Thank you everyone who was interested in Les and my crazy diet. While we did not originally go on this diet by choice, it’s been really great for us and given us a lot more control over how we feel. For those of you who would like to give it a try, here is an outline for how you can take it for a test drive for a month and change the way you think and feel about food and about life.

There are 2 key points to this diet 1) carbs are directly proportionate to the workload, meaning exercise, like they would be in a horse, and 2) attitude is the barometer for food choices.

Since this article is getting really long, I’ll put this up top… Here is a 4 week plan for going to the grocery store. Don’t over think it! Instead of thinking about what you can’t eat, think about what you can eat.
Week 1 – Prepare yourself to only walk 2 aisles in the grocery store. Go to the store and buy meat, fish, and green vegetables. I would get a roast to slice for emergency snacks, a chicken to roast, and whatever else you like. If you can, go natural or organic.
Weeks 2 and 3 – Buy meat and green vegetables again plus Quinoa, sweet potatoes, and other potatoes, and various kinds of rice in small quantity from the bulk section. Grab plain yogurt and nuts. Ask yourself what your stress levels are. If they are low, proceed to week 4, if not, stay on the week 2 diet until you’re feeling more like yourself.
Week 4 – Drop meat quantity back down to a more normal portion size. Pick up cheese, lentils, beans, and some fun Bob’s Red Mill flours like sorghum and teff. You might pick up honey, carob (check that there is no barley in it) and gluten free pasta as well.

So how do we decide what to eat within the diet? Well, the first thing you need to do is be able to register the feedback your body is giving you. To set yourself up to do that, that I recommend doing a 5-day reset – eat only meat and green vegetables for 5 days. It’s a difficult 5 days because it is a total reset, but it’s worth it!

“Stage 1″ Foods – The 5-day Reset, or foods for stressful times
So which meats should you eat? That depends a little on your genetics and your symptoms. For your first attempt at the 5-day reset, I would eat any meat you want, so long as it is a plain meat seasoned only with salt and pepper (ie., not salami, bacon, or lunch meat, which has sugar, etc). You’ll probably need a little more quantity than you normally would since you aren’t taking in any carbs. Maybe 1/3 or even 1/2lb of meat per meal with a serving of vegetables that is about the size of the vegetable plus carb you would normally put on your plate. The amount of vegetables would be about 1/3 to 1/2 a bag of peas. You might need less if your activity level is lower. Here are the few exceptions to the green vegetable rule – bell peppers, onions, garlic, beets, and carrots. Coconut flakes and coconut milk are a great snack during this stage.

You’ll probably loose 5lbs in those 5 days, which can be a blessing or a curse depending on where you’re at in your life. If you aren’t looking to lose weight, you’ll have to make a concerted effort to get enough calories in, but I wouldn’t stress too much because the 5-day reset will likely make your absorption better and you should be able to pick the weight back up quickly. At the end of the 5 days, you should feel really refreshed, whether you wanted to lose the weight or not. Also, if your’e really looking to make a profound change, if you stick to meat and green vegetables for 2 weeks, you’ll have a super reset, but most people aren’t willing to stay on it that long.

“Stage 2″ Foods – Foods that are safe when life is a little harry, but not quite crazy
After the 5-day reset, you can’t start reintroducing foods in proportion to your exercise. Start with plain (unsweetened) yogurt, nuts, seeds, brown rice, quinoa, sweet potatoes, and other potatoes. Most people better with goat dairy than cow dairy, but it’s hard to find. After you eat a Stage 2 food, ie., that is something other than a meat or green vegetable, notice how your attitude is. If your mind starts going off on some tangent, you either ate too many carbs for the amount of exercise you got, or the food just doesn’t match with your system.

Because the goal of this diet is to help you figure out the emotional impact of the foods you eat, try to keep the variables simple. 2 foods in a meal, maybe 3. As soon as you start making things like stir fry, which has a lot of ingredients, even though they are good ones, you reduce your ability to match up the foods with how you feel. It might sound really boring to eat only 2 foods in a meal, but the palate changes after the 5 day reset and a simple meal like green beans and back ribs is amazing. While you’re still figuring out your Stage 2 foods, try eating the food by itself right after exercise. Most of these foods you’ll probably be fine with so long as you eat them in proportion to your activity level.

“Stage 3″ Foods – Foods for when life is, or might as well be, a vacation
After you have figured out what stage 2 foods you can eat figured out, you can add in honey, fruit, cheese, squash, lentils, beans, various grains, carob, unsweetened cocoa, processed foods like pasta, and combination foods like bread, and baked goods. Processed foods to me means a food that has changed shape – for example, rice pasta doesn’t look anything like rice, and is harder to digest than regular rice. Combination foods are foods that are what they are by way of multiple ingredients. For example, a muffin might be 6 ingredients- baking soda, tartar, honey, butter, eggs, and at least one kind of flour. Combination foods are really complicated foods, so you should only eat them when you’re in a great mood and pretty sure you’re going to feel great no matter what you eat, because sometimes the ingredients work together like a Red Bull and Vodka – you’re mixing uppers and downers. Not a problem if that’s what you plan to do, but not the best when all you want is to have a steady baseline.

