16 minute read
ON MY TACKBOX WITH NANCY CLARKE
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again (and again)…
Nancy’s talented but sensitive Warmblood mare, Summer, has often suffered from separation anxiety. A ten-day ‘Elevate’ clinic with Tanja Kraus turned out to be just what the horse doctor ordered, writes NANCY CLARKE.
When Tanja and I first discussed the idea of a ten-day clinic it sounded as if it was exactly what I needed. It would be a chance for participants to have enough time to identify issues, work through them, and create new patterns for their trusty steeds.
It was truly a wonderful moment when after all the hard work of organizing everything, it all came together and the floats began to roll in. Suddenly my place was filled with people looking for the hose, filling water buckets, cleaning out their floats and turning them into instant cosy homes while horses neighed at their new companions. One cheeky horse tried to undo its neighbour’s rug, and a sudden burst of stress-relieving laughter filled the air.
Gradually all the visitors settled their horses, and we gathered around for our first communal meal of the ten days. What follows is a diary of the unfolding trials, tribulations, emotions and achievements I personally experienced during the clinic – which I can truly recommend to anyone as a way to bond with their horses.
Day 1:
The meet and greet session after breakfast is always an interesting insight into your fellow students on the clinic. We all shared a snippet of our horsemanship journey so far and our hopes and dreams for the clinic and beyond. There were as many different experiences as there were participants, and by the time we’d told our stories and Tanja had introduced us all to the main points of the next ten days, the morning was gone in a flash.
After lunch it was our first arena time with our horses, and a flurry of energy woke the horses from their afternoon naps. My girl, Summer, a seven-year-old Thoroughbred x Oldenburg had been showing signs of anxiety when horses come to visit our home and the first day was no exception. Summer gets consumed by the excitement of new horses and loses herself in the moment, panicking and trying to escape to her safe place down in the back paddock with her mum and the safety of the herd.
It was a bit over a year ago when I started to notice a change in her behaviour when friends came to visit, whether it was from the anxiety I was suffering due to my job at the time or because she’s always lived in a herd with her mother and found it hard to adjust to change, I just don’t know. Summer is an exceptional horse out and about and has excelled in everything I’ve asked of her – including Working Equitation, Horseback Archery and Cowboy Dressage. So this issue had me dumbfounded. I’d been seeking an answer so I could help her when she started to stress for sometime and it was that journey which led me to Tanja.
I knew a ten-day clinic was jumping in at the deep end but I figured to solve the mystery it needed to be bigger than just a visit from friends on a Saturday afternoon - because as soon as they leave Summer completely relaxes and life goes back to its tranquil state.
I should say here that Summer had a bit of bumpy start to life - her mum dripped milk for two weeks before she was born and under the vet’s recommendation we gave her colostrum the day after she was born to make sure she got all the goodness her mummy had lost. I sat with her wrapped in my arms and legs as the vital fluids drained into her system, and she didn’t struggle once, she just lay there with me until the bag was emptied.
But then when she was only a week old Summer showed signs of lameness in her front hoof. The vet recommended x-rays to ensure there was no infection, so I bundled her up into the float with her mother on that drive – all my hopes and dreams were in the float that day. I don’t think I took a breath from the
Tanja Kraus (left) on her baldy-faced paint horse, Cooper, and Nancy Clarke on her Warmblood, Summer, enjoying an evening ride.
‘ ‘ For the first time I truly understood the balance between physical ability and mental stability in our horse ...
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moment I sat behind the wheel until the x-ray results came back and she was given the all clear.
The vet prescribed a cautionary dose of oral antibiotics and I was to give them to her daily. The medicine was the consistency of creamy honey and hard to push out of the syringe. By the fourth day Summer was wise to what was happening and it was getting harder and harder to administer. She was quickly losing all trust in humans and I was devastated. Her mum was becoming more protective too, which hindered proceedings. After some stealthy manoeuvres we managed to contain her but she screamed like I have never heard a horse scream before, it made me feel sick to the stomach. With the horrible sound still ringing in my ears I called the vet and begged him to let me stop the medicine. He didn’t agree but I couldn’t give it to my little girl again. Everyday for the next seven years I’ve worked hard to rebuild her trust but deep down it seems that her experience is still occasionally underlying her behaviour and it can manifest itself at any time as ‘Fear Aggression’ as it’s known in animals.
