Flash - Baby Steps, Feb 23

A bit of an emotional post for me for many reasons, but hopefully educational. I finally trained some horses! Didn't ride them, sorry, not sorry. Just took baby steps with them.
I literally need a whole podcast to talk about Flash and his training and what's happening in this video, but I'll do my best. For context, I've been rehabilitating a bunch of donkeys over the last couple of years, so my horses get very little R+ training.
I have two horses who are nearly the opposite, like chalk and cheese. Flash in the video has a very unhappy history as an ex-racer, as a Standardbred, the 'throw away' breed here in Australia. I can't imagine the things he's been through that have so deeply affected him.
Flash has been with me for nearly 9 years now. He's been trained without force or pressure for 99.99% of the time. I tried a bit of pressure and release at the start, like others before me and it was a big fat NO from Flash. He's my transition horse.
Even now, I have to be so gentle, careful, mindful, empathetic and train him in such thin slices, such small successive approximations, in such a slow and methodical way, to ensure his comfort and hopefully, enjoyment.
But there's no guarantee on how he will feel or cope any given day.
Oh, and he's one of those geldings who drops if my training is not up to par because he's feeling . . . . . . . something.
The most important thing for him, for anyone who's experienced trauma, is to feel safe, to know what to expect, to not be asked to do things that are outside of our comfort zone and to build and stretch our comfort zone so slowly and carefully, we don't even notice.
If you have a horse you are training with R+ and they struggle and get tense and offer too much, if they race ahead or cut you off or just look tense, this video might be helpful.
Flash will do more, offer more, trot rather than walk, overshoot the halt and cut me off, trot around the reverse round pen rather than walk. But not because he's "high energy" or "young" or "flighty" or whatever nonsense I've seen even clicker trainers spout. He does too much because he's tense and scared. He wants to stay out of trouble. He wants to avoid correction or punishment or unwanted attention by offering more and more and more.
Who can relate?
If you have a horse like Flash, I suggest you become a master of thin slicing, observing YOUR behaviour, not just your horse's and find ways to bring them back to you. Bring them back to earth. Bring them back to routine and predictability, because there lies comfort.
Nuts and Bolts. Basically I'm doing a pattern with Flash. Walk 4 steps, mark, feed, stand while I stroke, mark, feed, walk 4 steps, etc.
Note the "standing while I do something" behaviour was his introduction to injection training and vet checks and he's a star at that because I worked so hard on that with him. To cause him to feel safe and comfortable standing still while someone does something to him, something painful, took years of training for a horse like Flash.
Does he have the best life? Probably not. But the alternative is a whole lot worse.
I'm so proud of him, he's a beautiful horse inside and out!
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#positivereinforcementtrainingforhorses