Well in the end I was home for only about two weeks of the New Zealand winter before hitting the road again. I had a few more loose ends to sort in Europe, but I was so glad I got a couple of weeks at home with my folks and my wonderful young horses. I also needed to chop a bit of dead wood when home so I could move on with some new plans in life! So after putting away my axe I boarded yet another jet and heading back "Up Over" from "Down Under".
I think I counted it was my ninth time at Dubai Airport in just over a year - that's some amount of frequent flyer miles. I now at least get to make use of Business class check-in and the business class lounge in Dubai which means smoked salmon and capers and endless glasses of Moet! People often ask how I cope on the flights - Easy: I sleep! Take a tablet people - it's the only way to go! On this trip I watched a movie (The Hunger Games - highly recommend it) on the first leg to Melbourne - took a pill and slept about 10 hours straight up to Dubai, then had three seats to myself on the last 7 hour leg so slept most of that too - No jet lag baby yeah!
One important part of this trip was to attend the 10th annual International Society for Equitation Science (ISES) conference - held this year in Scotland. Last year we were at Bartel's Academy in Holland, and I have also attended in Dublin, Michigan and Sydney. This year we were lucky enough to be at the Royal Edinburgh (Dick) University - named after its founder William Dick - I have pictures of his statue below - a stern looking man holding a horse's hoof! The vet school here has recently been rebuilt and the facilities are amazing. The main foyer is adorned with the original building's old stained glass windows - this time hung from the ceiling by wires - a nice modern touch incorporating aspects of the vet school's history.
This year's conference was called "The Road Ahead" and once again there was an interesting array of speakers. One of my personal favourites was the UK vet Sue Dyson who gave a plenary on Physical Aspects of the Sustainable Athlete - her talk on conformation of the sport horse was fascinating - looking at the nitty-gritty such as coronary band shapes and hock angles.
The second plenary was from Dr Andy Hemmings from the royal Agricultural College in the UK. His topic was Equine Behavioural Neuroscience: research goals for the next decade and beyond. Well I haven't met many neuroscientists in my time, but boy was this man passionate and he really seemed to know his stuff! I only understood about one in every five words he spoke but I really enjoyed his talk...
The final two plenary speakers on the first day were my friend Dr Lesley Hawson - an Australian who has a great outlook on life and a wicked sense of humour, and Dr Inga Wolframm who is a sports psychologist from Germany / Holland. Both spoke on rider aspects of the horse-human relationship.
There was an absolutely mind blowing array of papers and posters presented over the two days which covered everything from investigations into limb hypersensitisation of jumping horses; human-horse attachment theory; the effect of the Pessoa training aid on the limb angles and other variables in working trot; and the differences in hind limb angulations between top-level dressage and showjumping horses.
The second day started back in the lecture theatre with a plenary from Sweden's Dr Lar's Roepstorff who spoke about the latest technology and kit available for measuring variables in equitation. A friend of mine (and host for my stay in Scotland was the Kiwi Tracey Ward who gave a presentation on her concept saddle which I simply can't wait to test ride once a prototype is available at my disposal. It's a really novel concept and one which may revolutionalise the world on which we sit!
My mentor Dr Andrew McLean gave a plenary himself entitled: Distilling Equitation Science - objectivity vs subjectivity in equine behaviour modification. I always enjoy listening to Andrew talk and ALWAYS make notes and learn more from him - even though I have heard him speak at least 20 times before.
International dressage rider Wayne Channon gave a very interesting plenary on the future of equestrian sports. Wayne is not only a fantastic dressage rider, but an academic (statistics is his thing) and a businessman as well. He talked about how science based training systems can be incorporated with traditional training systems winning the medals today. He talked passionately about the use of stem cells for injury repair in sport horses (he is in the business of stem cell storage amongst other things) and he also talked about his own "baby" - reforming the dressage judges training system.
Gemma Pearson is a young vet based at the University of Edinburgh. She presented a great talk on advancing equine veterinary practice by the application of learning theory. By using the technique of overshadowing Gemma showed how even the most needle-shy of horses can be trained to accept a needle or stand quietly for other veterinary treatments.
I was invited to do a demonstration on the practical day which unfortunately didn't go according to plan. They say one should avoid working with children and horses as the potential for being let down rather large. Hard to avoid in my line of work, but I guess after so many successful demos in a row all around the world I was due a bad one. We were attempting to show how installing clear cues reduces anxiety in challenging environments. We were also testing how thermography can be used to take accurate eye temperature readings which are an indicator of stress levels in the horse. We were hoping to bring the horse out into the indoor school and take an eye temperature reading when he was showing a heightened state of anxiety in front of the audience. Then I was to do some groundwork with the horse to overshadow the environment and hopefully show a lowered eye temperature reading once his legs were under stimulus control and he was "parked" standing calmly in response to my operantly conditioned signals I was training in via positive and negative reinforcement.
