Benefits of The Waterhole Rituals™ to Riding, Part 2
Oct 1st, 2009 by Carolyn
The Waterhole Rituals™ are a way of being and interacting with a horse. Use the Rituals as guide and way of thinking to help you develop your ability to train and create a program for your horse in the most harmonious way.
The Rituals help all equestrians find their own solutions and be creative by developing a program of training for their horse that allows the horse to shape their leadership to be effective and desirable. The Waterhole Rituals™ are not meant to be a problem solver or a method that should stand alone from other methods unless you are training with me directly. They are a support system for all other forms of horse training systems and techniques, including learning how to ride. My Method is an additive for any program and method that needs more support in developing the connection you share with your horse.
I would like to say that a lot of people get confused that my Method will help them to have a better relationship under saddle from the bond when they don’t have the skill for riding. To ride a horse takes experience and education. You can develop a great connection for riding from the ground with my Method but you need to back it up with the appropriate skills in riding and training from the back of the horse.
Groundwork and riding are two different skills of management. When you have the horse completely working at liberty from the ground and you then go to ride him, you must have the same amount of skill for riding in order to carry forward a good connection from the horse’s back. People get confused that when they are on the back of the horse it is the horses responsibility to take care of them. When this happens it leaves you in a passive position, as the horse is expecting you to lead the way. This does not work out for most horses and humans.
The good news is that over time you can acquire better riding skills from the practice of the Rituals, as your decision-making skills will also improve as well as your understanding of how to not get on the wrong side of a situation of your own creation. You will learn how light or strong your aids need to be, you will know when your horse is receptive or not and when is the appropriate time for ask for the performance and how not to over face your horse with what you are asking him to do.
Problems are caused by not having enough experience or not setting up the right conditions to get what you want, or from leadership that is not strong enough and inviting enough or indeed, choosing the wrong horse. If you are not getting the performance you want from your horse maybe you are over-facing him and asking him for something that is beyond his ability or your ability.
Focusing on the Waterhole Rituals™ will help you make sure the heartfelt strings of connection are in place and will give you many of the skills to achieve the confidence and connection needed to advance your abilities as a rider. With consistent practice of the Rituals, you will deepen your abilities on all these points, which will support you when you ride. This will also help develop a horse that wants to be ridden.
I am writing this earlier in the week actually as I will be on Santa Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles on Thursday giving a workshop. As a result, I won’t be able to work with Mark on the next Insider Circle class but we hope to have more news for you next week. Thank you for your patience.
Hope you have a lovely weekend
Carolyn
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[...] would encourage everyone to read Leanna Kielian’s comment to last Thursday’s blog Benefits of The Waterhole Rituals to Riding – Part Two and my response. I think many of you will find this helpful in giving you more ideas in how to [...]
Dear Carolyn
Thank you for the post. It has helped to clarify things that I was feeling. I am coming to realise that you need still need horsemanship skills to keep yourself safe on the ground, and in the saddle, even if you have a good bond with your horse. Also that it is important to ask for help if you are not sure. After all it isn’t necessary to keep inventing the wheel!
I am very sorry to have missed your WRIC call on Sunday evening. I had the wrong time! I will pay more attention to the time of our final call and look forward to speaking to you then.
Carolyn!
As they often are… this post was so timely for me. I have recently started taking dressage lessons with my young stallion, Khemancho. He is the little bay Arab in the video I sent you called “Small Dance” .. where you see I call him up in the paddock, and we do a little circle trot and comehere…. you might have remembered…
Anyway, I am a trail and long distance rider, but have been somewhat of a dressage-a-phobe all these years. This stallion, however, was born to do dressage– he looks like an arab-andalusian cross — so I am learning along with him.
What I want to say is that the ground work and relationship truly does support the dressage… I always want to work from that place of relationship, through all the challenges that arise. Even before I take ChoCho on the trailer, I ask him to trot up to the gate where I am holding the halter out to him. If he has no enthusiasm… then I know that I have to structure the day differently. Right now, every Saturday morning, he is happy to trot up and out, and happy to jump in the trailer to go for ou lesson! I think he even knows when its Friday night– and I say “want to go to lesson tomorrow?”… and he puts his head in a way like saying “yes… here is my dressage manner- how do I look?” … and we have a laugh together.
thanks for your posts. they are very supportive!
