the biting and tail swishing fades because he can understand and then he is not scared. I was able to talk him through hindquarter disengagement, lateral flexion and forehand yields. And we walked around quietly. I praised him highly and every small effort. He felt like a king. And this was never more apparent than at the end of the ride, as I halted him next to a half barrel, he put his foot up in the barrel in a very obvious TADA!!! movement and I laughed and patted and hugged him tightly. Yes, my beautiful boy, you are indeed so clever! And suddenly, I loved him.

So I've had a problem with Red for awhile now where I ask for the trot and he goes but then gets faster and faster and FASTER until he hops to a stop and tosses his head about. In essence, he would lose hia balance and begin to fall onto his forehand and get faster to try and stop himself from falling on his face until finally he'd throw a paddy and declare he couldn't do it. So with Annas guidance we began a program on Sunday to remedy the problem. Here is what I did: Warm up on the ground as normal. Mount and walk around for a bit until he was blowing out and calm. Then I asked for the trot and just let him go and counted the strides before he lost his balance. 4 strides. So I brought him back to walk, got him calm again and kept the number 4 in my head and halved it. When he was calm again I asked for the trot again but bought him back to a walk after 2 strides. That way he stays in balance and can downward transition in balance too. Over the course of the session as he got more balanced I would increase the number of strides I let him go before pulling him up. In our first session we started from 2, finished with 8. I repeated the same routine for the second session. We started at 2 strides and finished up with 25!!!! I was so ecstatic at his effort I pulled him up and dismounted before he'd even come to a complete halt. So much gratitude for his efforts!! 25 beautiful, perfect, calm and BALANCED strides of trot. Super star!!!! #unbalancedtrot #balancedtrot

Redemption and I playing with some work in calmness. Haunches over for Mounting and Haunches In to half walk pirouette. "It's not enough to prepare yourself with with proper knowledge and the fact that you know what you want to do is not enough either. Understanding needs time and space and calmness in which the understanding of the things that are going on can happen. Many people are seeking magical ways to communicate with their horses and to do the new exercises at once. The real magic happens when you understand how the Nature works and that it needs to connect new things with the old things. Doing things in small steps is the fastest way to success. And in this exercise you can experience how proper preparation can lead you directly to your goal." ~ Anna Marciniak

I have followed Anna Marciniak since February 2015. In April, Anna launched her OneHorseLife website and began the first of her online workshops. Over the last few months I have noticed the awareness of social media hone in on Annas work until finally today I find myself scrolling through my Facebook news feed in awe. Every second post is one of Annas. People going back to her posts from months and months ago, sharing their stories of how Annas posts have so positively influenced their day to day lives and interactions with their horses. For me, it is truly a wonder to behold. I have been privileged to work closely with Anna in one of her workshops for the last 10 weeks and the changes in myself and my horses has been beyond amazing. So it is wonderful for me to see others making the same discoveries. Anna is what I would call a "Game Changer". I believe she is the next generation of international change to come for the horse/human interaction with her unique focus on the discovery of self. I hope day Anna offers an instructor course. I would love to be able to teach this work and spread the word to help others make the same discoveries that I have made. Check out her website. Have a look around. Read her articles. And if you can, invest in her ebooks and/or one of her online workshops ♥

