This advanced Mirror Game is the next step to getting your horse in the habit of being happy to do what you ask them to do. This is a foundation for saddle work that will knock your socks off and is an example of how you can work the yin yang balance that I talked about in the last Lesson.
It is one way that you can increase your horse’s motivation to freely do what you ask them to do and is especially important with a horse who has always been MADE to do what the human wanted.
There are two parts to this Lesson – an audio introduction followed by a video lesson.
Click here for the alternate recording for Introduction to the Advanced Mirror Game
Now for the video. What you are about to watch is a lovely example of someone’s very first day at playing the Mirror Game. Kerry will get better and better over time and use smaller and smaller signals – until she and her horse are so synchronised, so together in that moment, that it will be poetry to watch.
Even the first time playing this game, the horse Missy released her fear (or at least a substantial layer of it), found a Comfort Zone and started the very beginnings of self carriage where her stride became softer and more rhythmic and her back started to lift. Kerry also started to create a Comfort Zone and develop some confidence around communicating what she wanted from her horse. Just imagine what you will be able to do with more time!
Watch on Youtube if you need to.
Keys to Success
1. Do MUCH, MUCH more mirroring than anything else at the beginning. After your Feel has developed, you’ll be able to follow the good feelings when you’re asking them to mirror you and use the Not Quite Right to drop back into mirroring them.
2. Create a Comfort Zone with WALKING before going to the higher energy of a trot. Although occasionally you can have a horse who prefers to trot, you would very much want to make sure that they have not come too far out of their Comfort Zone.
3. Listen to your Not Quite Right very carefully and stop or back off if you need to.
4. If your horse were afraid of the stick (which is definitely NOT OK!) at this stage you would throw it away and use something else. There is a lesson coming up that will help you get all the tools you want to use, into your horse’s Comfort Zone.
5. You can get even more creative about this game – this video shows Kerry learning how to do it for the first time.
Written Version of the Audio
I’m cheating a little with this Lesson – you have an audio introduction AND a video, to get you all the information that you need.
But just a note before we start. Do these lessons at you and your horse’s own pace. You will be amazed how when you work as slow as you need, that it will turn out faster in the long run. So if you’re not ready to do this lesson yet, enjoy watching the video and seeing what you are going to be doing, learn some new stuff and put the emails in a file so that you can look at them again when you ARE ready. This is about happiness – it is not about trying to keep up with the lessons or anyone else!
So, do you feel either peaceful or happy or excited or any other way good, when you play the first part of the Mirror Game with your horse? If so, you are ready to move on.
The aim of this game is to start getting your horse absolutely relaxed and happy about doing what you ask them to do. So when we ask that all important question “What’s in it for our horse?” – then having fun is the answer.
The value of this to our riding is HUGE. It gets our horse in the habit of doing what we ask them to do, HAPPILY and it gets us in the habit of us asking only a little bit at a time and building that up to the big picture of what we want. And of course – deepening the bond at the same time.
Getting our horse used to doing what we ask at liberty allows us to establish our communication while our horse is still free to move away from us – and THAT takes the pressure right off both of us. Any confusion with communication is much more happily worked out at liberty.
It would be lovely to be in that happy place with your horse 100% of the time, but the reality is that the better you get at using this model, the more happy you are both going to be.
And the reality is that you are exploring getting better at happiness – so if you mentally work on 80% feeling really happy and 20% feeling your way through learning new things, with the confusion and maybe even anxiety occasionally that will come from that – then that’s a good deal at this early stage. Later on, the percentage of time spent in your happy place should get bigger and bigger until even learning something new can be a happy thing to do together.
The point that I am making though is that right now, it is absolutely OK for you to feel crappy occasionally as you figure out what it is that you have to change to feel good again. It’s not about feeling happy ALL the time – it’s about HOW FAST can you figure out what you have to know or do to find that happy place again. And do you see, the faster you can figure that out, the happier you are going to be!
This game is about asking our horse to do something in such a way that they get into the HABIT of being relaxed about being asked to do something and we get into the HABIT of working much more in the comfort zone for us and our horse and only working for short periods of time out of it.
This has fabulous effects on your saddle work, as you expand the HABIT of your horse being relaxed about doing what you ask them to do. Imagine what it will feel like when both you and your horse are BOTH relaxed about your riding – woohoo it’s gonna feel good!
This advanced mirroring game is a great opportunity for exploring and getting used to using that feeling that I call Not Quite Right to know when to back off with your horse, when to take the pressure off and when it’s right to ask your horse for something again – and THAT folks is the sign of a world class horse person…
Enjoy the video that comes next.
Up Next
Is a very powerful concept for one-ness in the saddle as well as at liberty.