“Party” Foods – Foods you’ll pay the price for
Generally speaking, milk and sugar will get just about anyone… A pasta sauce that has sugar in it won’t kill you, nor will a splash of milk in your tea, but a steamed milk from Starbucks and an iced pastry could be termed “off the wagon”. Corn and wheat are challenging for many people because they are so refined, but some people do ok with them. Coffee and alcohol are not in your best interest most of the time, of course. There are many amazing teas that can take the place of coffee.

Alright, so in review, stick to meat and green vegetables for 5 days. For about 10 days after that, eat Stage 2 foods. You should stay on Stage 2 foods indefinitely if your are feeling stressed at all, lest you poison some of your Stage 3 foods! Only enjoy the Stage 3 foods when you can truly enjoy them. Stage 1 foods are the best choice when life is crazy. Stage 2 foods are acceptable most of the time. Stage 3 foods are foods to eat when life is awesome. Here’s why…

Emotional State is Sticky
Be forewarned – the emotional state you are in when you eat a food is sticky! For example, I was in a phase where I really liked to eat beet chips on the way home from the barn at one point, and it happened to be during a time when the barn was really stressful. Consequently, I now experience stress when I eat the beet chips – my body associates them with stress and prepares for a stressful day. So, whenever I eat those beet chips now, I start to feel cranky, which is a real shame because they are delicious! The sagest advice is to not do anything else when you eat (no tv, computer, driving, etc), just eat, but of course that can be challenging in our modern world. You can sometimes undo an emotional association by eating a problem food when you are in a great state, like on vacation. On our honeymoon I reintroduced lentils, and have been great with them ever since. I felt grumpy the first time or two I ate them, but then my body let the pattern go.

Here are some tools to help keep you on track when things start to seem a little blurry. It can be difficult to separate the effects of external stressors, like work and family life, from the impacts of the foods we eat. Sometimes we’re too tired to expend the brain power to decide what to grab out of our pantry. These tools are a great crutch.

Muscle Testing
To muscle test yourself, just make a circle by touching your thumb and index finger together. Do it on both hands, interlock them, and try to pull them apart. They will be harder to pull apart if you are thinking about a food that is good for you and easier to pull apart if you are thinking about a food that is bad for you. What is good for you changes from hour to hour, so you have to test the food when you are planning to eat it. Here are some other ways to muscle test yourself – article and video.

Blood Type
If you know your blood type, that will give you a good place to start, though you can make yourself sensitive to things you should, by virtue of your blood type, be able to eat. I’m AB+ and I can’t eat some of the things on my list because I ate them when I had Candida and my body learned to attack that food. That said, blood type food research will get you started.

QiFood
QiFood is an iPhone app that allows you to look up what a food does from a Traditional Chinese Medicine stand point. For example, coconut milk is nourishes nourishes blood, nourishes yin, and nourishes jing. This app is simple enough that you an probably figure out how to benefit from it with only a Google’s-worth of TCM knowledge.

Carb cultures
There is a theory that most people are descended from 1 of 3 carb cultures – wheat, rice, or corn. Chances are, 2 of the 3 won’t work super well for you, so as you’re test driving Stage 2 foods, keep this in mind. It’s a good idea to keep as much variation in your carbs as possible. Try experimenting with ancient grains like amaranth or using coconut flour or a nut flour in place of a grain.

Heart Rate
Take your pulse before you eat a questionable food. If your heart rate seems rapid after eating, your body may be feeling a little distressed and that particular food may not be the best food for you. Heartrates normally go up some after eating, but a pulse that feels rapid should be “food for thought”.

Attitude
Common attitude changes after eating a food that is not ideal at that time would be crankiness, impatience, irritability, or festering. If your brain starts running away with you, you probably ate the wrong food for that situation.

Rainbow
Try to eat all the colors of the rainbow every day. You can also try eating all 6 tastes every day – sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and astringent. Google these categories for food ideas. Deekpak Chopra has great ideas for this.

Symptoms
Try googling “elimination diet” for any symptoms you want to get rid of, like a headache, dry skin, or stomach bloating. There is an elimination diet for just about everything! The diet we described above is a good start, but for some things, like headaches, you might want to eliminate red meat.

You Are What you Eat
After you are done with the 5-day reset, try to add in more “living” foods. Like the saying, “you are what you eat” implies, it is best to eat foods that are alive…not dead. You can bring your foods back to life by soaking and sprouting, which are easily done. A quick Google will give you ideas.

Nuts
Most nuts and seeds have a lot of rancid oil and mold in them. If you can find refrigerated nuts, they are a better bet. Alternatively, you can try sprouting and see if that helps.

Mountain Rose Herbs
Mountain Rose Herbs is a great website to get herbs and tea from. Nettle has a ton of vitamins and minerals in it. Nettle capsules or nettle tea are really good for allergies, both food allergies and environmental allergies. If you have phlegm in the morning or get nauseous on an empty stomach (which you probably will during the 5-day reset), nettle really helps. Ginger is great for digestion if you are a cold/damp type person. Cinnamon warms you from the inside out, also, but doesn’t have the digestive benefits of ginger. Pue-erh tea is often called the “happy drunk” tea, so it’s great for mornings and unfun meetings. Green rooibos is an awesome herbal tea with antioxidants that tastes almost like a real tea. If you are going to have real tea and don’t want the caffein, if you pre-steep the tea for 30 seconds, dump that steeping out, and resteep, you keep most of the antioxidants and lose 80% of the caffein.