It is no secret to the world that I am an empath. I think for a long time the only person who didn't know was me. Throughout my life I felt so much. I hurt so much. So deeply. I would create wild and often times physical arguments with loved ones and at the end when it all calmed down, I never knew why it happened. One psychiatrist told me I had Emotional Disregulation. But nobody ever mentioned empathy before. Empathy is, quite literally, feeling what others feel. And for me, that means taking on the emotions of others as my own. And that is why much of what I feel doesn't make sense to me. As a teen I use to hurt myself. I had a lot of feelings in me that I didn't understand. They never made sense to me. I spent hours in my own head trying to connect them to something and in my frustration, I would cut myself. Often I cut the soles of my own feet so that when I walked, I could focus on the pain in my feet rather than the pain in my heart. From the age of 18 through to 21, I buried it all under alcohol. I spent a good 3 years of my life drunk or hungover. The world saw a young girl having fun. I saw a child crying for help. So when I rediscovered my love of horses, I thought I had found my new escape, a new world to hide in so I didn't have to feel anymore. What I actually found was something so raw and so real that I couldn't help but take notice of how it made me feel. When I first went to see Red before I bought him, I remember staring at him through the yard fences and feeling terrified. And his wild eyes staring back. He was as scared of me as I was of him. He seemed enormous to me. All 15.2 hands of him felt all engulfing. His power permeated the air. A thick smell that you couldn't escape from. I remember being able to stutter out a request to go away and think about it but I knew when I left that he would be mine. Over the last 3 years I have started to learn to feel again. I laugh more, I cry more, I feel more but there is still much I fear to feel. Tears and emotions well up in me multiple times a day, often for no apparent reason. My automatic reaction is still to push them back down. I don't know how to manage them or express them safely. But at the same time I know that when I work it out, it will be like a bird being freed from its cage. I will be able to sing freely without choking on my own tears. I will be able to move with my horse like a tree moves in the wind, steadfast but free. The time with Anna, and the rest of the people in the course, has opened the door for me, even if it is just to peak outside to see what true emotional freedom looks like. This will not only free myself but also my children, for they will also learn to acknowledge and feel freely. I still don't know how to let it go, but I trust I have the perfect horse and the perfect people around me to guide and support me to freedom through calmness. To Anna, no words, no actions will ever be able to truly express what you've given to me <3

I also discovered that Milo requires a different kind of touch and energy from me. So when I move from Milo to Red, I need to do calming technique between them to resettle my energy back to what is acceptable to Red.

And in this way, I realise also that my partner is my perfect match. He use to run life coaching seminars. The other speakers would stand up on stage in their expensive suits, fancy shoes and hair slicked down with enough hair product to blow up a small country, and my Mark, he stood up on stage with long hair, a hat, jeans, a singlet and jandals (flip flops, for those of you outside of NZ). And at the end of the seminar, crowds would flock to him. He was so genuine and so real that people gravitated to him. It is only now, 8 years later, that I can see the power and strength is being so genuinely, truly and purely YOU!

Module 2 encompassed allowing the horse autonomy. That’s not to say we allow them to do whatever they want, but instead that we propose something to the horse and the horse has the opportunity to participate or decline. Autonomy is if the horse declines, we accept this without anger, resentment or upset. We simply observe, smile and move on. So we covered things like approaching scary objects and yielding the body. Module 3 started to introduce some classical maneuvers such as Shoulder In and Haunches In with the pre-face of finding engagement from the horse through calmness. I find these exercises really enjoyable and so does Red! He offers Haunches In quite a lot and moves quite well in that way. We’re now up to Module 4 where we are discussing an expansion on Shoulder In and Haunches In, as well as Extending the walk and teaching a beautiful halt with the base idea of co-operation. I love how Anna describes things. She speaks about how the horse can stand without any muscles engaged so we should be able to move the horses muscles freely, like water in a plastic bag, while the horse is standing. And if we cannot move their muscles this freely while they are standing then they are holding tension in their bodies which can indicate pain. Anna’s thoughts around pain mirror my own. 80% of pain in horses comes from the hooves. The other 20% comes from teeth, digestive upset and/or back pain. So that’s where we are at and you’re all caught up, so now I can carry on filling you in on my daily discoveries and thoughts. <3

So I've been silent for quite awhile. Life happened. Things happened. And this blog went down my list of priorities. But I've recently been encouraged to reincarnate it due a new path I've been taking that is full of valuable knowledge and experiences that really should be shared with the world. So hang in tight. I'm back! What's been happening? Well at the end of March I had a pretty horrific accident. Red and I had a beautiful ridden session, working on sitting trot. I wasn't holding the reins because he was working so wonderfully without my guidance. Just as I asked him for one final lap, I felt him freeze up and look sideways. By the time I looked down and realised my foot had gotten caught in the electric fence tape, I was halfway to the ground. I collected Reds leg to the face on my way down. I was incredibly lucky to get out of that with a partial dislocation of my jaw, 5 stitches in my chin and one hell of a concussion. But this was a poignant event for another reason. This accident lead me to realise that in a scary event, Red went into "every man for himself" mode and I no longer mattered. And this has never been what I wanted. What I wanted was a horse that would look to me first and I didn't have that. As fate would have it, at the same time I stumbled across a woman of Facebook by the name of Anna Marciniak (OneHorseLife) and the stars aligned to allow me the opportunity to be apart of her 12 week online workshop which I am currently taking part in. I hope that you will enjoy what I have to share from my time with Anna. It has certainly been life changing for me. Beyond my accident, Red had an accident of his own. Two weeka after I came off, Red put his leg through a fence and tore the front of his hock open. Lady luck was with us again because by some miracle he missed all the tendons bit you could see the tendons moving and the joint opening and closing as he walked. The first week or two was touch and go, we didn't know if it would heal because it was in such a mobile area. Bandaging wasn't an option so I had to hose his leg down and apply things to the wound 2-3 times a day. The wound is now almost healed. It started out the size of a baseball and is still about the size of a golf ball but he moves freely on the leg and there is no swelling. It was a timely event. Perhaps Natures way of forcing me to take a break from all work and training with Red until Annas course started. So please stay tuned. There will be a lot of new things that I will be posting and I hope to encourage many of you to seek a new way to be with your horses. With love; Carin & Red

