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I’m a fairly new rider and I have just started learning to canter. The initial adrenaline and anxiety I experience is becoming a problem because I notice that once it kicks in I can hear my instructor yelling but it may as well be a different language. Nothing computes! It’s very very difficult and I haven’t figured out how to stop this because I feel so out of control and my mind goes blank. Usually I just lose all composure and I drop back to a trot. It’s frustrating and I feel bad for the horse. This video was helpful. Maybe if I can try to recognize this happening I can improve it!
Oh, my God, Callie. This explains what I see in abused horses. They are stuck in that “learned helplessness” stage. Dead behind the eyes…my mare had been abused and stuck there. When she finally came out of it, there was a sweet, curious, and funny girl in there. I know that outcomes can be different. But I found my soul horse under that depressed and apathetic layer.
My horse spooked to a backpacker in the middle of the Hoosier National Forest. I was a beginner and just held on as we took a different route through the woods. When we stopped I got off and said "I will not get back on this horse." Lucky a more experienced rider traded horses with me. It would have been a long walk back.
Can you go into more on how to shift yourself from a state, and how to help shift your horse from a state? I think we learned a lot about the nervous system, but would love to have more hands on advice in this area. thanks!
My horse spooks at other horses coming at him face to face. At the same time I feel the tension and try to breathe normal and turn his head away. (It’s usually arena traffic) Sometimes that helps him but if anyone has another idea I’d appreciate it.
my issue when a horse get scard he or she goes to my back sometimes full blowen body shake all i do is slow my breathing when this happens i find it nutty i am even protected like a foal if there is a coyote around
This is so interesting. I'm not sure why it would now be called ventral and dorsal, except that the shape of the curve, where it's termed dorsal, makes me think of the dorsal fin of a whale. That's probably just my imagination. Otherwise, I experienced the fear and then calming down the other day. My lesson horse got startled when another horse got worried because of some horses outside of the arena. I was afraid my lesson horse was going to spook and run. Last summer, he did that, I came off, got a huge black bruise over one hip that was painful for the next couple of weeks. This time, I was glad my instructor was right there to calm us both. At a later lesson, she told me he wouldn't have run. Had I known that, I probably would have not been so scared of coming off, but I did react with fear, and it extended into a later time, fearing a (different) horse would spook when he wouldn't have, to the point where I decided to get off and just walk him from the ground. It turned out he wasn't interested in being walked. What happened after the lesson horse startled turned out to be wonderfully relaxing. I was scared enough to ask my instructor to lead the horse while I rode, so she did, and she took us to the spot where he had startled. The lesson went from my instructor teaching me how to "barrel race," which was funny because I riding slowly, not at all trying to race. One of the horses in the arena, this time, instead of getting worried, rolled, got up and blew. I sat on Ranger and watched. He took a deep breath, which I felt through my legs, and that was powerfully relaxing. What I'm working on with my instructor is to have a better seat so I have more confidence that I can stay on if a horse spooks.
Thank you Callie. I enjoyed this as I do all your presentations. However, I'm a psychologist and behaviour therapist, and you probably should not draw learnt helplessness on a continuum with the flight/fight response as if they were part of a single event. LH is more or less always the result of REPEATED exposure to stressful stimuli which the individual cannot mediate. We know from the study of phobias that repeated exposure to a feared situation is the best way to adapt to it. This is based on the simplest form of learning - habituation - the tendency of an individual to cease to respond to a repeated stimulus. The 2 basic rules of this approach (which works throughout the animal kingdom, including the human species) are: Do not avoid or escape from feared situations where possible; and enter feared situations which have previously been avoided/escaped from in a gradual way, as fast as you can tolerate and remain there until your anxiety subsides. So the things you say about taking a deep breath, and so on, are incredibly important principally because they allow you to remain in or enter the feared situation - they give you something to help you cope while your bodily reactions get used to the situation as a natural consequence of habituation. In riding, this is especially important for the reason you touch on in passing, that your horse's fear communicates to you and your fear communicates to the horse. So you break that cycle by paying attention to your breathing and your bodily tension. By doing that, you say to your horse: 'I'm calm, you can be calm - we don't have to run.' Now I'm not boasting I'm a great genius at this as a rider - I just had a new horse completely freak out in the arena and ended up barrel racing round half a dozen times because I was unable to put what I just wrote into practice (my mind was calm, but my body was frightened, if you get my meaning). But eventually we both calmed down and all was well and we took the time to continue to confront the situation repeatedly in a controlled way. I have no doubt there will be some repetition of the difficulty, but we'll both be better prepared, and it will be a bit better. The time after that it will be better still, and so on. I should also say I have a great instructor!
When I was riding regularly on a farm nearby, they stored their hay in a corner of the riding hall in winter. There had to be mice or sparrows in it at one day, and my mare freaked out over the sound of something in the hay. The situation didn't excalate too much, as the other horses kept calm, but afterwards she always got vervous in that particular corner. At first, it made me nervous, too. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear and nothing to smell for me there, so I thought my horse had picked up something I didn't notice. But after about ten minutes when I realized her gaze and ears where always pointing at that same spot she freaked out before because of the mice, I relaxed. Which in turn made her relax more, too. Probably helped that at that point other riders with non-spooked horses where coming in, too.
This is a fascinating topic, I loved this video- particularly because I have a spooky horse and I have had no experience with horses until the past year
"The more I learned about tje horse, the more I learned about myself." ☝️☝️☝️☝️👌👌👌👌👍
I’m a fairly new rider and I have just started learning to canter. The initial adrenaline and anxiety I experience is becoming a problem because I notice that once it kicks in I can hear my instructor yelling but it may as well be a different language. Nothing computes! It’s very very difficult and I haven’t figured out how to stop this because I feel so out of control and my mind goes blank. Usually I just lose all composure and I drop back to a trot. It’s frustrating and I feel bad for the horse. This video was helpful. Maybe if I can try to recognize this happening I can improve it!