…and I will follow with some recipes in a few days You don’t really need recipes to eat meat and green vegetables, though, so you might as well get started with your 5-day reset!

If you’re still pondering a New Year’s resolution, I’d like to offer one for suggestion – try Les’ and my “Athlete’s Diet.” Ok, so Athlete’s Diet is really just a charming name we made up for a lifestyle diet that seems unbearable to most people, but it’s really stood the test of time with us and has made our life more manageable in many ways.

For breakfast this morning, we ate organic ground beef and peas. Yes, very unusual in the United States, but most other countries in the world do not have breakfast-specific foods like we have. Breakfast is just another meal like lunch or dinner, and thus, soup, meats, and greens are often on the plate. So before your mind shrieks, “That’s outlandish!” and runs away with you, let me explain a little bit about why this simple breakfast makes sense.

The reason Les and I refer to our diet as an Athlete’s Diet is that it makes us our best mentally, emotionally, and physically. What I like best about it is the stability it gives us. People often say, “You’re so calm!” and “I can’t even imagine you getting mad!” and “You guys are the most grounded people that we know.” It’s so rewarding to hear people say that when they used to say things like, “You’re so opinionated,” “You’re so sarcastic,” and “Take a chill pill.” Today people say that I’m athletic and passionate, but also relaxed, friendly, and really easy to get along with. I feel a lot calmer, too.

So here is an example of how our meals might go on any given day… Take a pro-flora upon waking. Carrot soup and ground bison for breakfast. Make hot herbal tea. Roasted chicken, brown rice, and salad for lunch. Head out for some exercise. Sweet potato and toasted nuts for a snack when we get home. Cabbage topped with pork sausage and toasted sunflower seeds for dinner. Yogurt or coconut mousse for dessert.

Sounds at least reasonable, right? What makes it a really great diet for us is that most of the meals have a low glycemic index, which is what gives us that steady baseline. The only carbohydrates are right before and right after exercise. That way we take in a few extra calories, right before we are going to use them, and then refill our glycogen stores within 1 hour after exercise.

Other things that we try to do are rotate our foods as much as possible. Ideally, one wouldn’t repeat the same food ingredient for 3 days, but that’s almost impossible. The best we can hope for in a cold climate in the winter, especially thanks to the fact that 97% of the vegetables grown in 1900 are now extinct, is to try to not repeat the food in the same day. If we do repeat a food too often, it’s pretty obvious, because driving home from the barn or other exercise, we’ll start to feel cranky or fester about something upon eating our carbohydrate snack. Something few people know is that most food sensitivities don’t show up as digestive problems, but emotional problems, until they’re pretty strong. Just as horses get too “hot” when they eat too much sugar, so do people. So we eat complex carbs in limited quantities. We use honey on occasion, but no sugar or artificial sweeteners, and the main spices we use are turmeric, garlic, and salt and pepper. From a food-combining perspective, the simpler the food, the easier time the body will have digesting it, allowing the foods to do the jobs they are meant to do.

We also take fish oils and calcium supplements, and make sure we get at least 30 minutes of walking or other flowing movement every day, even when we’re sick. 30 minutes of walking is really important – just 30 minutes a day drops the risk of all the major diseases by 50%. As a person gets fitter, many people need 1.5 hours of elevated heart rate exercise 3 days a week. Were we to eat the number of carbohydrates the average American eats, we would feel flustered and stressed most of the day, unless we had about 3 hours of exercise. We don’t like feeling stressed and we don’t have time for that much hard exercise, so instead we lower our carbs and still get to feel calm and collected.

Having the right pro-biotic really helps also. We rotate ours, so sometimes take acidophilus, sometimes S. Boulardi, and sometimes Garden of Life HSOs, which are very controversial.

So, that’s a brief overview of how things run in the Kiger household. I hope you’ll consider giving our Athlete’s Diet a try. Feel free to email if you have questions

A response to the comment, “I am sorry but I cannot smile when I see people on horses.”:

I used to think it was not good to ride horses and that they suffer. I went over a year without riding my horses. I no longer agree.

As horses have been domesticated, I suspect it has become part of their nature to seek that union in the same way it has become part of ours. My Mustang, Ilo, I adopted wild off the BLM and she helped me figure out what I thought was right. I worked with her only at liberty for a long time and did not ride for 3 years. Both I feel were to her detriment. She often seemed worried and was not outwardly very happy. Now that she is being ridden, she is more confident and looks longer distances into the horizon rather than shorter. She is stronger and proud of her agility. She holds her ground against the other horses at the gate. She moves more boldly and more freely with more enjoyment on her face. She jumps beautifully rather than stumbling over things in her path.