Bonnie
Dear Leanna
Thank you for sharing. What part of the country are you from?
I wish that everyone on this blog and around the world that rides as weekend trail riders or anyone for that matter who rides would learn to do what you did with this horse before you began your ride. It is a blueprint for anyone that has learned the Waterhole Rituals as the way to approach a horse they know or don’t know before getting on. This is close to the blue print that I use. It should be standard practice that all horses are approached in this manner. It takes such little time and gives the horse the ability to enjoy the ride as much as the owner. More and more people have lost team working skills. When we lose these skills we also lose how to care for others feelingd, how to love others and we think that when things do not go our way it is someone else’s fault.
Remember if your horse is resistant he is unhappy or he hurts and it is not fair to the horse to force him to comply to a self serving need. Alot of the problems horses are showing and their vices have been caused by the rider not approaching the horse with proper horsemanship skills. The horse doesn’t need to be trained not to kick in most cases but rather the person needs to develop more tact in their behavior and leadership approach and timing of their requests to create a connection in team work.
Once you learn how to connect with a horse before you do anything with him and you have learnt how to use the Waterhole Rituals you can have the horse of your dreams. Your approach and using your blueprint is half the answer but knowing how to adjust the attitude of a horse is another part of the puzzle of owning a horse and this can be accomplished through the practice of the Waterhole Rituals.
Since I have the wonderful opportunity of discovering Carolyn’s books, dvd’s and blogs just before I found my “dream horse”. I could only afford a yearling but my Andalusian, Chispazo (Pazo) will be handled with Carolyn’s techniques in mind from the very beginning of his relationship with me. In a way, although it will be many years before I can ride him, I just love the ground work and I am happy to have a baby to raise!
So far, I am very pleased how well he is fitting in at his new home and the different ways I am handling him. As hard as it is, I am teaching him to let me pick out his feet while he is untied and if it does not work, I just take my time and let him direct what he is comfortable with. Observers say that I am just letting him have his way, and I guess they are right. They are shaking their heads and saying that I am spoiling him already and he will never do what I tell him to do. Hmmmm…
So far, I can hardly believe it, but if I just calm him and do what he will freely let me do, the next time or maybe 2-3 times after that, he lets me do whatever he was not sure about before. It is not working out that he is getting more dominant, but that he is getting more trusting.
We go for walks in the woods and the only rule I insist he follow is that he not bolt in front of me. I just jump in front of him and act BIG and just stand for a 10-15 seconds and then invite him to come along with me again.
He is getting less claustrophic in tight situations if I let him run through and then stop him when it is safe and then continue on. Every day he is getting less and less reactive and instead of things escalating, he is getting calmer.
Anyway, my point is that I will not be riding him for a long time, but I wonder how much playing with him at liberty I can do (in a fenced arena) and how inventive we can be. I want to do things that educate me about his personality and also be a good leader he can trust. I spend lots of time sitting with him sharing territory and brushing him and sometimes just leading from behind and playing where I run with him in the field. He is by no means following me at liberty, just getting to know me. He always comes up to me to say hello and will leave if I ask him to do so. Even after we dodge and play in the field, I can easily go up to him with an outstretched hand and way “good boy, how are you?” OK see you later, and then I leave. He is definitely not afraid of me and does not feel that I am chasing him.
Thank you Thank you Carolyn. Keep those blogs coming. I so look forward to what I can learn and incorporate into my new relationship with Pazo.
Hi Carolyn
have you ever thought about a visit to Europe? May be the other members of the WRIC calls of Europe are also interested in a workshop over here?
Tine
I read all these posts with great interest and realise (again…) that I have to reconsider the way I am working with my young Icelandic mare Kría. You all show me (again…) that I’m not considering her opinions, feelings and moods enough. She is a very strong charactered mare (she once was the leading mare of a herd of sixteen mares when she was only 3 years old) and fighting her is never an option because she will definitely win. And that’s wonderful, because I don’t want to fight her in any way, but sometimes apparently I do – unconsciously… – and she immediately shows me that that’s a NO-GO area! She combines great sensitivity with courage and a strong opinion and that makes her a challenging teacher. I think she will need a lot of patience with me, but I’m determined to follow her wise lead and learn how to work together in harmony
!
