(dramatic Western music)
- G'day, I'm Warwick Schiller, and recently here,
I have been sharing some videos presented by Weaver Leather
about reconnecting with your horse during Coronavirus,
and one of those exercises had to do with
attracting your horse's attention,
getting a change in focus towards you,
not by putting pressure on them, but by curiosity,
by attracting their attention, not driving them to you.
And it's a very, very helpful exercise,
but I've had a lot of feedback from people saying,
"I couldn't get my horse's attention at all,"
and so I'm gonna help you guys with that in this video.
In this video, we have a broodmare here,
and she has an extreme version of separation anxiety.
Some horses have separation anxiety.
If you're leading them away from their friends,
they're losing their mind.
If they're loose away from their friends,
their losing their mind
and if you're riding them away from their friends,
they're losing their mind.
This mare doesn't.
If you're leading her, she's fine.
If you lead her somewhere, she's fine.
If you ride her away, ride her on her own,
she's perfectly fine.
But if you put her in, say, in the arena in here,
we turn horses out in the arena here a lot.
If you put her in the arena here alone,
she will walk up and down the fence showing a very odd,
what the behaviorists call a stereotypical behavior
and a stereotypical is usually,
it's a monotonous behavior that serves no function,
I think is the official term for it,
and usually it's called by depravation of freedoms,
or like, you know, horses need friends, food and forage
and this mare, before we got her, she lived in a stall.
I don't think she was turned out very much and so you know,
if you have a look at what she looks like here,
she walks back and forth along the fence,
paces along the fence, zombie-like
and bends her head at a right angle to her body.
You know, some horses run around and scream and carry on.
She just does this and will do it for hours
if you were to leave her there.
I've not felt in the past like I had a good enough idea
of what I could do to fix this
without it being some sort of pressure,
some sort of training.
I didn't know how to help her with this,
so I have not done anything with it,
but what I thought I'd do is I thought,
that exercise that I've been showing you guys,
I'm going to try it with her
and see if we can help with that
and so I'm gonna show you the progression of that
and this is an experiment.
I've never done this
for this particular type of horse before.
So I have no idea if it's gonna work,
but the first thing I did, just like those other horses,
I turned her loose here in the arena
and I started a long way away from her,
way across the arena.
She was over here in the corner,
walking backwards and forwards with her crazy,
head bent, zombie-walk going on
and I wandered around like I normally do with that exercise,
trying to gently attract their attention.
Nothing, I couldn't get her to flick an ear.
I ended up having to walk over,
even if I walked up to the fence over here
and waved the flag in front of her,
she didn't even change from her zombie-walk,
walking backwards and forwards
and so I had to change what I was doing a little bit
and it's all about experimentation,
you have to be effective,
you have to get a change in focus for this to work
and so you know, you've got to experiment
and this is what I did in my experiment.
So I'm waving this a little bit right here.
Might get a little bit bigger with it.
Right then I though she kind of flicked an ear towards me.
I'm not really sure that she did,
but you can see, she's pretty fascinated
by, you know, mentally, she's pretty over there.
I might actually walk up here.
Right there.
I just got her to look away from what she was thinking and,
huh, you might not have, that's a bit unexpected but
you might notice, as soon as she took her attention off
what she was thinking about,
so her mind came back over here, she followed me over here.
Now, I'm not worried about any of this stuff.
She's standing here and her mind's over there
and she's gonna walk back over there again.
Great, that's perfectly fine.
I'm not worried about that at all.
But I had to do quite a bit to get her attention, didn't I?
So once I could get a change in her focus,
that went on for a while where she'd actually
stop thinking about those other horses and come over to me,
but then she'd be there for a bit and then she'd leave,
but after a while, what started to happen was
she'd leave and then as she left,
then she'd turn around and she'd come back,
but did you see, she just made a huge change right there
and she forgot about her friends over there.
Now she looks over there, I'm gonna look over there.
By the end of day one,
she was starting to get to where
she'd change her focus herself instead of being fascinated,
you know, there was some horses out that way
and there's some horses out this way,
but instead of her being fascinated over there,
she could change her attention and the whole day
ended up with her walking quite a long ways from down there
over to me and stood there and so
that's how we finished up day one.
When we came back for day two, it was pretty much the same.
It was just, probably, initially,
it was just a little bit easier for me to get an ear flick.
So I've got my flag out.
That's all.
Now I'm gonna start to move,
I'm gonna walk in parallel with her right now
and I'm just waving that flag, just a little bit.
Right there, I think I got an ear flick, I'll stop.
And what happened after that
was pretty normal for this exercise
is once I can get an ear flick, the eye would follow easy
and then the feet would come over quite easily, you know,
feet would follow her mind
and then she'd come over and she'd leave,
but the whole day ended up was
she was looking out through the fence over this way
at the horses over there, turned,
took her own attention off these horses over here,
turned, walked over to me and then felt relaxed enough
to circle around and buckle at the knees and roll
and I was just blown away by that change in her
at the end of the second session.