As humans, we have the tendency to think that leisure is preferable to work. I like to work. I like to work more than I like to eat. I once knew a Boarder Collie that worked on a cattle ranch. When she got done herding cows, all she wanted to do was play fetch. Her owner remarked, “All she thinks about is that darn ball,” though she was clearly an effective cattle dog and clearly enjoyed herding. The dog was a herding dog bred as finely as anything. It was in her nature to herd, and she liked to herd, but she loved fetch. Just because something is not natural, doesn’t mean it is not innate. Toot loved fetch more than she loved herding. It’s natural for me to eat. It’s innate for me to work, and I love work. It is possible that while it is not natural for horses to be ridden it is inherent in the essential character of some horses.

Today many people understand the innate characteristics of dog breeds enough to know that you shouldn’t keep a Boarder Collie in an apartment. However, few people understand the innate characteristics of horse breeds. Most people only work with the breeds suitable for what they want to do. I work with all breeds because I don’t want to do anything – I want to do everything. As my husband says, “If there is a horse in it, we’re interested,” and we’re finding out what is interesting to the horse as an animal, as a species, as a breed, and as an individual.

If you at least ask the question, “Is it inherent in the essential character of some horses to be ridden?”, what’s left is to determine is if we should ride them. How do we know if it is good for them or not? It may be in someone’s inherent character to be an addict, but that would be something to discourage. If riding is bad for the horse, it would be better to discourage it, but I don’t think that it is.

Unlike Nevzorov does with his horses, I kept Ilo in a paddock with other horses and did not remove her from her home when working with her. Her paddock included a weanling she bonded with, treating like her own baby. Nevertheless, Ilo nickered to me when she saw me coming, trotted by my side, and was responsive to cues at liberty (and I was not using clicker training either). However, she looked as if she was missing something. She was curious and engaged and willing, but not fulfilled.

When I added the rope, just a cordeo/neck rein at first, our bond grew deeper. She liked the touch and sought it. It was like linking elbows with someone for the first time. I used the neck rope to take her all around the farm and on trails. We moved to a different facility where she could eat her fill of grass and lived with several other ponies of various ages and genders. I could play with her and another horse at the same time and have her hooves trimmed in the cordeo, but she still was not happy. Her eyes were dull and when she made eye contact she was always asking a question rather than sharing.

Then I started working in the halter. There was again a step up in her confidence. She felt and returned more whole, sincere communication and was more sure of what to do. It was like taking someone’s hand for the first time. I worked at liberty for 6 months. In the cordeo for a year. In the halter/liberty/cordeo for 1.5 years. Then I finally decided to ride her. We rode bareback and treeless for a year, and just started some treed riding. Treeless is her preference over bareback or treed. Today she is social with not just me, but everyone who comes to see her in the pasture. That is very, very important. Do not underestimate the importance of your horse’s conviction of the goodness of people and her excitement in sharing her soul with the people that she meets.

Another one of my horses I bought and did not ride for nearly 2 years. He had competed extensively under saddle and his back was severely damaged. I bought him without doing more than leading him to the trailer. He was very bashful when we first began working together, kind, sweet, and goofily shy. I rode him a handful of times diagnostically and decided it was not right for him at that time. I thought his back was permanently damaged. With QuickDraw, I used clicker training (which I did not use with Ilo until nearly 2 years together) and I continued to work primarily at liberty. To rehabilitate QuickDraw, I needed to change how he thought about his place in the world. In order to do this, I rode him out to a bridge just across the street from our farm in a treeless saddle. He had only been arena-ridden and was nervous. I clicked him for prancing and dancing underneath me. When we got to the bridge, he reeled and reared. I clicked him and his whole body changed instantly. The tightness dropped out of his back and he felt like a totally different horse. He reared again and again, and I clicked him. Convinced that he now understood, I got off, led him back to the barn, and did not ride him again for a year, except for getting on maybe 3 times bareback and cuing him to rear, to remind him of his freedom, and getting off. All winter, I played clicker games with QuickDraw. I spent Christmas Eve with him reinforcing him for smiling goofily after he ate a licorice treat for the first time. We played with a barrel and huge ball. QuickDraw and my dog took turns getting clicks for playing with it. QuickDraw was very happy, but still in pain, though I did stretches and massage with him endlessly. I had been told he liked to jump, so when I put out a jump for him at liberty, he jumped it in the most awful form you’ve ever seen, and showed no more interest in jumping after that. Given the opportunity to choose, he did not like jumping, but has started to show some interest in it just recently.

Nearly 2 years into this process, a student fell in love with QuickDraw. She worked with him hour upon hour, slowly reintroducing cues that would seem like work. Her patience and unconditional love caused QuickDraw to decide that he actually did want to revisit the things that had once pained him and get answers. No doubt he was asking the same things I ask – “Is this whole situation bad, or just how it is done normally?” Over time, QuickDraw showed Katelynn that he wanted to be ridden by lining up to the mounting block. At first Katelynn would get on and QuickDraw, staying right next to the mounting block, would buck and rear a couple times to make sure that he would not be punished. Katelynn sat patiently – a very bold thing for a 13 year old who had never ridden before to do – but probably only possible because of her innocence. (Of course the bucks and rears were also very small since QuickDraw was not strong). Over time, QuickDraw returned to his former glory without the shackles. He is now the kindest, most honest and generous lesson horse you could find, teaching kids who have had bad falls on other horses and are terrified to ride, but still compelled to ride, not just play with horses on the ground.

