Benefits of The Waterhole Rituals™ to Riding – Part 1
Sep 29th, 2009 by Carolyn Resnick Method
Last week Sally asked a good question in the comments section of the blog about how the practice of the Waterhole Rituals™ relate to riding and training horses when there are no fences or arenas to contain the horse. I will answering this question for you in my two blogs this week.
The Waterhole Rituals™ are a unique method of working with your horse by working with the horse’s natural instincts. The Rituals do not train your horse per se but rather they provide a means whereby you can communicate effectively with your horse in a language that he understands that also builds the trust you need when you go to ride him. By communicating with him in this manner, you create a bond of friendship and trust with your horse where he sees you as the leader, which in turn causes the horse to be more willing and more connected. The strength of this connection allows the horse to feel secure and so in my experience the horse offers you more performance under saddle than you would have without the practice of the Waterhole Rituals™.
Consider your own relationship with your best friend. If you have a great relationship, your friend will go to extraordinary lengths for you and this exactly how I have found my horses respond to me and why I have been able to command championship performances in all disciplines from both them and my students. This is why I refer to my Method as being the Foundation for all Equestrian Pursuits.
When using the Waterhole Rituals™, you are working with the culture of horses and learning how to interact with a horse to develop a bond built on respect and trust. The same way that a lead horse goes about collecting a herd of mares and how lead mare keeps the order in the herd and how the young are raised in the wild. All these abilities to form unity and harmony are achieved through seven daily bonding rituals that are instinctual to almost all horses. The Waterhole Rituals™ mirror these seven bonding rituals and help you create a real connection with your horse. This connection is comprised of seven strings, which I call the heartfelt strings of connection. The strings are:
- Bond
- Trust
- Respect
- Willing Attitude
- Focus
- Magnetic Connection
- Teamwork
There is a Waterhole Ritual™ to help you develop each one. When you have all these heartfelt string of connection in place, you will experience more reliability from your horse under saddle from the connection you have formed and you will know what you can and cannot expect from your horse from what the Rituals have taught you. By being more connected and attuned to your horse, you will know how to create the proper energy he will need for what you are asking him to do. You will know when he will respond well to being ridden and when he will not. You will learn how to put a program together that will give you the performance you would like to have from your horse when riding him.
It is important to remember that heartfelt strings of connection are always changing and you must continually check in and make sure all the strings are in place. Horses in a natural herd are always changing their personal boundaries to create order to support the good of the herd. Through flexible boundaries, I have found that I can create manners, respect and responsibility both in my leadership and my horse’s ability to follow my lead and feel responsible to it. By respecting my horses boundaries at all times, along with teaching my horse to respect my personal space through changing my personal boundary lines, I am able to get the horse to choose me as his leader. From the way I choose to work with flexible boundaries, I can build the horse’s confidence and attitude towards not being too shy or dominant.
I hope all that makes sense and will write some more on it on Thursday but if you have any comments or questions, please write them below.
Thanks and enjoy your week
Carolyn
No related posts.
Dear Carolyn;
In one of your videos on Youtube you are giving your horse treats (carrots) but I have created a monster by giving my horse treats. I have obviously done something wrong. I do not give them to her until she does whatever I ask of her the right way, but somehow I have lost control and she will not do anything unless she is going to get treats. She has become a spoiled brat! I will not be able to carry treats with me when and if I ever get to ride her. She pushes me with her shoulder, tries to stomp on my feet, and almost ran me down the other day when I turned my back. The problem is I don’t even know what went wrong.
I have taught her how to play ball and she loves to play and asks to play all the time and I started out giving her a treat every time she kicked or moved the ball with her head. Before long she had the idea, but her mouth would be so full that she would be dropping food as she was trying to chase the ball. I tried to cut back to where she had to kick the ball until her mouth was empty but she started throwing temper tantrums. She snorts and pouts and if I run out of treats and/or don’t want to play anymore she gets mad. Playing ball with her is so much fun but I don’t know what to do.
She responds so well to anything I ask of her when I have treats as if shes known how to do it all her life, but if I don’t have treats, she refuses to do anything.
I started the treats in the first place because no matter what I did with her she just ignored me. I couldn’t even put a halter on her until I tried your method….and the treats.
How do I stop her from bucking and kicking at me. She squeals as she does it so I know she is upset with something I did or didn’t do. She has done this though since I got her almost 8 weeks ago. It is not as often as it used to be, but she is becoming extremely dangerous.
She would not allow me to put a saddle on her to begin with without bucking it off but I am able to do this now with ease and without tying her up to do so. She stands freely and allows me to put her saddle on, only because of your method.