Now I ease her over there with those two.
Now they're out the front with those two,
but what does she do here in a second?
Does she continue her stereotypical behavior
of just walking up and down the fence
with her head bent all funny or does she just
make a change in focus like that.
See the big yawn she's having right there?
Big old lick and chew?
So I didn't have to do anything.
Hey sweetness.
I didn't have to do anything to get her
attention off those other horses that time.
I have done at the start, but you might notice,
it's taken a lot less time today and there,
look, she's not worried thinking about me
and she's not thinking about them
and that's what I'm looking for.
And when you get 'em really relaxed
where they're not thinking about other things
and their mind and their feet are all in one place,
what you'll tend to find is, this'll happen right here.
(horse snorting)
Day three, she started out the same way
she started out the first day.
When I took her two friends off over
to where we've been putting them in that pen over there,
she went back to the same behavior she had before,
but she had a new behavior,
she had her head shake in there too.
So she's becoming a little bit more animated
instead of just so monotonous and drone like.
And so what I did was I started a long way away from her
and I just thought I'd stand there
and wait and see what happens.
After a while, in her walking back and forth,
she'd actually turn her head and look at me
while she was walking without me asking her to do it
and it's not a big deal.
A horse turning its head while walking,
you know, looking at me while she's walking,
except the fact, it's a change in focus she did on her own.
After a while of her wandering backwards and forwards
and looking at me every once in a while,
I thought I'd walk down and stand just a little bit closer
and see what happened.
Now her ears are on those other horses.
I'm just gonna walk this way.
Now right there, her right ear flicked towards me,
for a split second.
I'll just stop.
So she pulls her head out of there,
she's looking out the thing,
her head comes and she looks at me
and she, okay, so I haven't done anything today.
Can you see how, hey beautiful.
How are you?
Yeah.
Can you see how different that is?
This is where we ended up on day two
and see, she gets distracted, but right then
and she whinnied, but didn't run off.
So that trot there just blew me away.
She just came up there and she hung out with me
and that's where we finished that session
was just hanging out there together
and then day four, it started out completely differently
than any of the other three days it started out.
And so the first change I would wanna know today
is what does she do (laughs) here we go,
what does she do when I turn her loose?
Today's the first day when I've turned her loose
and she hasn't, she has a big old lick and chew.
Hey darling.
And she doesn't just walk over to the fence
and start pacing backwards and forwards.
Then pretty soon, she'd be walking up and down the fence,
then she'd be walking straight.
So she doesn't have that weird head bent sideways thing
which to me, I thought was a great improvement
and then she would stop and look out through the fence,
but the big thing with that was
she would not stay focused for very long.
She would change her own focus
and if you ever look at this clip here,
she changes focuses about three times in, you know,
with only two or three seconds in between each one of 'em.
I'm just gonna stand here for a minute and see what happens.
I just wanna see if she changes her focus at all on her own.
That's the big thing.
And right there, she's looking over that way.
And then her head lowers
and now she's sniffing the poo, so now she's no longer
looking at those four horses over there.
Now she's going for a walk.
Now she looks back towards the fence.
So that there's the first time--
So she has a change in focus there.
Then she walks away from the fence, okay?
This has not happened on any of the four days
unless I wave my flag around and somehow got her attention.
She did that on her own right then.
Okay?
So that's a huge change right there.
So me being out here is only to facilitate
her changing focus, it's not
to get her to focus on me, I'm just--
(horse whinnies)
Hey missy.
I'm just the guy who helps her do that, right there,
what she just did right there
and she was thinking over there
and then she thought back here, but I didn't do anything.
Okay, so my job here is to facilitate that
so that, that I could actually leave
and she could do that herself.
And after that, I did leave.
I came out of the arena and I sat up here
to see what she'd do and she started wandering around
and just wandered around like a regular horse
in a pasture that's not got a separation anxiety
from its friends and it was a pretty amazing transition
to see and if you really think about
the only thing I did, I helped her reconnect with herself.
I helped her connect her mind back to her body
and it doesn't matter if, you know, if you did it
with a human and taught 'em how to meditate.
If someone had anxiety or depression or whatever,
they're just not present.
Their mind and their body
are in two different places at the same time
and you know, I've been really hard on this exercise.
I've been using it for quite a while now
with all sorts of different horses
and I personally think, for me,
this is my starting point,
really correct so much connection.
You get a relaxed horse that's connected to you
without doing any training on them
and I have found that it's just,
yeah, it's an amazing tool to have
and I think it's a great place to start with
and if you think about this mare right here,
you know, I really made this video,
releasing this video for people who say,
"I can't get my horse's attention."
You may have to be quite inventive in the beginning,
but if you can let them know,
you see when that focus changes,
I think that's when you'll see
a huge difference in your horse's
just whole self-confidence and demeanor.
(dramatic Western music)