One the of the questions I asked in my book, EQxpressionism: Individuals Modeling Horsemanship as an Artistic Practice is, “Why do you ride? Not just play with horses but ride specifically.” Almost all of the individuals said for the union, for the closeness. My husband did not ride his Mustang at all for a year and only rode her a handful of times until she had been with him for 2.5 years. We would never have known how light and amazing this mare is had he not ridden her. On the ground she is light and fun, but not incredible. In the saddle, she is incredible. You see a part of her soul that you otherwise never see.

My refined bay pony, Sam, is another pony we did not ride for nearly 2 years. He was also a rescue that was practically dropped at my door. Six years old and didn’t have a name. Like QuickDraw, his body was a wreck. He used to stand like a tripod with his forelegs narrow and his hind legs camped and spread apart. He was incredibly spooky. For a month, I did over an hour of stretching and massage daily. It made a lot of difference but wasn’t the solution. Teeth floating and balanced hooves helped. Getting his confidence up through clicker training helped. Teaching him to rear nearly fixed him. But it was when he started being ridden by little children that he started looking for people coming to the pasture. He got to play clicker games for 2 years prior and have all the fun he wanted, but he never really looked for people. Today he does, not all the time, but most of the time, and the only difference is that he is now teaching the same children who played with him on the ground how to ride. As spooky as he is on the ground, he is the gentlest pony with someone on his back. He takes a great deal of responsibility in his job. His ability to do it fluctuates with his hoof trims and his connection with the rider, but when things are right, he is brilliant to watch. And this particular pony prefers a treed saddle to bareback or treeless. I think he would prefer bitted, if we would give him that option, but I am delayed getting there in my own mind.

If we have successfully established that riding may be good for the soul of some horses, the next question is, “Does it hurt their bodies?” As a person, I have a high tolerance for pain and a lot of ambition, and I tend to find horses with similar attributes. Skiing, wakeboarding, and even to a certain extent, horseback riding, are sports that could be considered painful. While doing these activities, I do not notice my physical discomfort but rather enjoy the physicality of it and the adrenaline game. When I wake up the next day, I’m sore, but I feel accomplished, and over time my body learns to recruit fewer muscles and I get the enjoyment without the soreness. So the question is, what is more painful to the horse – idleness or physical discomfort? In humans, the lymph system needs to be pumped manually or the body becomes stagnant. Stagnation makes one feel muddy and cranky. The more athletic the person, the more help the lymph needs from exercise. No doubt there are horses that through domestication have become athletic enough to require additional pumping of the lymph system, lest they feel sick. Maybe not true of all horses, but as humans, we ought to be able to be able to trust the person who knows the horse best to judge.

The next question is one of the tools we use. Are the tools we choose helpful or bad for the horse? I believe this is a question of frustration. What feels more painful – frustration or physical discomfort? Assuming the horse likes to work with humans, do the tools help the horse to work with us or make it more painful or more frustrating? My Mustang, Ilo, was ridden in a cordeo for her second through fourth ride. Les’ Mustang, Koa, was ridden in a cordeo for her first few rides. The cordeo is gentle, but it is not helpful to the horse. It’s not painful physically, but painful in that it causes frustration. Whips and spurs can hurt, but not necessarily more than unclear communication. Unclear communication causes loss of trust and can lead to many repetitions of confusing exercises. It not only a question of which tools you use, but a question of how you apply them. The simplest method for the horse to understand is usually the best.

I know the statistics about pressure sensing with weight and the facts about bits, but I also know about the decline effect – which is the tendency of many exciting scientific results to fade over time, to the point that the phenomena we found originally does not exist at all. For that reason, I believe an empirical approach is best. Even if one does not feel comfortable basing ones decisions on what other people say they observe, one has no other choice but to base one’s decisions on what one observes, or make no decision at all. We should give our horses the right to choose, unless we don’t trust ourself to honor their answers or don’t trust ourselves to know what they say. A person who loves horses should be able to do both. Knowledge is power for horse and human.

It’s such a shame that so many people condemn our time without really knowing it. I try to really know something before I judge it. How mistrustful are we of our fellow man that we assume that no one has asked these questions before in 6,000 years of equine domestication, and we just kept going blindly along towards more and more evil. How faithless are we that we assume that the tools that were passed down from the people before us were all worthless and cruel to the horse and someone forgot to tell us. Do we have so little respect for our ancestors that we think they would not have even thought to wonder if what they were doing was wrong? People love their animals like they love their children. Not everyone has a great childhood, but most parents try. Not everyone is a good parent, but most of us have some inkling of what a good parent is. A good parent doesn’t make sure their child’s life is free from any discomfort. A good parent makes sure that the child understands life and gives them the tools that that child needs to be secure, even if sometimes it hurts the parent to do so. It is ok for our horses to go through childhood and have experiences that are difficult. The only reason a person would not let their horses have these experiences is because the person is too weak in themselves to watch it happen and support the horse through the challenges. It takes a lot of guts to be a parent and it takes a lot of guts to raise a horse. Not teaching your horse to be a horse is like not teaching your child how to swim. One day he’s going to run into some water and all that work you did to protect him writes him his death sentence. Raising a horse takes courage and the conviction that even if you get it wrong sometimes, the intention of your heart will make up for it.