I have make-shifted my own bitless bridle and she will allow me to put that on, but it still sometimes becomes a fight so I slowly coax her to put it on.
We have just started working on turns without a halter or any tack whatsoever. She will do them perfectly every time if I give her treats and she will come to me if I have treats, but refuses to do anything without treats.
Well by now you should have the full picture or at least close to what I am dealing with. Can you give me any advice? Should I stop the treats all together?
I have been sitting in a chair with her everyday now for over 2 weeks, she eats until she’s had her fill then she comes and lays down close to me. It is so awesome! Sometimes she allows me to touch her and other times she lunges out at me as if she is going to bite me. She is so unpredictable.
Oh another thing she does: For the first 5 or 6 weeks after I got her I could not get her to let me do her feet so I got a ferrier to come do them for me. Since then I have had no problem cleaning them until this last week and now she decides she is going to lean on me when I do her front feet. I’ve even resorted to giving her treats for each foot, but the leaning is getting worse and I don’t give her a treat until she doesn’t lean on me at all. I am just so flusterbusted!
Please tell me what I am doing wrong. I know it’s not her; it is something I am or am not doing. Am I being too pushy? Am I expecting too much too soon? Please help. Thank you for your blog. Please don’t ever stop.
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Comment on Try a little tenderness…. by Frank Martinez
Posted: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:59:22 +0000
Hello Carolyn,
Judging by your excerpts from “Naked Liberty”, and the numerous comments found on your blog, I’m basically convinced Water Hole Rituals will be of much help as I seek a closer relationship with my horse.
Not recalling exactly how many “yes” answers were checked, the guesstimate would be at least 7.
In late 2003 I began reading of the severe plight of the wild Mustang herds of our western states. I was very much touched and moved by the information that came my way. So much so that I vowed to try to “save” one of these awesome creatures. In July of 2004 it happened. The BLM was to conduct an auction in Ocala, Florida. A trip of under 90 miles from my current home. But with no horse trailer, or truck to pull it with, I enlisted the aid of a sister-in-law and her horse-owner neighbor for help with those logistics. Which ended quite successfully! The auction itself was a bittersweet experience for me. I was as physically close to the horses in the auction pens as I had been in the early and mid 1950s, riding rented horses in New York’s Central Park. But the most frightful part of this event was watching the animals being loaded onto their new owners’ trailers. I could sense their reluctance to load up. The eye white showed on almost all the horses I watched; ears fully back, and flat as they could be! Their ‘calling’ out was too much to endure. But Gitano merely looked at the trailer floor, sniffed it for several seconds, then hopped aboard. It was almost as if he had done this many, many times. He had more “issue” with the halter than the trailer. Later that evening, his “papers” clearly indicated that he had been trailered in the recent past. The Ocala event would be his “third strike” not being adopted. The two previous attempts were Midland, MI, and Clinton, NC. The BLM had officially labeled him a “frequent flyer”. This means he would have gone into a temporary holding facility to await slaughter.
The ride to his new environment was uneventful. But he seemed to be “entertaining” motorists traveling in our same direction! The rainy drizzle, nor the 18-wheelers seemed to phase him. He preferred to ride facing backward on the trailer. I like to think that he sensed things were going to be ‘better’ for him than on the Nevada desert, his original home range.
Arriving at his new home, he unloaded quietly into his combination round pen/stall. With help from the horse-owner friend; only about 15 minutes passed before I was able to touch this horse myself for the first time. At that moment 50 years had melted away. But I didn’t over do it. The next day it was him and me. No helpers! At the same time I noticed that he was not wearing the halter I provided at the auction. It was in the dirt, near the center of the pen. Obviously it had slipped off; possibly due to not having been put on properly. That’s my theory. Starting then, I may have been too hasty in attempting to halter him for the second time. It was about six or seven weeks before he wore a halter. At that, it was worn only while I had need to attach a lead line. But I was able to trim his mane and part of his tail within two weeks. He took to brushing in general, very well!
Over and above what I was able to do since adopting him, Gitano received about 17 weeks of gentling spread over a year(2006), at the rate of three days per week. This rendered him safe to ride, which I did up until the summer of 2008, when medical issues “unsaddled” me. Thankfully, all is well now, and for a 70 year old, I’m in good shape …for the shape I’m in! In the Fall of 2008, we went back to basics: lungeing at a walk, trot, lope. He has since learned to step/jump over low-lying objects, i.e., rolled-up tarpaulin which has a circumference of about 10 inches. He also appears to enjoy stepping on a large ball with either of his front hooves; at times he’ll push it forward. And, I often lead him at liberty. But lately, when it comes to ‘training’ – we seem to be running out of fresh ideas. I try applying things from various clinicians – but the man I go to most often is Monty Roberts, for his many years(since the 1940s) of studying the Mustang. Your book/method(s) and his have been compared in at least one of 15 reviews on amazon.com. I see more similarities than differences after reading your excerpts. At this point I cannot see any reason why one “system” would not compliment the other.
