Week 3 becomes work & Ollie learns to wait for cues

Sorry about the lengthy hiatus on the blog updates. I’ve been in the midst of a family crisis. Ollie has continued to receive training and healing, however; and I’ve been keeping track to get blog updates out in order of how things are going.

Ollie is finding that things are less fun the last half of this week. Now, it’s starting to be work, the glow of attention is wearing off, and he’s a little stiff and sore from doing things he’s not used to doing. He’s also showing us some of the holes and behaviors that we need to address, which is perfect because we can’t do anything about them if we don’t see them.

Three things have become obvious: 1) Ollie has trouble moving his feet in reverse, especially his back feet. 2) Ollie not only anticipates, he goes to the next level and takes the action he guesses is required. 3) If Ollie is pressured and can’t figure out what action to take, he gets upset and goes kapoof.

Ollie now knows two new ways to back up. One is to tap the air or line with the stick. the other is to wiggle the rope, wave the stick back and forth under the rope, and walk toward him to back him up. Ollie doesn’t mind the first method. The second puts more pressure on him, and if he doesn’t back out of the way, he can get whacked with the stick. (Not hard. He’s sensitive. There’s no need to wallop him.)

The stickier the feet, the higher the head. You can see from his foot position how he could easily rear.

This second technique really shows how sticky Ollie’s feet are, which he showed by throwing his head up high. Sticky feet can really get a horse in trouble. He actually reared up a few times because his hind feet weren’t moving but his front feet were. He wasn’t being mean or trying to be intimidating. He just didn’t have any other place to go. With his size, though, that’d be scary under saddle. It was still a little scary on the ground the first time, too!

Ollie did figure it out, eventually. On his second to last back up, he flung his head really high but got two good steps back with his hind feet without his front feet leaving the ground. He did such a good job, he got another chance to do it and was successful again. After that, we gave him some processing time as he had smoke coming out of his ears.

As he was working on his back up skills, Ollie showed us that he could anticipate at a level that would put an Arabian to shame. (Don’t be offended. I like Arabians. I own one and ride another!) When Brandie and Ollie reached a wall, Ollie looked at her for a moment, and when he didn’t get a cue right away, he trotted around and turned to face her 180 degrees opposite of where he started. It was pretty funny, but we were surprised at the level of action he would take with no command.

This is the sort of thing that can really get a horse in trouble. If he decides wrong, there can be a lot of trouble.

After backing close to the opposite wall, Ollie anticipated again. This time, he made some less good decisions. Brandie wanted him to wait, and he couldn’t figure out that all he had to do was stand still. Certain he had to do something, he bolted forward, not quite at Brandie but close, and started lunging in circles. He was pretty upset. When Brandie stopped him and told him to back up again, he got very confused, and if he was a person, he’d have burst into tears.

It was after this incident that he finally got the two good steps backward.

This was one of those moments where we had another talk with him. When he finished working, I explained to him that he wasn’t bad, and didn’t anything wrong. We weren’t even upset.This was part of what he needed to learn. We also explained to him that he didn’t need to figure out what to do next. Rather, he needed to wait for the cue for what to do next. If he didn’t know the cue, we would help him learn it, and making mistakes was part of the process.

Waiting for the cue seemed to be foreign concept. He was really used to “filling in the gaps” in the commands and thought it was his job as a way to support the person (Tara). People frequently think that kind of anticipating is really cool because “gee, look how smart he is!” (And Ollie is a smart boy!). I’ve done it with my own horses. But, as much as I appreciate their efforts, I also ask my horses to wait for the cue rather than deciding on their own when to do what.

I explained to Ollie that his responsibility was to stay between Tara and ground and take the cues as they came. It was NOT to decide what to do next.

Ollie let his breath out and licked and chewed. The message had gone in, and he liked the idea that he didn’t have to do it all.

I said to Tara later (exactly when I’m not sure) that Ollie was a really good guesser. And when there were only a few choices to guess from, he did a great job. That made it look like he knew what he was doing and what she was asking. As he advanced in his training, however, there were more choices and guessing right got a lot harder. Then he got frustrated and upset and things escalated from there.

Next steps:  Confirm backing and shoulder moving. Still teaching Ollie to stay out of a person’s space while teaching him to move his parts independently.

We Haven’t Forgotten Ollie

Hey all. Sorry there haven’t been any updates on Ollie. We’re still working with him, and he’s doing great, but there’s been a very serious illness in my family, and I just haven’t had time to get posts done.

I should be getting things up soon, and I’ll be posting week by week so you can follow Ollie’s progress.