Even the best horse people don’t train horses using markedly less pressure than anyone else, but that is because pressure takes many forms. There is mental and emotional pressure and physical pressure. Say you train a horse bitless, you’re going to have to make up the difference in taxing the horse more through use of your legs, through more repetition of exercises, or through expecting more of him mentally. That’s still pressure, just a different kind. Say you train a horse with a double bridle. He’s going to be so light he will rarely be confused and there will rarely be conflict between you, but there will be pressure in his mouth and under his chin. It often comes out a wash. The best thing, the most responsible and kindest thing, is to treat your horse as an individual and try to give him the best deal for who HE is, because different horses value different things.

As a horse person, I test EVERYTHING. I’m serious. EVERYTHING. Breed, age, location, time of day, events, disciplines, girths, halters, lead ropes, pads, saddles, hoof trims, footing, feed, living environments, herd mixes… While many horse owners pick a way of doing things and decide it is the best, just because it SOUNDS like it is the best, I am a good person to talk to because I experiment with doing things a multitude of ways. I’m always asking BIG questions about horses. I can only tell you what I have found to be true, but I do not over-generalize and there is not a minute of any day that goes by when I am not thinking about it and trying to find the best possible way. I look for the answers purposefully and methodically, and without assumptions about what is right, yet the belief that I know a better way when I see it. And I would quit horses tomorrow with not an ounce of heartache if I felt my involvement in horses was a mistake.

What I do think is a mistake is to think that we are free and that our lives are so much better than our horses’. It’s also a mistake to think horses are so much better than we are. We don’t know what humans would be like under similar circumstances. How sad it would be to be disgruntled about what you are, especially when we cannot say we really know it. A human does not get the opportunity to be a human.

Our program is called PonyPros because we teach kids to develop horses. We are the “pony professionals.” In this video, you’ll see what an awesome job our students can do starting colts. For this year’s field trip to Mt. Dragon Pony Acres, we brought 8 students ages 9-15 and started colts and broodmares ages 3-11.

Sion is a 3 year old Section B Welsh. He was started by 11 year old Maddie during our 3 day field trip to the Evans breeding farm. Sion had never been ridden or ground trained other than the 3 days we were there last year. The Evans ponies are taught to stand tied as foals and get their feet trimmed but are otherwise unhandled. Sion and Maddie were able to do phenomenal things together. The footage in the video above was taken over our 3 day visit.

Last year, June 2010, PonyPros spent 3 days working with Sion as a 2 year old. At that time, 13 year old Elizabeth did ground work with him, had him carry a saddle, and sat on him. Then a year later, August 2011, Maddie, age 11, gave Sion a colt start, riding him bareback, then saddled. Maddie rode him at a walk, trot, and canter as you see in this video. Sion was handsome, loving, and playful. Maddie also rode Sion through water and trotted a small jump (we don’t jump 3 years olds, but it gave him an object to step over). Isn’t it great what nice ponies and kids can do with proper guidance?

Here is a video of Sion’s interactions last year as a 2 year old:

This field trip was a total experiment. Normally we have the kids do a ton of groundwork first but nowadays they’re pretty good riders and we wanted to see what ridden work we could accomplish. This year, we set the goal of having each kid trot a jump on their pony in full tack by the end of the 2.5 days. In part, we wanted to see if more traditional photos and video would better help the breeder find homes for her ponies in this tough market. In the past we’ve done footage with balls and tarps and bareback riding in more of a NH style.

To start the colts, what we did this year was basically go out there and ride them. We had the kids hop next to them, lay on them like a surf board, then turn them left/right and back up using the reins on the ground, tap lightly with a crop to teach a go forward cue, then hop on. All 8 kids were trotting their ponies by the end of the second 2 hour session. 3 of the 8 kids were cantering their ponies by the 3rd session – proof positive that a natural approach can be successful even when a traditional outcome is needed.

Just under 4 weeks to go and we still need a name!

Lily's and Hannah's first time jumping

Last July, we rescued Lily. We paid $125 for her, despite the fact that her hooves looked like elf shoes and she had had no training. We knew that she had a great temperament, pretty coloring, and decent conformation that would help her to excel despite a rough start.

The first day we brought Lily home, she could hardly trot or canter. When the other ponies got running, she would try to go, then give up. For 6 months we filed Lily’s hooves diligently every 2 weeks. Now she is on a 4 week cycle. Initially, for a few days after each trim she would need time to figure out her balance again and could not be ridden. We could tell because she would hop into the trot when asked to go, or would sometimes take a couple canter strides. She would also have a hard time walking off straight when she had been at a halt, or would stop and swing her hind end separate from her front end when asked to turn. Gradually we built up Lily’s stamina and athleticism with tricks and games. She loves chasing the tiger!

