The Natural Dressage Forum

Karen Rohlf Question 9: Expression
Discuss away! Smile

Question:
Hi K1,
This month our question concerns the horse's expression, specifically his
ears (since that seems the most obvious).
If you are playing with a horse online, at liberty or even while riding, and he pins his ears what do you do depending on how you read the horse? If he seems dominant, do you stop him in his tracks (because he is being dominant and you want to interrupt the behavior) and "wipe the look off his face" (by somehow disciplining zone 1).
Under what circumstance would you simply keep your picture and continue on, trusting your picture will eventually become his picture or something completely different?!
Whether you read his behavior as dominant, unconfident or simply one of deep concentration, what other 'body language' do you look for to make your decision?
Thank you much!
-The Members of the Natural Dressage Forum
www.naturaldressage.2freedom.com

Answer:
Thanks for your question.
This for sure can be a tricky subject, but just the fact that you are thinking and asking this question means you are half way to solving it. And of course, we can thank Linda Parelli for all her investigation of the individual ‘horsenalities’ which gives great strategies for figuring these things out. Given that you likely have the information from Parelli, I will just expand with some more ideas.

Some considerations of your question:

What does ear-pinning mean?

What is the cause of the ear-pinning?

What to do about it?
In observing horses we can use categories to group the different types in, and this helps get a general view and clue as to approach, but the danger is in seeing the horse only as that type and not taking into account particular situation and the influence we are having on the situation. Sometimes (believe it or not) we are the cause of the disturbance, and it is not just the horse ‘having an attitude’!

Here are some questions I ask myself when I come across the ear-pinning:

What does all the evidence tell me? Real ear pinning (not just ears back) is definitely telling you something... the horse is putting out some intense energy. I will see horses do this when they want to drive another horse away, or in an intense activity, such as cutting (which really is driving a cow away, so it is the same) or racing each other. But in these moments the horse isn’t thinking it is mad or unhappy, it is just using his energy and body language as a very effective tool! Depending on the personality of the horse it seems like it would make sense for him to do this activity with the ears pinned. My horse Atomic is VERY dominant and I can’t imagine him coming up to the molasses water with his ears up saying: “Excuse me nice Mr. Ovation, please, if its ok, and you don’t mind could I kinda squeeze in here?”

What we need to assess is whether this horse is pinning his ears because he is really ‘going for it’ in an intense activity that we asked for: “Look out world, my human and I are coming through” or is he using his effective tool to try to drive you away? Atomic loves to put his feet in feet tubs and to chase a ball (have you seen him on youtube?) and if I send him to a feed tub he sometimes runs over, ears pinned and really shows that tub who’s boss! That’s just fine in my book! But if he tries to drive me away simply to see if he can... That is not OK and I will assert my leadership in that moment to drive him away, the same as any horse would do to maintain the top position.

How was it related to our interaction? Now, another layer to the issue is to ask yourself: ‘Am I causing this?’ Besides just dominance games, horses will pin their ears for a couple main reasons:

1. Because I asked for something and they didn’t totally do it, so some of the energy went into just holding tension. The ‘Left Brain Introverts’ (to use Parelli terms), get stuck in this. You ask, they do 40% of what you ask and the other 60% goes into locking down or feeling put out about it. Of course sometimes humans create LB Introverts by being unclear and confusing, so they are not really sure what to do, and because they are nice horses, instead of exploding, they just err on the side of doing less. For these cases you need to follow through and increase your horse’s motivation and/or understanding.

2. Because they have done what you asked but they are still perceiving pressure on them. You are thinking: ‘yay, I got what I asked for so now I am in neutral’ but these sensitive horses are still feeling pressure... your arm is still clenching the stick, you are staring at them, still moving in the saddle, etc. I see this a lot in mares, and the sensitive, fearful types. Mares are different than geldings. You won’t really see mares out messing and playing with each other... that’s for those silly bachelor geldings. Dominant mares are used to giving the directions, and if they aren’t a lead mare, they pretty much just want the list of rules and then be left alone... and they really can put in huge efforts, but they don’t like to be fiddled with and are very sensitive to pressure remaining on, even when we think it is off.

