I’ve been working with my lease horse Bit for seven years, now. We’ve come a long way from our first days together, in which he put up with me as long as I let him graze more and work less. Being a novice, my early attempts at training took longer than they should have, and I’m certain that there was an easier way to teach him a given task, I just didn’t know what it was. So I plodded in, reading books, watching other riders, and asking loads of questions, and ultimately, Bit learned what I needed him to learn.
Because he gets bored so easily, my on-going challenge is to find new things to teach him. They don’t have to be complicated things, they just have to be things he’s never done before, things that will make him think, and work out what I’m asking of him. I’m always on the lookout for such things, and last week, something new finally presented itself.
I was at the barn on fund-raising business (I’m their Event Coordinator). It was a Saturday, the day when the usual stall cleaner is off work, and the volunteers come in and clean in his stead. Saturdays are very dusty days, and my lungs can’t take much of breathing that air, so I had no plans to stay and ride. A girl caught my attention, though, and I watched in fascination as she lined up a series of poles in the arena, then proceeded to make her horse weave his way through them. I knew instantly that Bit and I should work with them in the same manner as the girl was now doing. At last! Something new to do! This was just what Bit and I needed!
Bit’s a very intelligent horse – a mite too intelligent for his own good, actually – and he gets bored with things so quickly because he thinks he knows how to do them, whether he really does or not. He’s always sure that he’s mastered a new task the fourth time I’ve asked him to do it, and he’s not the least concerned with whether he’s doing it well, as long as he’s doing it. After that fourth attempt, he nods his head up and down very emphatically, letting me know that he’s ready to move on to something else, regardless of whether I’m ready to move on or not. Bit’s primary concern is that I not waste his time.
So I went out to the barn yesterday with a view to using those poles. I set up five in a row, with sufficient space between them for a horse to manoeuvre. I led Bit through them once from the ground before I mounted and had him do it again whilst I was on his back. He mastered the task quickly enough that I moved on to variations of it: weaving through the poles at the trot, changing direction, and skipping a pole or two, so that the task never got predictable. Or so I thought.
It’s unusual for Bit to stop walking and refuse to move. He usually reserves that stunt for when I’m trying to take him off-property and he doesn’t want to go. Stopping in the middle of a ride in the arena is so rare that I was at a loss for what to do. I turned him in circles – the only direction he would go – but every time I straightened him out, he stopped again. After a few minutes of this sort of thing, I dug my heels in and insisted.
So he started walking, and, of his own volition, he walked in circles around one of the poles. I only became alarmed when I realized that I was no longer steering or encouraging him on. He was walking around that pole over and over and over again all by himself. Indeed, I loosened the reins and rested my hands on the saddle, just to see if he would keep walking. He did. Same pole, same circle.
Clearly, Bit was trying to tell me something, and that something made me sad: he was bored, all right, but more than that, he was frustrated that I hadn’t noticed his boredom and acted accordingly. To the untrained observer, Bit looked like one of those old-timey circus ponies that children got to ride, only the ponies only ever walked in circles around that spoke-wheeled thingumabob. It must have been excruciatingly boring for them, just as weaving around these poles appeared to be for Bit. And here I thought I’d come up with something new and interesting with which to challenge him!
Having figured all this out, I took matters in hand again, and grabbed the offending pole. I directed Bit to walk over to the corner of the arena where the poles were stored. After I set it down, I walked him out to another pole, grabbed it, and repeated the task we’d just done.
To say that Bit was now confused would be an understatement. He didn’t know exactly what we were doing, but it had something to do with those poles, and I wasn’t making him walk around them anymore. I knew that Bit was smart enough to figure out that we were putting the poles away. Indeed, he stepped up his pace as we went for the third and fourth poles. The last pole was still in the far corner of the arena. I steered Bit toward it, but he balked, slightly, as though he thought it was sufficiently far away that we needn’t bother with it.
“We still need to put that one away, too, Bit” I told him. Once he knew that – and I can assure you that while he may not always understand the words, Bit certainly understands the intent – he walked toward it with a newfound sense of purpose.
After all the poles were back in their corner, Bit was sufficiently chuffed to grant me not just a few laps around the arena at the trot, but at the canter, as well. I feel dreadful that I hadn’t noticed Bit was trying to communicate with me. We’re supposed to be working as a team, after all; it can’t be a one-side affair in which I do all the talking, and he does all the listening. He’s a sentient being, with his own mind and his own desires. What harm would there be in stopping working with the poles ten minutes earlier than planned? Sometimes, I become so focused on the goal that I lose sight of the idea that my horse doesn’t always share an interest in that goal. Next time, I’ll be paying closer attention.