Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6
C ole
Before Saturday, I can’t think of a single reason for how I can get out of my agreement to teach Johan. Of course, I had hoped he would have forgotten all about it. I’d wanted to avoid him after my almost panic attack on Sunday, but he just appeared the other day and then Sam started talking to him, of course. So there he was in front of me. He didn’t make me feel uncomfortable again. In fact he wasn’t bad. He was friendly and I was so relieved about it, that against my better judgement I again agreed to teach him. I can’t believe I did that. Why couldn’t I have just walked away?
I’d already said that I wasn’t on call—it’s not my weekend, so I can’t use that as an excuse. And I do want to spend some time training the horses, anyway. So I’ll make a start and if Johan turns up—so be it.
It doesn’t help that Tom knows. He brought it up during lunch the other day. If we’re all around at lunchtime, then we usually eat with our parents and it was the first time this week we’d managed it. Otherwise, we usually grabbed something when we had time.
He’d acted very casually when there was a lull in the conversation.
“So, Johan said he might see us Saturday. What did he mean?” he asked, catching me off guard.
I shot him an angry glare, which was all I could do. I wasn’t going to swear at him in front of Mum and Dad.
“It’s nothing. He just wants to come and learn some things about training the horses.”
Tom earned himself another glare when he smirked at me but thankfully he didn’t say anything. My mother on the other hand…
“Oh, he was a lovely boy. You will invite him to lunch, won’t you?”
“I don’t know, Mum.” I cringed a little inside. I certainly won’t be inviting him to lunch. “I don’t know when he’ll be arriving.”
“Oh, okay then, love.” She sounded disappointed. This confused me; how could she be disappointed, she’d only met him once?
Saturday morning, I’m a jittery mess. I want to cancel, but I have no way to contact Johan to put him off. I want to cancel but know Tom will find out if I do, and the thought of the questions everyone will ask is as bad as the fear washing over me whenever I think of the impending training session. I feel as if I'm backed into a corner after stupidly agreeing to this.
I want to work with the horses anyway, and so I bring them down from the far pastures to the smaller paddocks near the yard. I take Erin into the training paddock. She hasn’t been the easiest of horses due to a bad start in life, but she and I have a special bond. But today it’s not working. I don’t feel the same connection I usually do. I know when to quit, so I put her back with the others. I’m leaning on the fence, cursing myself, when Johan appears. I swear he has timing which is calculated to be the worst for me.
“Hi.” His greeting is all cheery and I grit my teeth before returning it.
“Come and meet the horses.” I resign myself to the inevitable. We might as well get it over with.
We enter the paddock. As I know what mood Erin is already in, I expect her to stay aloof, but usually the rest of them are curious and as they normally love training, I’m not really prepared for them all to disappear to the other end of the paddock. I had counted on Barney, the most stable and quiet of the horses, and the one I’d decided to use to introduce Johan to my training. He would normally be straight over to say hello, but they all were over on the opposite side of the paddock. I sigh, cursing myself for not realising sooner what the problem is.
“So, do we go over and catch them?” Johan asks looking across the paddock at them.
“No, we don’t.” He looks puzzled, so I explain. “First of all, I consider my horses as partners in this process, so when I’m training with them I want them to be comfortable being with me. That they’ve taken themselves off over there makes me think they’re not quite comfortable right now. Also, horses are really good at mirroring us, our behaviour and thought patterns. They’re used quite often as therapy animals to help people understand themselves better.”
He considers this for a moment before asking, “Am I the problem?”
I sigh a little but I like that he asks. “I rather think we both are.” I know my anxiety is mostly to blame but as it isn’t going away with Johan here, I’m not sure how we’re going to proceed. I knew this would be a mistake and should’ve cancelled.
He shoots me one of his smiles but I’m not prepared for what he says next. “Why don’t you tell me all about them?” He turns away from the horses slightly and is leaning on the fence.
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me their names and how they came to be with you.”
So I tell him about Erin, that she’d been handled roughly and had been confined in a small space, separated from her friends. She had tried to climb a gate and got stuck and hurt herself. I met her when I was called out to treat her. She has trust issues, cannot be confined, and definitely not left alone, but she’s a sweet horse really and does try hard for you. I go through the horses one by one. I tell him of Barney, who’s the eldest, and an ex polo pony, now retired but very good to learn with. Phoenix, who is the youngest, is part Friesian and very handsome, but was bred by someone who was scared of him, and he wasn’t handled much, so can either be boisterous or not let anyone near him. His progress is good but not always consistent, and if he feels overwhelmed, he tends to blow up, a strategy he learned as a youngster, earning him his title of a difficult horse. Lastly, little Sunshine, who whilst the smallest, is the leader of the group and keeps them all in check. She was abandoned one day; I found her tied to the front gate one morning. Possibly her owners couldn't afford to keep her anymore, which is sadly happening more and more these days.