River really taught me this. We would be playing, either on the ground or riding and she would sometimes get her ears really back, and I found that if I just touched her while she was going (like a rub), the ears would go forward again... as if she just needed to hear from me that she was doing great, I didn’t need any more from her. My neutral hadn’t been neutral enough for her.

But Atomic needs this too. He is a very dominant horse, but also very sensitive and fearful. We can be going along doing something that I asked and his ears are pinned, but if I stop, they go forward, then I have to ask myself if I am causing it. Why does he feel like he needs to defend himself?

Parelli Professional Bernie Zambail was visiting me once and he watched me play with Atomic at liberty. He is such a spirited horse, but is kind of like a chihuahua.... can be aggressive, but there is fear behind it. Atomic and I play with high intensity and I am really wanting to preserve as much spirit as possible, but without feeding into the aggression or reaction. Bernie really helped me to see that I was putting pressure on him even when i didn’t know it. Because I didn’t really trust him, I kept my eye on him (so I didn’t get bit!), but this posture of defensiveness from me was feeding into the general vibe of: ’there are things not to be trusted here’ which just made him more defensive (and offensive!).

For sure we established some clear boundaries, and this is what made my next statement possible and safe: I had to trust him before he became trustworthy. I had to soften myself and become less aggressive myself for him to be able to do it ‘happily’. So if he is doing something I am asking him to do, and while he is doing it he is thinking :’boy there is a lot of pressure in the air” and if I bop him in the nose... it just confirms to him that things are not so pleasant and feeding into perpetuating the situation.

Now that was a bit scary to do, to turn my back on him when he was sticking to me with ears pinned and gesturing aggressively at me... and what helped me was to know that my leadership in general was high with him, so if I needed to get him to move, I knew I could. Don’t misinterpret this. There are for sure times when a horse is pushing on you just to see if he can and you need to be quick and clear with your assertiveness of who gets to move who’s feet. Just make sure once you are safe, that you look at the whole situation and take responsibility for your part in creating it. And always check your friendly game to make sure the mere presence of your tools isn’t causing it.

Ears are such and obvious sign, but we must take every thing into account. ears pricked forward is not always a great thing, either. With some horses I am on alert when their ears are pricked forward when I ride them, because their attention is way off in the distance and not on me. Ears softly back can be a wonderful position when you are looking for your horse to really be focused on your body. If you are working on point to point and destination type games, with an aloof or unmotivated horse, then you want to look for moments when he pricks his ears and gets literally looking forward to something!

I am sad to say that I have a video of a horse being ridden who’s ears are pricked forward the entire time... even when this rider repeatedly punches him in the head. This is ears pricked forward in desperation looking for a way out.

I sure hope this helps... I love that you are thinking about this. If we keep our intention that we want our horses to end up feeling good about what we do with them, then one must look at this topic. The answer is in the observation. What is happening now, and what happened right before? When does it change? What role did you play?

~Karen

Africa is DEFINITELY in the "Because they have done what you asked but they are still perceiving pressure on them." category.

Laura helped me a lot with that finding the TRUE release. I felt like I was releasing, but my energy was still 'on'. Africa is pretty tolerant, so she kind of just went along at first, but once I started wanting her to TUNE into me, she got into 'ahhh- gooo away and SHUT UP!' Smile

Minus the angry faces, we had a few 'vertical' moments, one 'and these are my back hooves coming INSIDE the circle' incident and then I got the 'oh crap, I'm doing some wrong here!' message! Smile

We're doing better, now that Kate is learning to turn OFF her energy rather then 'and now let's do this, and that's just GREAT, and now THIS, and I LOVE that, and....'

What makes it really tricky is that I can't say 'oh, she's POed, I need to watch my releases' because I can't release AFTER she does what I ask and THEN makes the face. I have to remember it for the next time, and she's already ticked off! So it was kind an escalating issue. Now, there were times when I would release on a pissy face, because she DID give a big effort and I didn't release enough. But that's a judgement call thing I just have to play with. And she lets me know when I made the 'wrong' call for that moment!! Smile

Karen's nswers are wonderful because of how in depth they are!

I havn't done much with my mustang lately, but I definitly want to work more on 'teaching the ears' and see how it goes.

WHile Rave may put his ears back for all of the above reasons, his most obvious/often is the LBI withholding syndrome.