10 months later, Lily’s hooves are balanced and she just had her first day of jumping with a rider! The rider, 9 year old Hannah, started with us last summer, about the same time we bought Lily. Yesterday was Hannah’s first time jumping, also! Lily was very careful to trot and simply step over the jumps at first. As soon as Hannah gained her confidence, Lily offered to jump round and tuck her knees, and we rewarded her with a click and treat. Hannah did a great job getting her hands forward to release, never popping Lily in the face. Hannah will need to learn to stay a little closer to the saddle and keep her heels down, but for her first day, she did awesome. Hannah is a very bold, focused rider who listens attentively and works hard. Lily is lucky to have Hannah as a little pony jockey to help her learn!

It’s so great to see the progress the kids can make with the help of the ponies, and the progress the ponies can make with the help of the kids. We are so lucky to be able to give the children the experience of teaching a pony and seeing the impact they can make on another’s life.

(Sorry about the grainy photo! All we had on hand was an iPhone )

Q: (paraphrased) I have a rescue Arab mare, Cora, who often wears a sour face, which I think is really more of an apprehensive/serious face. She doesn’t seem to like a cowboy halter or bosal, so I tried using clicker to get her used to the “alter real” attachment on my rambo bitless. It took about 5 minutes, then I turned her out to graze for an hour. This session was our best yet – she seemed more engaged and happy – ears way more active, lips relaxed, lower eyelids more relaxed. Now I’m wondering, since bridling is a “big trick” for her, like laying down, do I always treat for it, or do I phase out the treats? Also, is treating her for ears forward too vague? I want her to loosen up and smile!

Koa seeing with her ears

A: I agree with you that a sour face is probably an apprehensive or serious face. A lot of the more sensitive breeds, Iberian breeds in particular, wear their ears partly back when they are focusing. Have you ever heard the expression, “Listen with your eyes?” It is a term used in Martial Arts to describe what horse people often call a “soft focus,” but I like “listen with your eyes,” and would add, “see with your ears,” because that’s what it feels like to me. Studies have shown that people “split” with their eyes and “lump” with their ears, but when I’m working with horses, I feel like the senses meld together. More sensitive horses tend to wear this expression of listening when they are really focused. Les’ mare, Koa, does it a lot. People ask us what’s with her ears all the time, but anyone who knows her knows that’s just who she is. She’s a sensitive gal.

Right now Cora might be feeling defensive because of her past handling, but you’re right on track with clicking her for smiling. I do that a lot. Because communication through facial expressions is so important to me, I tend to click for eye contact and a curious expression. Die-hard R+ people would probably tell you that what I do is too vague, but I think of it as capturing a behavior and also utilizing the click’s energizing power to change the mind state, and it works.

About the bridling – It’s been my experience also that you can teach bitting super quickly with clicker training. Here’s a vid of one of the EQxpressionists teaching bitting. Some horses do seem to be very sensitive on the bridge of their noses and I have wondered if in those situations a bit is more humane. It’s hard to say. The answer to the question about whether or not you’ll have to treat her for bitting indefinitely is whether or not the bit is a poisoned cue. A “poisoned cue” means that as soon as the bit comes out, what happens next makes her not want the bit in the first place. For example, picking up the reins is often a poisoned cue in riding. The horse learns that if she take the reins away from the rider, the rider can’t pull on her and make her go to work, so she learns to avoid letting the rider take up the reins. If Cora has such a sensitive mouth that after you put the bridle on, any kind of contact feels like pain to her, you’ll probably have to treat her indefinitely. But at that point, I would look at doing something even gentler, like a jumping hackamore with a fleece nose band, and see if maybe she really is just that sensitive. Of course she could have a tooth problem or an external factor like that, but I’ve known several healthy horses who seemed to experience a lot of discomfort from just a rope halter who did really well with a padded set up. (Here’s one of them – 3 year old rescue mare, had a really hard time when she lost her caps, too). I’ve also known healthy horses who seemed to react badly to things on their face as part of an underlying fear problem. You know how it is often very hard for children to let someone wash their hair in the tub? They startle and gasp sometimes when the water is poured over their heads. That is how some horses react to things on their nose – almost like they are drowning. In those situations, I spend a lot of time conditioning them to crave touch. They learn that a touch from me on the nose is comforting and reassuring, and eventually become my most reliable, devoted horses.

My guess is that Cora does not have the touch issues, but I will describe them just in case… I think your plan to teach her about head gear using clicker makes perfect sense and that clicking for a happy expression will have good results.

Heather, the mare who taught me about the importance of touch

From what I can tell, clicker training won’t help with conditioning a horse to crave touch. You can teach a horse to make rational choices regarding touch using clicker, but as far as teaching the to really seek contact, that’s something best done through attuned pressure and release training. I think that doing stretches with your horse and clicking for leaning into the stretch is one way clicker can make teaching about touch easier, but ultimately the way the click activates the brain will get in the way. For example, I have worked with a couple ponies by the same sire who are very odd about their faces – they react to touch like a child being doused in the bathtub. What I did with them was to round pen them at a slow jog and invite them in when their expression changed to one of relaxation. When they came in, if they had truly worked through some of their anxiety on the rail, then they would often want to be held. They would rest their heads in my arms and ask me to cuddle their faces, similar to what Temple Grandin describes with a squeeze chute. If they hadn’t worked through their anxiety, the slightest touch from me seemed electrifying. They would fling their heads and push on me. Sometimes you see anxious foals do this to their moms – they head butt them a bunch and nurse frantically. It is very hard to be around horses when they are like this. You have to be able to be with them and support them while they work through things but not let it rattle you. The only reason I can do it is that I’ve been through it enough times to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

