An Obstinate Therapeutic Riding Student

February 19, 2008

T is one of our most difficult students in the Monday night therapeutic riding groups at Pegasus Farms. I talked about working with her a while ago in the Therapeutic Riding Chronicles.

T is an adult student who has been riding at Pegasus for years. Randy, the Monday night instructor, told me that ages ago T used to ride quite well independently. Now she sits up there and refuses to do anything at all. She says she doesn’t know how, when at times it’s obvious that she does.

T is an interesting character who really seems to enjoy being obstinate. She slumps on her horse, refusing to give walk and stop cues either verbally or physically. She lets her hands rest on the pommel of the saddle. She never lifts a hand to ask her horse to turn. She doesn’t answer questions, and rarely talks other than to say, “See you on Monday?” She has a nasty habit of throwing the reins down rather severely if she’s angry, annoyed, or trying to get your attention. Two weeks ago, she took her helmet off and threw it. She very rarely smiles.

And the problem is, she knows better. She knows better than to throw the reins. She knows the verbal and physical cues for whoa and go. She knows how to ask her horse to turn. Heck, unlike most of our students, she actually knows right from left.

She just plain won’t do it.

At least she won’t most of the time.

T rides Micah these days, a gray Percheron gelding who is probably close to 18 hands tall and is mostly used for vaulting. We had to put T on Micah when we were short horses one day. She’s not very tall, so with her bad attitude, I didn’t think she would be too thrilled about getting on the gigantic horse.  To my surprise, she absolutely loves him. At least, she doesn’t realize how funny she looks perched up on his back.

A few weeks ago I was leading Micah and T, and she was up to her old rein throwing tricks. I had refused to make Micah walk until she asked him to. I knew very well she knew what to do, and was just being difficult. After all, she’s supposed to be riding the horse and I’m just supposed to help as needed. I really think T has gotten away with letting her volunteers do all of her work for too long. At any rate, she got mad and threw her reins. Typically we give them back and tell her not to do it again; she does know better. Sometimes Randy even threatens to take her off the horse if she does it one more time.

Of course, once she starts, she keeps up the rein throwing. So I decided to try what works with boys who like to tease–don’t give her any reaction and maybe she’ll stop. So the next time she threw her reins, I didn’t even look at her let alone hand the reins back and reprimand her. I just kept walking. She picked them back up. She tried it two more times, and when I didn’t even turn around, she gave up.

Last night T mounted Micah with a smile on her face. She was grinning the first few times around the ring. She told Micah to walk BOTH verbally and with her legs. She pulled back on the reins when we needed to stop. She even informed Randy before we headed into the ring, “Both hands on the reins!” And it wasn’t anything I did, she just happened to be in a cooperative mood.

At one point we had to stop and stand for five minutes while Randy gave one of his famous monologues on working with horses. T wasn’t too interested in standing, so after we’d gone for a good 20 minutes without any rein throwing (had to be a record), she started the bad habit again. I tried the ignoring her trick. But it didn’t work this time. She kept at it and threw harder and harder until I finally handed them back and reprimanded. Then she stopped.

After that one incident, T and I talked about how to turn a horse with the reins. We were going through a course that zig-zagged up the middle of the ring, with cones that we had to circle at each point. Once, T actually helped me ask Micah to turn around three out of the four cones. Then she was done. After a brief cooperative streak, T was back to slumping in the saddle and refusing to participate.

Randy decided to try something crazy, and remove the leadline. And immediately T asked Micah to walk with her legs, and started steering. After a minute she stopped and just sat there, but it was obvious from her first minute of independent riding that she knew what she was doing.

What a stinker! It was the most successful night with T that I’ve seen since I started back in September. It didn’t have to do with anything I did, so I have no idea how to repeat the success. And apparently if I discover a trick that works, it’s only going to work once.

It’s a good thing I like a challenge. It only makes me more determined to break through T’s shell and to get her to interact with me and participate in riding her horse.

Posted in Jackie's Thoughts, Making a Difference, Therapeutic Riding