#touch it pattern

He wanted to do a lot of Touch It pattern. So much so that it almost became impossible to do anything else because he'd track off to go and Touch and item, or you'd try a weave or figure 8 pattern and he'd stop at the barrel and Touch It with his nose or foot. And when I sent him of circles he'd throw wobblies at me half way around and stop and toss his head. I can't decide if this behaviour is "no, I don't want to", or "Nooooo, I can't do this anymore!" it really has me baffled. Perhaps I can try to find a way to get someone to film it and let others see it and perhaps tell me. He's also doing something similar after I send him. Again, I can't decide if I've somehow insulted him with my send perhaps being too strong, or, if it's not strong enough so he's trying to be dominant and argue with it. I suppose I could play with my own energy and try adjusting it. Try stronger and see what I get. Try softer and see what I get. I suppose the worst that can happen is I'll have a small rodeo on my hands.

I identified yesterday that the only difference between the items he'd touch and the ones he wouldn't was that I'd played the friendly game with the items he'd touch. So today I lugged those barrels around,  rolling them,  kicking them and touching them against his body and he became interested in them. So I set them down on the ground and crouched down and gently asked his head down with the lead, releasing at the slightest try until eventually his nose was touching the barrel. Once he touched it I backed right off and stood back and waited. Cue RBI shut down. System overload. Please wait while your horse reboots.

Sure enough he rebooted with the new information firmly stored. So I played he friendly game to help him recover and then set up the four items for a game of touch it. And by golly, we did it. Two complete rounds on the 4 items and he had it.

I quickly spent a few minutes working with his feet (grouchy toddler hanging off the fence again), just to test because the farrier is due tomorrow and he did great.

I immediately saw when I turned up that Red was very right brain. Wary, ears back (not pinned), his energy was low and he seemed genuinely unsure.

So I got him to come into the pen to eat and I haltered him in there. I didn’t think it was a good plan to try anything that involved extreme pressure such as trying to halter him in the paddock. As it turned out this proved to be a good read on my part because when I haltered him he was tense and for the first time in weeks he spooked off when the neck strap came over his poll and I had to take another shot at haltering which went fine in the end.

So I started with a lot of friendly game and walked two full circles of the pen, retreating with the carrot stick to make him feel safer. It feels like it took forever to get any sign or relaxation but eventually it came in the form of a lick and chew.

So I moved on to working on backwards first. I worked off the nose with the porcupine game first and I was pleased at how soft and easy it was. Next I worked at the driving game backwards. He gets a little confused and sometimes tries to go sideways but I just stay calm and redirect him to straighten up and backwards again. He got it in the end and was moving backwards nicely with the driving game. The yoyo game is where things got a bit stuck. He went quite deeply inside of himself, every step was tentative but he also licked and chewed every time I asked him backwards. But then, he got stuck on the draw and was really struggling with being able to come back in. Even taking treats, he was so tentative and slow and no matter how long I waited,  he didn’t seem to be feeling any better about it all.

So I retreated with some friendly game until he relaxed and moved on to the touch it game.

My goal with the Touch It game was to get him to investigate things below his nose height. Until now he would only touch something that didn’t involve having to drop his head below his withers so I had been putting the saddle blanket and feed bag over the fence of the pen. So I started out with them like that today and once he was touching them confidently I moved them down one rung on the fence. He got the idea pretty quick and soon I had each item mounted halfway down the fence so he was having to bring his head slightly below his withers to touch them. He even began asking me questions and at one point walked over and touched an item and turned to face me, ears forward,  asking what was next. I was so pleased with that.

But the real kicker today was discovering the power of patterns. Pat Parelli always talks about how important they are but I never truly understood it until today,  even though this is the second time it’s happened.

The other day we were doing sideways to objects. And then today when he overshot the mark, I wiggled the rope to back him up towards it, and he went backwards 10x more confidently than he did when I’d been asking him earlier. It seems so simple yet I had missed it the first time. Patterns give horse and handler confidence, focus and purpose. By asking him to yoyo backwards to the object I had once again given the principle of backing a purpose in the same way I had given sideways a purpose the other day. And he just got it.

At the end of the session he spent a good 2 minutes yawning his head off, releasing the adrenaline and so I was happy to call it a day there.