But here we are seven years later, with many adventures under our belts already, with everyone in the arena ready for the first session, running through ground-work exercises of lateral flexion, forequarter and hindquarter yields. Summer chose exactly this time to manifest her anxiety - squealing and not settling with the horses that were to be her company for the next 10 days surrounding her.
Gradually, with the dint of some solid groundwork, we got through some of the lingering anxiety issues and with help from Tanja we worked through the fog. It was a relief when she had a massive download, yawning and shaking it out - I didn’t realise how tense I was as well until I started yawning with her. It’s hard to balance your energy when your normally calm and collected horse loses it in a situation that to any other horse would be perceived as normal – at least after the initial greeting frenzy is over - but the ground work helped her find confidence in familiarity and a few brain cells started to click. I began to refine my energy conversation and observed what my body was asking of her in detail. It was nice to watch her transform her movements into a balanced fluid forward and flowing rhythm.
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A: When it came to liberty work, Summer chose to stay close Nancy. B: Tanja Kraus – anxiety interrupted. Tanja simply places herself between Summer and the fence, and finally Summer’s anxiety lessens, and she becomes curious.
Day 2:
hate to say it, but Summer was horrible, her internal struggle is really real and I was desperate to find a way to help her back to her calm, confident self. She couldn’t even keep her feet still by the mounting block so I just kept offering her a good deal every time she settled, and eventually I was able to mount safely but that was short lived and soon we were taking instruction from Tanja on how to help her out while I was in the saddle. Getting her mind engaged meant a lot of hind-quarter yields and releasing to forward. She would settle for brief moments where I was able to join in the clinic activities then something would trigger her and we would be back to our exercises. Thank goodness for instilling a good one-rein stop in her training - who knows where it might have escalated without it?
What I learned on that first day was that horses have anxiety for as many reasons as humans do, and any given situation will trigger one horse when yet another horse will be fine in the same environment. This would shape my journey for the next 10 days, learning the tools to enable me to help my horse out and allow her to find her confidence in any given situation - with or without me.
Day 3:
Summer spent the night in the yards away from her herd. It was heartbreaking seeing her so stressed and hearing her calling through the night. In the morning Tanja and I decided it was unfair and unnecessary to separate her from them given that she was at home, so from then on we let her go back with her herd for the evenings, with a bit of time spent in the yards through the day to simulate a work-day outing and to create familiarity in the routine.
Due to Summer’s unique behaviour she was selected by Tanja for the morning demonstration for helping horses to learn self-soothing – so that they can learn ways to help them calm themselves down when they are feeling overwhelmed emotionally. The aim is to help them achieve balanced mental health when they’re in stressful situations.
All we did was to let Summer out of her yard. Of course she went straight to the fence separating her from the herd. Having to stand there while she ran up and down the back fence, faster and faster, sweating and spiralling into a manic state was tough for me, but watching Tanja was a revelation.
Tanja interrupted Summer’s manic cantering but did not ask anything of her. The more Tanja interrupted the behaviour the longer the breaks were between her bouts of running, which also gradually slowed down. Summer began to approach Tanja and it looked to me like she was waiting for Tanja to give her something to do. By not asking anything of Summer, Tanja all of a sudden became very interesting to her, much more interesting than running along the fence! Tanja showed Summer strong leadership by not getting involved in her drama, by showing her everything was ok and by standing strong but quiet in herself. It finally gave Summer the confidence to lower her head, eat and start to release her anxiety,
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C: Best Friends Forever. Summer has been with Nancy since birth, but still has her horse ‘issues’.
D: Horses and humans relaxing together. E: The final day, and Nancy and Summer got to play with a Garrocha pole.
and to realise that she was safe.
All of this challenged my belief that to help a horse out you need to keep it moving. What I didn’t realise was that by keeping Summer’s feet moving from the moment she felt her anxiety building, I was actually making the situation worse and compounding the issue by putting her to work. Yes, there is comfort in repetition for our horses, but once they are past thinking all we are doing is adding energy to unwanted behaviour and fuelling their anxiety.