One issue I would really like to resolve is, Gitano appears to be motivated by food. I’ll quickly add: the food source is not my hands. Food/treats are already in the feed bucket. Since he is boarded at a facility, I can’t be 100% sure the feeding is in accordance with my request. At only about 14.3hh, and eight years old, he doesn’t need to weigh more than 850 lbs, in my opinion. But I’m certainly open to any guidance. Currently he is at 910 lbs. Another issue is for him to come when called.
Yours truly,
Frank Martinez
Lake City, Florida
thank you Marja…somedays he allows me to ride him for just 10 min and some days a hour…somedays he would rather just have my company on the ground…as I respect his wishes more and more he allows me to ride more and more…it is very interesting. When I first started listening and learning from Carolyn, I realized that he wanted nothing to do with me on the ground or on his back…it took me a good few months to even “graduate” from the first ritual.
What is also intersting is that now that i have worked through the rituals (and always still working on them) , we are of course closer and more fond of each other’s company, and I can talk to him now about moving certain body parts in order to find proper alignement. Before the rituals, i was commanding and pushing and now i ask and touch and wait and he thinks and says “yes, i think i can try that” or “no, i don’t think i can, wait just a minute and let me think about what you are asking me to do” I HEAR him now and he knows that I can, so he relaxes and as we all know, you can’t get much ride out of a horse who is not relaxed and offers his body to you.
Stephani, I find your post very inspiring, describing all ‘heartfelt strings of connection’ in the practice of one ride!
And Beth, I experienced your story with Pancho in exactly the same way with one of our horses a few years ago, when he didn’t want to leave the pasture on our request, but raced past the gate again and again. I thought “well, if this is your idea of having your way, I’d just as well go along with you”. He galloped and trotted around the pasture as if it was all his kingdom. At last he (of course…) decided to go back to grazing, but then it was my turn to keep him going. That pissed him off a bit, but I kept on asking him to keep trotting. The trotting around the pasture eventually turned into trotting around me in big circles, that got smaller and smaller. In the end he turned towards me as if begging to join him and he followed me like a puppy out of the pasture then, totally content. I was amazed, because I did this purely on ‘intuition’, but it worked!
Hi,
When I learned the WHR it was extremely easy for me to see how they correspond to riding. And I remember Carolyn, you saying that you should continue with your regular “training” during your practice or I should say continual practice of the rituals. I think this is important because during my integration of the rituals with my current horses and new horses I encounter, I find that it hugely impacts your mounted time and by riding, you can actually feel the effects it is having and your progress. It has even helped me with some “issues” I had been struggling with. I absolutely see this method as the foundation for all equestrian pursuits and I have found numerous creative ways to fold it into my day to day exchanges with my horses. I want to also say that this method also helps my horses show ring performance. So any of you who are wondering about that, I can attest to the benefits to performance as well.
P. S. The more comments you leve the more I enjoy writting the blog.
May times I do not answer all your letters but know that I do appreciate them and read them. So.. I hope there are alot on my return on Sat.
Have a wonderful weekend.
I will be out of town for a few days and will not be able to answer any ones comments. I will be back on Sat. and will respond at that time.
Take care. It is such a pleasure to share with all of you the things that we are sharing regarding our daily connections that our horses are choosing to share with us.
some of my ideas….
Unc and I BOND together as we walk casually to the saddle and i tack him up at liberty…He TRUSTS that I will make the tack comfortable for him and allow him time to get adjusted, I trust that he will stand still for me if I am not too hasty and careful of his tender spots…He RESPECTS me enough to stand still as I mount – i do not have to hold reins taught – and to stand still as i get comfortable in the saddle and find my stirrups, I RESPECTFULLY wait for him to take a deep breath and lower his head before we begin the ride….I look and feel for his WILLINGNESS to try a new bend or figure at the trail or ring, He hopes I am WILLING to listen and go back to what he is sure of if he gets confused and worried….I FOCUS on task at hand, the present, He FOCUSES on task at hand, the present…I follow his movement to the best of my ability with relaxed body movements – MAGNETIC CONNECTION – he follows suit and starts to swing and lift his back, lowers his head and breathes in rhythm – we move together as one – MAGNETIC CONNECTION….We come to a halt, square if possible, he nips at my shoe, time to get off…TEAMWORK
Hi Carolyn, I think there will be quite a few of us who have been waiting to hear what you have to say on this. I know for sure that there is no going back now I have understood the Rituals and experienced impact this has had. Being able to translate this into riding is essential as the alternative is to revert back to traditional methods which would really contradict everything we have been doing on the ground.
