The Catching Game Soap Opera

By the time Cloud stopped letting me catch him we were about a year into the journey - and still in L1. That's a BAD thing by the way. Don't do what I did - please!! Learn the *concept* of the games and then move immediatly into L2 - do not pass go, do not collect $200! Staying too long in L1 caused a TON of problems for me and should be avoided at *all* costs. The games do not need to be perfect - they cannot be perfect until you get into L2 and L3. You may not be able to pass your L1 assessment until you're partway into L2 -- that's OK! Get out of L1 pergatory NOW, for my sanity!!

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OK, that said, let's continue!



We could do all the games sort of. Not well, but sort of. Circling was still a PITA and Sideways wasn't much better. Squeeze was OK so long as it wasn't OVER anything, and Porcupine, Driving and Yo-Yo were better than those ones, but still not great. I had started riding - if you can call it that. More like sit on him bareback and if he so much as POOPS I'll get off because it sort of feels like a buck (phsaw!). Yeah - that Johnny really scared me! We'd sort of started playing with applying the games, but most of that knowledge is in L2, not L1, so I didn't have enough information to do things right and Cloud was really BORED. As in "out of his skull". Really.



((BTW, the last thing you want to mess with it a bored out of his skull Left Brain Introvert. It sucks. Really!))



As I mentioned earlier, I had gotten to a point where I knew that I was partly responsible for how Cloud felt about me, but I didn't understand the full extent of it. It was about then that we began our Catching Game Soap Opera.



Cloud was never thrilled to see me in pasture (except for a few rare moments) but he always stopped wherever he was at and waited for me to come get him. That is, until this point in time. We had been stuck in the dungeons of L1 far too long (and I don't even remember why..), he was bored with me, I was doing a lot of things wrong --> and this was how he planned to tell me! The first time it happened, I spent an hour and a half in a three acre pasture following him up and down the hills all over the place, trying every arrow in my (very small) quivver to get him to come to me. Nothing worked!

The second time it happened I spent another hour and a half, part trying to catch him, part trying (and failing!) to ignore him and part chasing after him with my carrot stick in pure, unadulterated frustration. Again, nothing worked.

This was interspersed over a couple weeks and was my first major "ah-ha" moment. We'd had minor ones before, but this was a true BFO (blinding flash of the obvious!) - and our first one at that. I'd spend a bunch of time trying and failing to catch him one day and then the next day (again - this means "session" as they could be over a week apart) he'd be really easy to catch - maybe even glad to see me. And it continued like this for, gosh, at least a couple of months, with me going out once or twice a week and being successful at catching him about half the time.

Remember that up to this point I had no conception that what I did on a daily basis would affect his mood and opinion of me - after all, horses live in the moment, they don't think about the future, so how could my actions change things?! Ahh - famous last words!

It was in the depths of my frustration one afternoon of unsuccessful catching (and you should understand my frustration; remember I only was able to see him once or maybe twice in a week, so if I couldn't catch him that was an entire week wasted!) that I noticed a pattern. My ability to catch him was directly related to the way we concluded our previous session. If things went well, if I didn't get angry or frustrated, if I kept his best interests front and centre - he would be really easy to catch the next day. If, on the other hand, I got frustrated with him, if I worked him too hard, if I made him extremely bored, if I didn't give him enough "down" time (i.e. it was all pressure, no release) - he would be impossible to catch the next day.

This single concept changed EVERYTHING I did with Cloud from that moment onwards, and it entirely altered the path we would take. Finally I seemed to understand what it meant that frustrations would turn into facinations - this was such a frustration for me, but the second I understood it, it became facinating! Once that little problem "clicked" for me, the majority of our problems went away. It was absolutely facinating!!

From that point on, I became extremely concious about how we played, how we learned. I became extremely - almost minutely - aware about when he was getting frustrated, or bored, and even in those early stages when I didn't understand the HOW, I was beginning to understand the need to change and fix things. That was when I began to learn the importance of quitting when things go badly - or before they do if possible. I had previously though that if I quit when things were bad then he'd "won" and I'd be in trouble. In some things, of course, that would have been the case. But if I don't have a definate solution to the problem, then struggling over it would be pointless, and I began to realize the truth to that.

I said earlier that there is a moment in time when the balance begins to shift, where things stop being so out of control, so manic-depressive. There is a moment when the bad days start to lesson, and the good days start to increase. This moment, this BFO, was my turning point, my shift in time.

I still had plenty of bad days after that. It wasn't an immediate change. The balance went from 70% bad days and 30% good days to 69% bad days and 31% good days, and it steadily improved from there. But that day, that BFO marked a major turning point, and it was a very positive one at that.

I can't really explain all that that BFO meant to me. There are so many things involved with it. But one of the biggest things it did was teach me that if things go badly, I should probably be blaming myself first. After this moment, when I would get frustrated with the circling game (still a tretcherous thorn in our side!), instead of taking my frustration and anger out on my horse, I would stop what I was doing, walk away and take it out on a tree, or something else - or I would just go away, cry it off, and then return. In doing so I made a drastic shift in our relationship - that one thing made a marked improvement on Cloud. It was harder for me - I had to learn to deal with my emotions on my own, by myself, which often seemed an impossible goal - but it was so much better for us. From that moment on I also started to plan for the next day - to really learn what it means to set myself up for success. And I began judging myself not on how he thinks of me at the end of the day - but by how thinks of me at the end of the next day. All these things were major, relationship altering changes, and they strongly influence the way I work with my horse even today.

Thank goodness for BFOs!