Oh, my God, Callie. This explains what I see in abused horses. They are stuck in that “learned helplessness” stage. Dead behind the eyes…my mare had been abused and stuck there. When she finally came out of it, there was a sweet, curious, and funny girl in there. I know that outcomes can be different. But I found my soul horse under that depressed and apathetic layer.
My horse spooked to a backpacker in the middle of the Hoosier National Forest. I was a beginner and just held on as we took a different route through the woods. When we stopped I got off and said "I will not get back on this horse." Lucky a more experienced rider traded horses with me. It would have been a long walk back.
Can you go into more on how to shift yourself from a state, and how to help shift your horse from a state? I think we learned a lot about the nervous system, but would love to have more hands on advice in this area. thanks!
If your horse has reached the dorsal stage, would you recommend getting off to calm him down or staying in the saddle to calm him down?
My horse spooks at other horses coming at him face to face. At the same time I feel the tension and try to breathe normal and turn his head away. (It’s usually arena traffic) Sometimes that helps him but if anyone has another idea I’d appreciate it.
my issue when a horse get scard he or she goes to my back sometimes full blowen body shake all i do is slow my breathing when this happens i find it nutty i am even protected like a foal if there is a coyote around
Callie, I should have said that if you were describing a repeated set of circumstances you were right on the money.
This is so interesting. I'm not sure why it would now be called ventral and dorsal, except that the shape of the curve, where it's termed dorsal, makes me think of the dorsal fin of a whale. That's probably just my imagination. Otherwise, I experienced the fear and then calming down the other day. My lesson horse got startled when another horse got worried because of some horses outside of the arena. I was afraid my lesson horse was going to spook and run. Last summer, he did that, I came off, got a huge black bruise over one hip that was painful for the next couple of weeks. This time, I was glad my instructor was right there to calm us both. At a later lesson, she told me he wouldn't have run. Had I known that, I probably would have not been so scared of coming off, but I did react with fear, and it extended into a later time, fearing a (different) horse would spook when he wouldn't have, to the point where I decided to get off and just walk him from the ground. It turned out he wasn't interested in being walked. What happened after the lesson horse startled turned out to be wonderfully relaxing. I was scared enough to ask my instructor to lead the horse while I rode, so she did, and she took us to the spot where he had startled. The lesson went from my instructor teaching me how to "barrel race," which was funny because I riding slowly, not at all trying to race. One of the horses in the arena, this time, instead of getting worried, rolled, got up and blew. I sat on Ranger and watched. He took a deep breath, which I felt through my legs, and that was powerfully relaxing. What I'm working on with my instructor is to have a better seat so I have more confidence that I can stay on if a horse spooks.
Thank you Callie. I enjoyed this as I do all your presentations. However, I'm a psychologist and behaviour therapist, and you probably should not draw learnt helplessness on a continuum with the flight/fight response as if they were part of a single event. LH is more or less always the result of REPEATED exposure to stressful stimuli which the individual cannot mediate. We know from the study of phobias that repeated exposure to a feared situation is the best way to adapt to it. This is based on the simplest form of learning - habituation - the tendency of an individual to cease to respond to a repeated stimulus. The 2 basic rules of this approach (which works throughout the animal kingdom, including the human species) are: Do not avoid or escape from feared situations where possible; and enter feared situations which have previously been avoided/escaped from in a gradual way, as fast as you can tolerate and remain there until your anxiety subsides. So the things you say about taking a deep breath, and so on, are incredibly important principally because they allow you to remain in or enter the feared situation - they give you something to help you cope while your bodily reactions get used to the situation as a natural consequence of habituation. In riding, this is especially important for the reason you touch on in passing, that your horse's fear communicates to you and your fear communicates to the horse. So you break that cycle by paying attention to your breathing and your bodily tension. By doing that, you say to your horse: 'I'm calm, you can be calm - we don't have to run.' Now I'm not boasting I'm a great genius at this as a rider - I just had a new horse completely freak out in the arena and ended up barrel racing round half a dozen times because I was unable to put what I just wrote into practice (my mind was calm, but my body was frightened, if you get my meaning). But eventually we both calmed down and all was well and we took the time to continue to confront the situation repeatedly in a controlled way. I have no doubt there will be some repetition of the difficulty, but we'll both be better prepared, and it will be a bit better. The time after that it will be better still, and so on. I should also say I have a great instructor!
Super class Callie, I really like how you sat, drew and shared the knowledge, connecting horses and human being in sinc.
Very useful, thank you xx
Great explanation Callie, it is difficult to remember how your horse feels when you feel scared yourself, so this information was great, thanks
Brilliant video!
When I was riding regularly on a farm nearby, they stored their hay in a corner of the riding hall in winter. There had to be mice or sparrows in it at one day, and my mare freaked out over the sound of something in the hay. The situation didn't excalate too much, as the other horses kept calm, but afterwards she always got vervous in that particular corner. At first, it made me nervous, too. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear and nothing to smell for me there, so I thought my horse had picked up something I didn't notice. But after about ten minutes when I realized her gaze and ears where always pointing at that same spot she freaked out before because of the mice, I relaxed. Which in turn made her relax more, too. Probably helped that at that point other riders with non-spooked horses where coming in, too.
This is a fascinating topic, I loved this video- particularly because I have a spooky horse and I have had no experience with horses until the past year
Very interesting Callie; thank you for another great video
GREAT SUBJECT THANKS FOR THIS ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
I learned a lot about myself and horses from here