Hi Carolyn,
Yesterday I had an interesting experience with a horse that lives at the same stable where I board my Cookie.
Pancho has a history of only being “caught” when he wants to be caught whether in the big 50+pasture, or in the small quarter acre paddock. Perhaps because I do not ride him, Pancho frequently will “let” me approach him, say “hello”, and give him treats when I’m wandering about the pasture waiting for Cookie to amble her way to me, and a time or two “catch” him for his owner.
Pancho currently is in the paddock, for more hopeful “catch-ability”, for treatment of some minor wounds and convenience.
When I arrived yesterday, three gals, the owner included, had been trying to “catch” Pancho for a couple of hours. The ladies were unsuccessful and discouraged, but brightened at my arrival, hopeful that I’d be successful where they had failed.
I went into the paddock and approached, but Pancho refused my “hello’s” and offered treats – I left him to get Cookie out of the big field for her yard grazing (she wears a grazing muzzle for weight control). Once Cookie was happily munching the sweet yard grass. I loaded up my belly pouch with treats and went back to see if I could “catch” Pancho.
He was having nothing to do with my offers of “hello”, “wanna be my friend?” and treats. He would turn his back on me and trot away. At first I found myself following him. Then I remembered something you wrote about “leading from behind”. I decided to cheerfully tell Pancho “what a good boy” and proceeded to encourage him to continue trotting…jogging was more like in, unflapped, unhurried, unworried jogging. The paddock provided a natural, if large, round pen type effect, so it was sorta like lounging without a line. I would point in the direction he was headed with one hand, arm outstretch and pointing, while encouraging him to move and keep moving forward with the other hand – to keep jogging, while telling him “what a good boy.”
Round and round he jogged, I walked and talked “what a good boy” and directed him. On occasion he would turn his butt to me and my response was to behave as if his change of direction was my idea…I’d point in the new direction and ask him to continue jogging, and repeat “what a good boy.” When he would drop to a walk, I would gently, firmly, insist he return to jogging.
Eventually he jogged with his nose sniffing at the ground. Several times I would stop my feet (I was walking an inner circle positioned at his hindquarter, trying to lead from behind). Pancho caught on that he could stop when I stopped. We did this several times. He’s looking at me, licking his lips, thinking “this is different”. Then I’d sort bend over, stick my hand out in a “hello”, and softly approach. Pancho looked with interest, but at first would only let me get so close before he took a step back. I backed up also – returned to upright, pointed directionally and asked Pancho to return to jogging. We repeated this many times. All very gentle and specifically unpressured.
Eventually Pancho would allow gentle, bare touch of “hello”. Several times we did this…jogging, stopping, approach, “hello”, retreat, return to jogging. Then Pancho was not only asking for a “stop”, turning to me for “hello”, accepting my offered treat, but allowing me to enter “his space” – to where I could scratch his neck and stand beside his head facing the same direction and give him treats. We did this several times…I was careful not to make any motion that implied “caught’ch”.
Then there came the time when I backed away from Pancho and asked him to continue jogging and he refused….he didn’t exactly pair up with me, but he clearly was ready to go with me. I put his halter on and lead him in…after his medical treatment, I asked his owner to let me yard-graze him on line with my Cookie for a reward.
I’ll be interested to see how Pancho responds to me this afternoon.
Mind you – Cookie comes when called…always at a walk, like I’m privileged she’s coming
but she always comes.
forever in blue jeans,
Beth and Cookie,
in Virginia
Hi Carolyn:
That was a good explanation of the connection between the Waterhole Rituals and future training.
I just received your new Meditations dvd and it was wonderful! It truly does send a clear message as to what to expect with the sharing territory ritual. It is really a letting go of any expectations and being in the moment. The more I do this, the more valuable I see it becomes. It is developing a sense of respect between the horse and the human which translates into trust for future endeavors. My yearling is becoming so much more trusting with me and I have not had to resort to any of the previous methods I have used to do start and continue his training in living with humans! I am slower and more respectful in my dealings with him and like majic he is responding to me with less biting and evasion than I thought possible at this stage of our relationship. Thanks for all your guidance .
Rosemary & Pazo