Healing: Ollie as Humpty Dumpty

Sorry all. This is a long one. Turns out I needed to do a lot more background and explanation before I get into what I’m actually doing to heal Ollie. I think it’ll catch you up so when you read future posts, they’ll make some sense.

When I started talking to Tara about healing Ollie, she said she thought he was as healed as he was going to be. He was as good as he was going to get.

I find that’s a pretty typical belief system–it’s as good as it’s going to get–but it’s also really limiting.

I don’t subscribe to that belief system. I believe anything is possible, and we are only limited by ourselves. Thankfully, Tara is open to that idea and gave us permission to do healing work with Ollie in addition to training.

Looking at Ollie physically

Physically, Ollie has both the fortune and misfortune of being one of those really athletic and flexible horses put together with rubber bands. The fortune part is easy to understand, but misfortune? It’s misfortune because people very frequently don’t recognize real physical dysfunction in these horses. They still appear four kinds of flexible and seem to be pushing from behind when they’re really not. They also pass vet tests with flying colors until they develop diagnosable pathology.

For all his illness and injury history (read Ollie’s story), Ollie still appears really flexible. He can trot and canter with his nose on the ground and do a pretty passable giraffe impression. He’s bendy and can get his nose to his flank, and he tracks up, too. How could there possibly be a problem now that his neck has had time to heal?

In fact, Ollie is really bound up through his shoulders and ribs, and his low neck is jammed up. He’s so stuck he can’t really lift his withers.Think about how you feel when your shoulders feel like they’re attached to your ears and you have an anvil on your head pressing your neck into your ribs, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what Ollie is experiencing.

In addition, Ollie’s preference for traveling with his nose on the ground has over-developed and tightened the muscles and tissues at the base of his neck and into his chest. So, not only are his shoulders at his ears and his neck smashed into his body, his neck is thrust toward the ground, similar to the forward-thust head and neck of the person who spends way too much time in front of a computer for too many years.

Tara says he always wanted to work with his nose on the ground, but that things got out hand with his behavior after the PHF. As much muscle as he lost, it would be reasonable to assume that just standing up made him stiff. Without rehab riding after he got better, it’s also reasonable to assume (because it’s how tissue works) that the stiffness never really went away. If only he had looked stiff!

And then there was Florida….

It all adds up to a horse who can’t really come through because he can’t get his shoulders out of the way to use his hindquarters. If he were a human, I would expect he would likely have balance issues, fascial pain, and reduced power. With Ollie, I see he has balance issues (doesn’t know where to carry his head), I know he doesn’t push from behind and lacks power (lack of balance, bound up front end), and I can feel (and see) the fascial tension in his body.

Looking at Ollie emotionally

Emotionally*, Ollie is tangled up. He’s got a complicated, rather co-dependent relationship with Tara–one of the hazards of being an orphan and being raised by someone who loves to love and needs to be needed to the point that she can give herself away by accident. He feels like he has to support her, hold her emotions for her, help her feel good and in control. Taking on that role makes it hard for him to let her call the shots, and he’s taken to anticipating to such an extent that he gets confused and angry, followed by panicky, when he’s asked to do something different. Then he feels like a bad horse for making a mistake. It also makes him needy and dependent on Tara for approval, and when she gets frustrated, he feels like a failure.

Ollie’s emotions are more difficult to deal with than his physical body. On a physical level, his emotions are stored in his cells, and they disrupt his physical body manifesting as illness, injury, and pain. Energetically, his unresolved issues and emotions create blocks in his energy field that disrupt his field, making him susceptible to physical illness, injury, and pain. It’s a double whammy.

It’s difficult and often impossible to get physical results without addressing the emotional blocks. It’s rare that I work with an animal who has chronic problems without working with his or her emotional issues.

Does he need healing or training?

The short answer is he needs both.

Many times, a “born broke” horse with Ollie’s behavior problems does well with appropriate training because he’s just missing pieces about how to do things. (The trick is finding the pieces!) Rehab riding for a fella like Ollie is also really important to loosen him up and teach him that he can move his parts independently of each other. However, when there are ongoing or deep physical and emotional issues, healing work will create change on a level that training alone cannot reach. As the horse heals physically and emotionally, he’s more receptive to training, and concepts that could take weeks and months to teach, if the horse could do them at all, can be taught in days.

What is this “healing” Ollie’s getting?

Energy Touch, Bowenwork, and a little bit of massage/fascial release.