That night I had a lot to think about.
Day 4:
beautiful autumn Queensland weather. We went for a play down the back on 22’ leads and Summer felt much more like her natural self - with only a hint of the previous day’s roller coaster. We jumped logs, played peak-a -boo around trees, and all just enjoyed hanging out together. If felt like we were getting somewhere. D
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Day 5:
The half-way mark and an opportunity to take stock of what we’d learned so far. Classroom Biomechanics in the morning and a cruise up to Tamborine Mountain in our Classic cars (my other passion) with the stereo blaring, singing along to some classic rock for a well-earned break, a few beers and a little retail therapy to ease the strain on our brains. Day 6:
Each day brought new knowledge and improvements to my horsemanship. Summer was really starting to tune in now as she found comfort in the routine. Every day I kept her in the yards with the other horses and each night she went back in with her herd. Each day she settled more and found comfort in the consistency. Day 7:
And what a day it was. Playing down the back with stunning views of Flinders Peak in the morning and then an afternoon session focusing on elevation and collection and putting all the pieces of the puzzle together with some great explanations and demonstrations from Tanja. With only three days left I finally got some true understanding of the athleticism our horses need to perform true collection, and the keys to communicating this to my girl. Day 8:
The day of the Obstacle Challenge is where we put all the skills we’d acquired over the previous seven days to the test. Summer was at her personal best and we cracked a few firsts. For instance, we’d never ridden with a large Aussie flag before. We started small - with it wrapped around the flag pole and worked our way up to a full open flag, with Summer at a walk to make sure she was 100% ok before we went up to trot then to canter. I returned the pole to its resting place and moved on with a big cheesy grin on my face - I was so proud of my girl.
Then…drum roll please – we danced with a Garrocha pole! After checking Summer was ok with a three-metre long pool pole we practiced the 10metre circle first, then a turn on the haunches with her head going under the pole, her ears hit the pole, which made me laugh – I know her ears are a bit big. We tried a turn on the forehand to put her hind under the pole and I nearly broke
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my wrist – there’s a knack to it that’s for sure. It was a huge day and I felt blessed to have such a wonderful, magical horse in my life. Day 9:
For our final lesson day each student picked a lesson they wanted to learn more about, with all of us joining in.
I chose collection as my topic because I wanted a more in-depth understanding of true collection and engagement. There is a fine art to balancing your horse between seat and hand, and Tanja showed us some balancing exercises to encourage our horses to use the correct muscles to help build the strength it takes to maintain collected movements. The detail in our communication is the key to keeping them supple and fluid through our ‘ask’.
For the first time I truly understood the balance between physical ability and mental stability in our horse, and how important it is to be mindful of how we approach each interaction with our horses because after the crowds have gone home, and the ribbons gather dust, all we have left is our relationship.
F: Nancy uses a bosal to ride Summer in. G: A bit of a break up the mountain in their classic cars. All pictures: Robert Frola from Foto Synergy.
Day 10:
The last day was our Liberty Day, and Tanja chose to focus on the connection - not what you can do at liberty with your horse. Summer was free to choose to run the fence again as she had on the second day, but she surprised me when she chose to be with me. When I walked away she crept closer to me, grazing while I listened to Tanja. Was this the change I had been seeking? Did we find it? I ended the clinic optimistic that I now had a whole heap of tools in my toolkit to help me understand my horse better.
Beyond the Clinic:
A week later I invited some friends over for a play. As their float arrived I noticed Summer starting to pace the fence line – but not manically as she would have done before. A friend was borrowing my schoolmaster steed, Junior, and while I was tacking him up I noticed Summer had stopped pacing and was staring at us from her paddock.
I simply continued with my job and suddenly in a thunder of hooves there was Summer right by the gate – ready and waiting. It was like something had clicked inside her and she wanted to be part of the action. She was keen to be haltered and saddled, with no squealing and only a few signs of very mild anxiety. I took her slow, keeping her distance from the visiting horse until I felt confident she was coping. We went for a play down the back with some obstacles and then out for a trail ride and only when we started heading back to her herd did her anxiety begin to peak. But this time it was different; this time I had some tools to help us get through it and we made it all the way home safe, sound and very happy.