I know I have commented many times here. But I would like to let everyone know that this method helped my horse and I work through some very diificult riding issues. I ride Dressage and Jumping and freestyle. I think it is so helpful for my clients who manifest what would be called “difficult” tempered horses my own included. They are really not difficult at all when you understand their true nature and language. That is if you are capable of stepping into the leader role. And that is how I approach people who come to me with a challenging horse. I say ” this horse is not a problem at all with the right leadership”. The question is “are you the right leader for that horse?” and that is for them to ask themselves. Often, that is where the interesting journey begins. Of course, if I feel the match is completely dangerous and inappropriate, I will say so. I have found though, that if I work with the people personally, they can find their inner leader where they didn’t know they could before. Sometimes it is a very slow process but rewarding to watch as it unfolds…I have had the good fortune to have been able to work with the same students over some years and they are blooming into leaders and horseman slowly but surely where when I started with them, they were petrified of their horses.
I really do enjoy reading these blogs as they both teach me and confirm so actions I have already discovered. I have found over the last few years that if I am visiting someone and am going to ride their horses I do not even want to get on them until I spend a little time on the ground or in an enclosed area getting to know them. I have at times felt a bit uncomfortable asking their owners to let me do this but it has really paid off in both my relationship with these horses and safety. If we can get a feel for each other on the ground we both know what to expect in the saddle. Walking around either loose or saddled up seeing if the horse will stop when I stop, follow me and how they flex left or right – which being their better side. The flex tells me what to do if something unexpected comes up and if it would be safe which side is the soft side to turn. One horse would follow me after about five minutes but if I was too far away from his heart line would not, so push come to shove we would not be on the same page (my assessment). The horses I have worked with like this really seem to appreciate the time and it really takes very little, sometimes only a few minutes. They stand better to be mounted, listen better, are softer and move lighter. I had an injury a while back and lost some of my nerve so this time settles me and I am sure a horse has the same feelings about carrying a stranger. Horses are probably thinking can they stop me without pulling? How will they approach riding me? Having a stop in place early on has been perhaps lifesaving, as when I was in Ireland something spooked the trecking “herd” and they took off during traffic, my sweet little horse listened to me and we were safe on the pavement. A while back I was going on a ride out of state and I didn’t know the people I was riding with very well (my ride had been arranged by a friend) and they tossed this gelding in a round pen to get him reading for my ride, chased him with a cracking whip, he was stiff on one leg and they thought he was acting up but it was a cold day with what was an old injury. I asked if I could take him into an arena for a few minutes and did the walking behind for a few minutes and he followed me after only 5 minutes. Never rushing no whip. He was very slow that day on the ride since I had seen him pulled on the bit the day before while spurs used at the same time. They told me he was lazy. I was offered spurs and politely declined. I checked first checked my stop (to confirm I could use a loose rein safely hoping the time spent unmounted has put us on the same page) and just used my leg and a very loose rein. We lagged for a while and eventually caught up to the others. The second day I took him in the round pen no whip and he did everything so soft and no kicking or bucking, I just worked on his stop and being with me. The person that usually rode this horse said that they thought this horses didn’t know very much and I tryed as softly as I could to say that I thought he knew a lot. That day’s ride he moved out and showed true joy in his step while being perfectly controlable on a soft rein. Very little leg was needed for impulsion. My friends that had set up the ride for me took notice how he followed me in the arena the first day after a few minutes of walking behind and how he was so good in the round pen without out any whip the second day but they didn’t feel the joy from the horse I felt on the ride. My only sadness was that I had to leave him behind when I flew home, only hoping that what I did might be noticed by the others and maybe his life might be easier. It was really hard to try that all in front of others waiting to ride on those days because I am shy but the added joy of the horse and the increased safety was more important that being watched do “weird stuff” I suppose one can hope they might try and get a better relationship later. I do think it is important to rememer that horses with old injuries need time to move and loosen up and not to pressure them because they will kick and act up where the old injury was but it is not out of rudeness. I didn’t use any stick because of how they had used it, in order to get closer to the horse a bit faster. My heart goes out to all of you in boarding situations because people do watch and have opinions that are not always useful for you or your horse but remember also that maybe they will also see the positive results and gleen something to better another horses life. But it is so hard to have others looking on. We are lucky and keep our horses at home, we get less riding time but a lot more connection if we are present in the moment and not just doing chores. Think manure meditation and then I will tell you my horses will step on the fork tines and as for a scratch. They can make go to the present moment!