The main technique I’m using with Ollie is Energy Touch. It’s an off-the-body modality that I use to repair and clear Ollie’s energy field and physical body. I work out to the 53rd level of the energy field, repairing the grids that surround the physical body, strengthening universal connections needed for optimal health, and optimizing energy flow through the field. I work with a hologram of the body to repair or replace organs, systems, tissues, and DNA, healing the body down to the cellular level. I also use a technique called cellular memory release to release and resolve stored emotions and traumas from the body. This work goes far beyond the actual physical body to not only repair the physcial body but to minimize and protect it against further damage. I am guided in this work by my team of guides as well as by the client’s guides. It’s not just a series of random guesses as to what the client needs. I’ve been a healer for 16 years and this is the most amazing technique I’ve every used or seen.

Bowenwork (and massage) support the physical body through the healing created by the Energy Touch. Sometimes, it’s hard for the physical body to keep pace with the changes in the energy body. These techniques help ease discomfort and speed healing physically.

Putting Ollie together again

We don’t really know how this will all turn out, but I think Ollie’s chances of being sound and happy with a good future are really high. Horses tend to let things go pretty easily, and he’s ready to be healthy and move forward.

Humpty Dumpty might not have made it, but I’m confident Ollie will.
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* As an FYI, I (and Brandie) do horse communication as part of healing and training. It’s how I know how Ollie feels and what he’s thinking. Brandie and I frequently cross-reference what we get, and it’s usually quite close.

Ollie’s told me a number of things, which I’ve shared with Tara as appropriate but I’m not going to share here. It’s a confidentiality thing, and it’s important for all my clients, including the equines. If he were human, I might write about him, but I wouldn’t be sharing his name.

Week 3: Back up and move forward

What a difference a week makes. Ollie’s energy is so much different from when he first came in and even from last week. He’s so much more relaxed. Brandie doesn’t feel like she has to keep him in her sights to avoid being bitten anymore. I was doing some bodywork on him and he grabbed at my fingers but not in the “I have to bite” way, rather in the “Oh geez that feels good!” way. (Still gotta keep an eye on that, but it’s got a different motivation.)

This week, Ollie is still working on inside turns during free lunging and on backing up. His free lunging and inside turns are really coming along. He’s working much more off Brandie’s body position and is much more confident and responsive with what’s being asked.

Ollie already knows how to back up, but we’re teaching him some new methods for backing for a few reasons. One reason is for respect, which I mentioned in a prior blog entry. Another is to help him learn to move his feet easily and gracefully without hesitation on command. And finally, it’s a way to teach him to stay out of your personal space unless he’s actually been invited in. Technically, I suppose the last two reasons are aspects of respect, but they’re worth mentioning separately. During backing, his feet are still a bit sticky, which causes him to raise his head practically to the rafters because he’s so tall, and he’s not straight. He’s really getting the hang of it, though, and is able to lift his feet to back up rather than drag them through the sand. As he gets better and his feet become better lubricated, his head will come down, and he’ll learn to back up straight. Check out Ollie backing up below. 

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Backing, of course, is a great exercise for opening the lumbar spine (low back) and strengthening the hindquarters. It’s also a great exercise to highlight back end weakness and stiffness. Ollie has definite stiffness in his hinder portion. After backing a few steps, he starts swishing his tail and picking up his hind legs in that hitchy twitchy way horses do when they’re uncomfortable. I’m so pleased to see this problem now. This sort of thing can make it difficult for a horse to really push from behind, especially with a rider to support. Potentially, it could lead to bad behavior under saddle, but knowing about it now allows us to do something about it and helps us prepare him better for riding. To counter the backing stiffnesses, we walk him forward every so often and when he’s done with his backing exercises, Brandie sends him out for a few laps of free lunging in each direction. Keep posted for more information about healing Ollie’s physical and emotional issues. Ollie is really a pretty cool horse. The more we work with him, the more we like him. He’s really sensitive but not at all spooky. He’s showing a very high level of “try,” and backing up really seems to be propelling him forward.

Week 2: Getting up to speed

So, last week was still about assessing Ollie even as he was learning some new things. After all, we’d only worked him a few times at the start of the week and only just started to ask him to commit to some work.

He certainly likes to do things his own way, in his own time, with a minimum amount of effort. I wouldn’t call him lazy, but he does believe in conserving his energy. At the same time, he’s not really opposed to what you ask as long as you’re not too serious. Oh, and he’s pretty sensitive. I can see where this could be a problem under saddle.

Tara tells me he gets pissy but only has four or five big tantrums a year. Sweetie, I think one of those ever in a life time would be one too many. Have you noticed how big your horse is?? I know you’re tall, but….