The horse in question actually lives the facility - he has well documented conflict behaviours both in hand and under saddle. His handlers have trouble leading him in an out of the stable yard and so employ the use of another horse that he can follow in and out each day to "solve" the issue. The horse also avoids putting his feet near anything he finds remotely scary which reinforces his fear to the point that he is afraid of just about everything. Under saddle he has various problems including napping and severe tension. For me this horse is just another day at the office - he will have a huge lack of turn and stop under saddle and no stop or park trained in hand. He was fairly alert as I took him out onto the arena. Although it is his usual place of training there were now more people than normal in the stands and a platform in the middle of the arena. Under the direction of Dr McLean I showed the audience just how bad his responses were in hand, letting him circle around me and follow my feet. He got progressively trickier to handle showing me just what he is like to handle normally, circling round the handler, running over the top of the handler and swinging his head to look at anything and everything in his environment. After his eye temperature was recorded by the thermography camera I proceeded to begin training the horse to step back to pressure-release cues from the bit and whip taps on the front of his legs. Unfortunately at this point some people started moving boxes and walking along behind the back wall of the arena - the horse went into a very heightened state of high alert and was passaging and high blowing, tail held erect - the whole works. He did not have sufficient training with the bit to allow me to step him back and effectively disengage his flight to calm him down. In fact this guy had learnt to fold his neck in half and run his shoulder into the handler which made any use of the bit useless. I was well aware of not using strong pressures in front of an audience despite the horse becoming increasingly dangerous to me on the ground. I wanted to take him out of the arena and away from the source of his tension to avoid flooding him, but as soon as the stimulus had started he was effectively flooded and it was all I could do to get him to the far corner of the arena and use the two walls to block him. Other people may have considered letting the horse go but I know that would have allowed him to run and experience even more flight (flight response is cemented by fast legs and distance and I was not going to let this happen for the horse's sake). I would happily have taken him out of the situation if I thought I could safely lead him out the exit, but instead I chose to keep him in the corner and wait for him to calm down a little. At this time I managed to get one set of three good repetitions of him stepping back from a whip tap and then I knew he was with me. I could then get him to park and lower his head and took him to various places on the arena where I got him to stand quietly with his head lowered. The thermographic camera showed his eye temperature had lowered several degrees than that taken when he was in a stressed state.
So mission acomplished one would think? Not on your Nelly! We then had to field various questions from the more "left-wing" audience members who were worried that the horse was put in a stressful situation, that a bit had been used in his mouth, that we should have let him run around to experience the situation more, that the horse should not have been put in a situation where he may have experienced flooding etc. Time for damage control! Firstly it was never our intention for the horse to get that upset - that was beyond our control and if the people hadn't been walking out behind the arena where he could hear but only partially see them then the demo would have been a resounding success. The horse was on his home turf in an area he is trained in each day and Dr Mclean had begun retraining his in-hand responses in the arena in a session a few days before. Retraining such a difficult horse in such a huge open space as a large indoor is never a good idea, but sometimes we have to go with what we have in front of an audience. I would happily have taken the horse out of the situation if I thought it was safe for both me and him to do so. Most of the audience were happy enough with what they saw, a handler trying to get a worked up horse under control without the use of overbearing force (which may well have been a lot safer for me) and a horse that in the end stood quiet and fairly relaxed with a calm demeanour. An ability to deal with horses in a heightened state of awareness such as at a racetrack or in the breeding barn is something I am fairly well versed in, but I will be the first to admit that in this particular situation we simply got it wrong. We chose the wrong horse for the demo or should have, in hindsight gone deeper into his responses in the days leading up to the demo. We had a noted veterinarian check the horse over after the demonstration when he was back in his stable and she found no signs of injury or distress to the horse. This was of course to be expected as at no time was the horse put under any undue physical pressure by me with either the whip (which was used only lightly to tap his legs) or by the bit which was in actual fact an ineffective tool to use as the horse was well versed in ways in which to contort his neck to avoid direct bit pressure. The most I did was vibrate the bit in his mouth which was never enough to get any form of response from him - he simply couldn't "hear" me over the overriding "noise" of the environment. I know I have learnt from this experience and will endeavour in the future not to put a horse into that situation - an apology to the horse for being stressed for 15 minutes whilst under my care is the best I can do at this point in time. I would have loved to have worked again with the horse as I think given a week of correct installment of the go stop and turn responses he could be a very nice riding horse indeed - but for now he remains somewhat of a danger to himself, his handlers and his riders.
The photos in the series below show how calm the horse became after some clear cues were installed.
We also had a couple of practical demonstrations about the use of rein pressure gauges and pressure pads on the sides of the horse and under the saddle - it is amazing where the technology is going with all of this...
And finally there was a carriage driving demonstration which looked at rein pressures amongst other factors. The carriage horses were beautiful and very well trained.
The practical day was chaired by Richard Davidson who kindly gave us his time before heading back home - with only 10 days to go before he rides for Team GB at the Olympics, to say that we were lucky to have him there is somewhat of an understatement. It is always great to have a rider of his calibre at the conference, and he is simply fantastic at chairing such events - he also does the Global Dressage Forum.
We always have a great social time at the conferences and this year was no exception. On the first night there was a meet and greet type affair which included some nice NZ Sauvignon Blanc. A handful of us ended up out for dinner in a little Italian joint - the owner was a true blue Italian - a lot of fun! The big social event was the conference dinner and Ceilidh - or traditional Scottish dance. We were piped in to the dinner by a lovely young Scotsman playing a great tune or two on the bagpipes in his kilt - Fabulous! We were treated not only to a delicious meal, but the dancing was great fun! I guess it took me back to the days of folk dancing at Te Uku primary school - but this was far more fast and furious and even after just one song (they seemed 10 minutes long at least!) the heart was pumping and the sweat was pouring off us. A great time was had by all.
The horse shown in the last couple of photos is a lovely 2yo Donnerwind filly who also calls Edinburgh her home after being exported fro New Zealand by Prof Natalie Waran when she left our fair shores.Next year's conference is on the East Coast of the USA - who knows if life will take me there...
PS Most of the photos below were taken by Jane Barr.
Jane can be conacted on jane_barr@hotmail.co.uk