I feel on familiar ground, talking about the horses, and I realise that I’m less anxious about having Johan here. He’s listened and asked a few questions. By the time I’ve finished, the horses are grazing happily just a short distance from us. I can’t help myself and smile at what has happened. This time when I call Barney over, he comes readily, and I stroke his neck and tell him he’s a good boy before introducing him to Johan.
I ask Barney to walk with us to the gate through to the training paddock and he follows calmly. It’s good that Johan doesn’t seem fazed by horses, but then I vaguely remember him mentioning them before. He also gives off a calm energy, despite his size. I feel a little pang that he seems to do this naturally when I have to work so hard at it.
“Have you handled horses much?”
“A bit.” He shrugs. “But nothing like the harmony I saw with you the other day. That’s what I want to learn.”
I ask him to stand to the side of Barney, and explain that the training I do is called positive reinforcement training. I don’t want to go into the technical details with him but explain that we look for the required behaviour and then reward the behaviour in a positive way. This might be with food, some scratches, or allowing them to do something they really enjoy, like play. Barney likes food and is often the easiest to reward, so we shall start with that.
“Sounds easy when you put it like that,” Johan states. “But I bet it isn’t.”
“It’s not difficult, but does take time.” I smile a little, remembering all the times I have got it wrong. “Timing of the reward is also important or you can find yourself rewarding a behaviour you don’t want. Would you like to try?”
“Of course. What do I have to do?” Johan sounds eager.
“The first thing we want is for the horse to stand quietly, beside us, calm and relaxed. So we only reward when he’s doing so. Eventually we don’t have to reward the more simple behaviours. We don’t need to with Barney really, but as he has stood for several minutes and you’re just trying this out, we shall do that.”
I hand him some horse cubes from my pockets and show him how to offer one to Barney. Barney is keen so turns his head to Johan for more.
“Don’t give him anything while he’s turned towards you,” I explain. “The last thing we want him to do is mug you for food, that is not the idea. Wait until he’s facing straight ahead.”
After a couple of minutes, Johan has got the hang of it.
“Okay, do you want to walk with him?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Great. He knows how to do this so just start from his shoulder, say ‘walk on’ and take a step forward. When he follows, walk for a few more steps, then stop and reward him.”
Johan walks and asks Barney to walk with him. Barney loves doing these exercises and is eager to comply. Johan looks pleased, a wide smile across his face. He does it a few more times, then I suggest making it a bit harder.
“Do you want to try walking round the cones?” I indicate to a set of cones I had in the training area. The same ones I’d been using the other day when Johan had been watching.
“Can I? That would be awesome,” Johan says and then asks, “What happens if he walks off?”
“Then let him. He’s free to leave whenever he wants, that’s the great thing about this training; he stays because he wants to. If he wants to leave we have to ask why; are we not interesting enough, have we made the session too long, is he distracted? We get instant feedback when we aren’t attached by any ropes.”
“Okay, I think I understand.” Johan nods and turns back to Barney giving his neck a stroke. “Are you ready to try this fella?”
I stand back and watch as he takes Barney towards the cones, and after a few false starts they negotiate the cones successfully. Johan walks back over to where I stand by the fence, watching.
“That was really amazing.” He says, “It feels different to any training I’ve done before, more, more…” He stops, seemingly unable to describe it.
He doesn’t need to, I understand.
He leans on the fence next to me.
“How did you discover it, the training?”
“When I was at university, we had to do some practical placements. I did mine at a zoo. Seeing the keepers handle the elephants and giraffes got me interested. I was intrigued at how they could trim an elephant’s toenails through cooperation rather than coercion and I started to look into it. Let’s say I’ve never looked back since.”
I’m surprised at how well Johan had listened and he’d done well. He tried to tune into Barney and get his timing right.
I found myself enjoying the morning and so when we put Barney back with the other horses, I readily agreed to another session the following week. As I close the gate, I surprise myself with my next question.
“Would you like to stay for lunch?”
Johan smiles. “I’m sorry, I can’t. In fact, I have to be somewhere and I’m going to be late. Maybe another time?”
“Oh, okay. Yeah sure, another time.” I feel a bit disappointed at that and can’t understand why.