My wonderful boy waiting with my son while he waited for the school bus.

It's a funny old world, equine nutrition, more complex than the horse itself and I have been brave enough to delve into it rather deeply but somewhat by force over the last few months. See, Red is a poor doer. In spring and summer he's as fat as butter and his coat shines so bright you almost need sunglasses just to lay eyes on him. But the moment that first autumn rain hits, he literally melts away to nothing. This season alone I've changed and varied his diet 2-3 times, fighting tooth and nail to get weight on him and keep it on and while I've made little steps, things are still less than ideal. A horse needs 4 basic things in their diet (not including vitamins, minerals, salt, and water). They need fiber, protein, carbohydrates and fat. It's really that simple, BUT finding the right ones, in the right quality and quantity is where things get confusing. So let's start with fiber. Horses need 1-5% of their body weight in hay a day, depending on what source you follow. Currently Red gets 2-4 slices of hay a day, well and truly enough. Then there are prime fiber sources that come in the form of things like beet (Speedibeet is my favourite because it's quick soaking and the only GMO free beet you can buy), soya meal (I have used Maxisoy in the past but it's high in potassium and they chop down rain forests to make it) and copra (coconut meal, a little unstable in its nutritional values but all in all a good option). Chaff or fresh fiber products are also a good edition if fiber content of grass or hay is low. Then you need protein, again, beet, soya and copra provide adequate protein for most horses. Protein is also present in hay, grass, chaff and other fresh fiber products. Carbohydrates, this energy. Most commonly people provide it to their horses in the form of grain, however this is less than ideal. Grains are a fast burn energy and a horses digestive tract is in no way, shape or form designed to process it. Truth be told, only high performance horses require this type of energy, and even then in much smaller amounts than what is offered. I'm talking half a cup, maybe a whole cup per feed. If your horse is struggling and needs that extra energy, an extruded grain is the best option. Why? Because it's been processed so intensely that it barely resembles it's original form so that the horse can more safely digest it and utilse it. Lastly, horses need fats. Fats are offered most commonly in the form of oils or seeds such as linseed, chia seed or sunflower seeds. Most of these seeds need to be crushed or cooked before feeding to avoid the dangerous acid build ups that can lead to colic and stomach ulcers. So there's that. So why am I struggling to keep weight on Red. Well, I've avoided grains for as long as I could. Feeding 1.5kg (dry weight) of beet, 2 cups of linseed meal and 2 cups of oil. He's gained some weight but I just can't get that last bit of oomph into him. So I have had hours upon hours of discussion with a friend who is schooled in equine nutrition and we stumbled on something. Red grew up on a station that cropped 600 hectares of maize every year. So guess where he got to graze when the crops were taken? Maize paddocks. That explains why he was fat and dull looking when he arrived. It also explains why he struggles to keep weight on in the cold, because his body has only ever experienced chugging grain into him for an energy source and it has no idea how to cope without it. Go figure! So the plan of action is to set aside my thoughts around grain temporarily to help him. He's now being fed an extruded grain in his feed to get him back into good condition and then I will slowly wean him off of it in the hopes of teaching his body how to cope without it. Once again, this simple little horse is teaching me so much. Not just about horsemanship but also about nutrition and other aspects of horse care.

But how cool is this horse, ahy!

I can so!