Anyway, our goal is to get him moving his feet forward, backward, left, and right when asked. That gets two things to happen: 1) He submits to the person moving his feet (read respect), just like he does for the herd leader in the pasture, and 2) he gets good at moving his feet (read responsive and willing), so his feet don’t get stuck and cause him to do something naughty or dangerous like rearing.

The plan is to see the bad behaviors come out while we’re working on the ground. The bad behaviors happen when he’s being pushy, disrespectful, and/or reactive. By seeing them during groundwork, we can work through them safely, and if we’ve been thorough with the groundwork, we won’t see those behaviors under saddle. If we do see them under saddle, that means we need to revisit some groundwork.

Still figuring out the inside turn. Ollie's not yet sure this isn't some joke. He really improved as the week went on.

This last week, Brandie’s been working with free lunging Ollie in our 60′ x 100′ arena and teaching him inside turns as well as moving and yielding his hip. The lunging is a respect thing, and a horse really needs to pay attention to do it. Ollie doesn’t quite get and is not sold on the inside turns, but after only a couple of days, he’s already doing much better. We are both extremely thankful that Tara taught Ollie to free lunge as a little

Ollie digs being asked to come to the person in the middle after working. Note the eyes lower than Brandie's.

squabbler. He does a pretty good job of maintaining his gait, so there’s no chasing him around to get him to keep going. He also has no fear of cantering inside. That speeds the whole process up a lot.

Brandie only needs to tap the air for Ollie to move. Ollie can really cross over.

Moving the hip is a turn or pivot on the forehand, and it’s a precursor to yielding the hip, which teaches the horse to move his butt around to look at you with two eyes. He’s quite talented at it, actually. No real surprise there. As he gets better at moving his hip, he’ll move just from a look with the right posture.

We do desensitize him, too, so he won’t just go around in circles every time you walk toward his back end. That’s a distinctly annoying and counterproductive behavior that makes me crazy.

Ollie has one bad habit that I like less than anything else we’ve seen. He trots and canters with his nose on the ground while free lunging. He was not doing it on the lunge line, so it was new to us. As the week progressed, he spent less time with his nose on the ground, but it’s a well-practiced habit that could lead to problems later.

Watching Ollie travel like a blood hound and alternating that with periods of traveling high headed made me think he there were still some significant neck problems. After all these days of watching him travel, I have a good idea of how he carries himself and how he deals with balance, so it was time for the hands-on assessment.

I was not surprised to find definite issues in his neck and withers. His behavior actually makes some sense, although it’s a bit extreme, for a horse with such problems.

You may be able to see Ollie's lower neck looking short in this photo. It's hard to photograph, but his inversion highlights it a bit more.

One of the interesting things about Ollie is that he appears very flexible when he’s actually compressed through his neck. I’m not sure pictures can show it unless you know what you’re looking at, but looking at him from the side, he looks like he ran head first into a wall and his neck got compressed like a slinky and shoved back between his shoulders. Needless to say, he will be getting Energy Touch healing. I did work on him a couple of times after he was diagnosed with wobblers, and this work will be a continuation of that.

Chillin' at the end of the day. Ollie knows how to relax.

I can’t wait to see what the healings and the next week’s training brings. We really like Ollie and so far we’re really pleased with him.

Oliver’s First Week (Feb 5 to Feb 12, 2012)

Ollie's first moments in his new pasture. Check out the size of the pasture.

After coming off the trailer, Oliver went out immediately with the herd he’ll be hanging with. The pasture is huge and the horses not aggressive so we weren’t worried. We were expecting a horse race, but that didn’t develop either. Bummer.

Ollie tends to stay on the outside of the group (and crib!), but this herd is really good about inviting new horses in, and they love to play and run. Someone usually comes over to find out what he’s doing and see if he’ll play. He’s figuring it out, and they’re pretty persistent. He’s living in a stall next to Summer, the one pony on the farm. That makes him happy and is helping him adjust since his pals at home are a pony and mini. Summer thinks he’s great and is always sticking her nose in his stall.

Before he came in, Tara told us that Ollie was pushy, constantly in her personal space and a biter–among other things. Some of that comes of being an orphan, and some from lack of boundaries. Tom, the barn owner, confirmed that Ollie was a bit of a spoiled brat. 

Brandie did her own assessment just by leading him around on a loose lead to see what he did. It was pretty clear that his oral tendencies could get him in trouble, but he’s very subtle. He sneaks his nose closer and closer and then can’t hardly help but bite when he’s close enough. No biting occured, but it was clear you couldn’t take your attention away.

