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Posted by Marianne Williams, Nov 24 2008, 10:33 AM
It’s not about the Gate
A new day dawns, my confidence returns, and so does my trainer. The first bit of wisdom that she shares with me is that, “It’s not about the gate. It’s about me as the leader.” Grrr. I am definitely getting tired of this. “Why is always about me and never about Bella? I thought we were supposed to be training the horse. If Bella would just behave, I would be just fine…”
My mental musings are interrupted when Deb sends me in to Bella’s enclosure. I slip her rope halter and 12-foot lead line on and out of the pen we go. I spend the next 2-3 hours under Debbie’s direction as I practice leading Bella, backing her, directing her nose, and playing red light/green light games. Deb tells me that that these are all exercises geared towards getting Bella to pay attention to me as the leader.
Up and down the driveway we go. Bella makes many attempts to do things her way and Debbie switches places with me in order to show me what I must do in order to be the leader. As usual, this is exhausting for me. I am unaccustomed to doing things wrong. I have flown planes, I have run fishing boats, and I’ve worked as a commercial diver during many frigid Maine winters. I even have 2 teenage boys who work in tandem with one another to usurp my parental authority and I generally come out on top. Why on earth is it so hard for me to figure out how to be a leader to this horse?
Debbie senses my frustration and encourages me to take a couple of grazing breaks with Bella. She and I talk while I play the friendly game with Bella with my carrot stick. This stick is about 3-feet long and is made of fiberglass. It has a 3-foot long slender rope attached to it with a small leather popper on its end. I lightly throw the rope over Bella’s back and around her legs and over her face and ears during our friendly game. She tolerates this well, except for her ears, so I use my advance and retreat skills that I learned during my wild mustang training workshop to work this delicate area.
Our lesson culminates with me leading Bella to the gate. She immediately balks and begins to back. Deb instructs me to turn this backing behavior into my idea so I vigorously back Bella up another 10-15 feet. She’s a little surprised and I let her think a minute about all of this. I begin to lead her again towards the gate as Debbie quietly instructs me: “Don’t hesitate. Look at the gate. Look ahead of you. No, don’t look down. Look ahead, Marianne. Keep walking.”
I resolutely march towards the gate, eyes ahead, trying not to hold my breath, and trying not to think about the distinct possibility of Bella balking again. We’re now even with gate and she carefully lifts her hooves over the steel threshold and walks obediently in to the enclosure. Debbie claps. She is very proud of us.
I learn that Debbie was right. It wasn’t about the gate. It was all about me and my leadership skills. I come to realize that Bella will make me earn her trust and her respect before she allows me to wear the leadership mantle. In addition to her wild horse wariness, she has the highly developed sense of dominant mare. I know little of her history save for the fact that she is now 3 years old and was captured when she was just shy of turning 2 years old. Her band of wild horses was small – with approximately 70 horses of various ages. They spent their time foraging for grasses, fleeing from wild fires, and being on the look-out for predators such as mountain lions. Bella is hearty and strong and I yearn for the day when she finally allows me on her back.
But we have many lessons to go before this happens. We continue our daily work together and I spend my evenings reading horse training websites and watching Parelli DVDs that Debbie loans to me. I like watching the body language of Linda Parelli. She is supremely confident, yet never over-bearing, and is quick to recall her own training mistakes. I watch and rewind. Watch and rewind. I store up questions to ask Debbie and I observe Bella’s behavior as I attempt to implement what I am learning from my research. I find that the DVDs make it look a lot easier than what happens in real life.
As time goes by, Bella and I leave the yard and venture out in to the paths that crisscross the woods that cover our island. I discover that Bella loves the woods. She gamely crosses stonewalls and slides between closely knit trees. Overhanging branches fail to faze her and she confidently walks through the fallen slash of dead wood. We are having more fun together than I could ever imagine. We walk for 2-3 hours at a time. It occurs to me that Bella behaves well when her mind is engaged. She likes a challenge and so do I.
As the rains begin to fall, we find that some of our familiar paths are blocked by giant puddles. I’m wearing my leather cowboy boots so I skirt the edges of the puddles. Bella refuses to walk through the water and follows me closely behind as she perches precariously on the narrow, slightly-raised edges of the paths. I can’t believe that Bella won’t walk through the puddles. I bring this up the next time that Debbie comes over to work with us. I tell her how Bella follows me everywhere in the woods but that she is afraid of water.
Debbie questions me closely about our walks. She asks me if I am walking through the puddles. I tell her no because I’m wearing my really cool cowboy boots. She tells me to get some rubber boots and walk through the puddles and I will find that Bella will follow me. She tells me, “It’s not about the puddles. It’s about you as a leader.”
Bella and I go out walking the next day. I wear my old rubber fishing boots and wade right through the middle of the puddles. Without the slightest hesitation, Bella follows me. It dawns on me that I had been silently telegraphing to Bella that the puddles were unsafe. As her leader, she watches me, and she follows me. If I walk on the edges, she does the same. She doesn’t know whether a puddle is 2 inches deep or 200 feet deep. She only knows that she must trust in the leader to do what is safe for the herd.
For now, it appears as if I am the leader of our herd. At least over puddles. I guess that’s a start.
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on Bella – Part Four