This is a photo of a pony mare who can be a very bad head flinger. The first time she met me when she was a yearling, she asked to have her head cuddled. When I saw her again at 3 after some training, she was a different pony. We worked through the head-flinging, but that drowning type reaction is something she defaults to when she is nervous. Not a flattering photo, but you can see what I mean. Endo-tapping and CAT-H are other good tools for working with these horses who have a hard time with touch.

Bobbing and weaving

When I’m working on teaching a horse to be more playful (which I can do while they’re still working through touch issues, but may not do as vigorously) I use a lot of bobbing and weaving. Studies have shown that all species initiate locomotor play with a “play bow.” So, I do a play bow towards the horse, then run backwards, and click for smiling or athleticism. Running backwards allows the horse to take my space and creates a feeling of equality. Usually we start with cutting moves, then go to a little forward and back, then make the rope longer and add in sending out around and some changing directions, and some grapevine. Each time you add a new movement or more distance, the horse will lose some confidence, but it’s important to develop each movement as the name of the game is Locomotor Play. In locomotor play, animals practice the movements necessary for life or death situations in their species – prey animals run and buck, predators pounce and tumble.

It might be worth mentioning here that animals of different species can learn to play together, and part of that is made possible by the play bow, bobbing, and weaving being universal elements of play. I’ll post some of my favorite videos at the bottom. Arabs, I’ve noticed among the various breeds, can have a particularly time learning to play and learning tricks because they are so attuned to human body language and emotion. They are so careful that they don’t want to take their focus off of the human long enough to engage with a toy. They can have a little bit of a martyr outlook – “I will bear this ridiculousness to the best of my ability.” Chase the Tiger is my favorite confidence-building, play-drive building game and it would probably be a good one to try with her. Actually, there is an Icelandic Horse at our barn right now who has been my assistant’s project. After months, she is finally chasing the Tiger, standing on obstacles for fun, and playing with the ball and bean bag. It was a combination of endo-tapping and clicker that helped to get her calm enough that she could play with the toys. She is very emotional and has a tendency to bolt.

2 Interspecies Play Vids

Q: My horses can do quite impressive things using Natural Horsemanship and cookies, but I felt like something was missing. They weren’t really excited about playing and I didn’t want to use more pressure to up the ante. I’ve started introducing clicker and it’s making a big difference. Do you have any ideas for balancing pressure/release and click/treat?

A: We actually performed at a natural horsemanship event last May. For this event, I gave each of the 9 performers three cookies to use for the 1/2hr performance. The cookies were for big tricks like laying down, but the kids, only ages 8-13 with ponies ages 3-11, had no problem performing for that solid 30 minutes in front of 2000 people without really doing any clicking. However, at home there are days when we click our way through whole lessons. Our principle is straight forward: “Use the simplest method for the horse to understand.”

The biggest determinant in when we click versus use a rest reward is whether or not we want to activate or quiet the brain. Clicking gets horses really focused and motivated, but sometimes we want them to enter a migratory sort of brain state and just cruise. In those situations, clicking just complicates things. The main things we click for are canter departs, obstacles, stretches, sideways, back up, jumping, and tricks. Things we don’t click for are longeing, the cloverleaf pattern, figure 8′s, snakey bends, or head down/long and low type exercises.

The way we determine how the click or rest reward is affecting the horse is to pay careful attention to the horse’s facial expression, which is partly why we call ourselves EQxpressionists. Particularly when you are using CT, it is important to watch little things, not just gross motor signals like cocking a foot and yawning. For example, I can start to yoyo my horse through a gate and click when he looks back to size it up. In that situation, I am clicking the intent and that is very powerful. With NH, if the horse was looking at the gate and not at me, it might be hard to capture that. We do find it helpful to use a lot of “keep going signals” in our NH, like “good, nice, pretty,” etc. Once your horse has developed an auditory sensibility through clicker, KGS’s are really helpful. We are also careful to use tilting our head to the side to disengage the HQs as a marker in our NH.

The thing 2 things I think are most important to develop with clicker are:
1) The horse’s use of her eyes – you want to teach her to look at what you are
showing her, then to look back at you to communicate her feelings.
2) The horse’s willingness to try something, even if she can only do it with
baby steps.
…you can see how overall this is focus and motivation but it helps to break it down into more tangible actions.

The things I think are most important not to lose with clicker are:
1) The horse’s ability to enter a migratory state (basically to have a quiet
mind)
2) Your ability to communicate true appreciation to the horse and have it be
reinforcing
…If you use the treat to make it so you don’t have to really be there for your horse in situations where he really has to put himself on the line, you’ll miss out on some bonding experiences. There are some situations where clicking cheats you out of a powerful heart-to-heart connection.

Anyway, that’s what we do. Hope it helps!
Kali