Brandie helped him understand that he needed to give her some space, mostly by working off her energy. It’s always fun to watch this. It’s very sublte, and people often don’t even realize she’s doing anything when she does it. She did a lot of stopping and starting, moving his head or body away when he got too close. After just a few minutes, Oliver was doing a much better job staying in his space,moving off with her, stopping at her shoulder as best he could (he is a giant, so sometimes that last step carries him a bit more forward). He clearly had smoke coming out his ears–our term for processing something new and really taking it in.

After his third time out, Ollie was able to stay in his own space even on turns without grabbing at Brandie, stop at her shoulder, and stand quietly in his own space without grabbing at her for a minute or two after they stopped.

On the lunge, Ollie worked only on walk, trot, reverse, and whoa when asked–as opposed to when he felt like it. The goal was to prepare him for free lunging, and we wanted to be sure he wasn’t going to do anything silly when we turned him loose. That’s a lot of horse to have be silly.

The first night, he was pretty sure Brandie was retarded. When asked to walk from trot, he’d get mad and canter a few laps. Every time he was asked to reverse on the lunge line, he’d take off, too. He shortly realized that he wasn’t being asked to go faster and slowed down without being asked. Again, he had smoke coming out of his ears.

By the third night, he came out focused in and ready to work. He wasn’t perfect, but he was pretty close. It was pretty impressive, actually.

Oliver is used to wearing an aid, like Vienna reins, when lunged. We don’t use those aids during lunging, so he was on his own for balance. He spent the first night with his head either in the rafters or plunged low most of the time. It was something he displayed while being ridden, too, so we were actually kind of happy to see it because it confirmed out suspicions that there was a balance problem. By the third night, he was walking on the line as relaxed and quiet as he does in the pasture. At the trot, he wasn’t plunging down anymore or getting as high. To get to the place where he really wants his head, he has to figure out how to use his body differently. That will come in time. The free lunging will help, and chances are he’s going to have to figure it out all over again with a rider on his back.

Ollie’s really smart and learns quickly but has a slightly slow processing time. We think that will get better with practice. He also learns patterns really quickly and then tunes out, so we’ll be sure to keep changing things up to keep him tuned in and interested.

The big fella is also very sensitive. (I should interject here that Brandie and I both do horse communication, and we spend time talking to our horses to get their input, help them through emotional barriers and traumas, see what their interests are, and any number of things. We incorporate what they tell us into their training and their healing.) We had a good and healing conversation with him on his second night out because he was clearly feeling bad that we were discussing him. We explained that talking about him didn’t make him bad or wrong. It just  meant he had something to learn. He said he liked it at Stone Meadow–having friends is fun. We talked about his role and responsibility with Tara, and told him his job was just to be a horse. He was very relieved, but he wasn’t sure being a horse was the good gig we thought it was. At the end of the conversation, he stepped forward and gently extended his nose to me and said essentially, “Thank you for seeing me.”

Ollie didn’t get his fourth night out this week thanks to the weather keeping us home, but the next step is free lunging and some basic ground work. I think he’s gonna dig it!

New Beginnings and Last Chances

When Oliver, a 7 year old 18hh warmblood with issues, came to Stone Meadow Stables in Sand Lake, MI, on February 5, 2012, he started a new chapter in his life. In this chapter is his chance for a new beginning, but it might be his last chance, too, based on his history.

Oliver has more lives than a cat, which is very fortunate because he’s been star-crossed from birth. Owned and bred by Tara Keel of Holland, MI, Oliver earned the name Oliver Twist when he was miraculously found in the woods after a six hour search that began after his mother was found not pregnant and without a baby at her side. The proverbial needle in the haystack.

Oliver was supposed to be the horse that took Tara to the big time in dressage, but since he was found in the woods, Oliver has had a host of different issues. (Read Oliver’s full story.) So far, he’s managed to land more or less on his feet–except for the fact that he’s got behavioral issues made worse by being an orphan, training snafus, and injuries/illnesses, etc., all of which have combined to make him a scarey and dangerous ride at times.

Dear Oliver’s troubles are many, but I (Sue Krenselewski, healer) and Brandie Feasal, trainer, believe these problems can  be overcome. As the healer, I will use a modality called Energy Touch to help Oliver heal bodily, emotionally/mentally, and sprititually. As the trainer, Brandie will teach Oliver what he needs to know to succeed on the ground and under saddle. Together, Brandie and I will teach Tara how to be with Oliver safely as well as help her understand what he mirrors for her both in their relationship and in her personal life.

Join us as this new chapter unfolds for Oliver and Tara. New beginning or last chance? I’m confident it will be a new beginning for both in ways neither would have expected.