Deja Vu

Deja Vu is ‘seen before’ in French, that sensation of having experienced an event, even if it is completely novel. But working with this mare is entirely unique each time, no sense of a ‘been there, done that.’ Well, some sense of having been there, since we do not start at ground zero each time we begin a session, rather we build on the foundation we have been working hard at creating.

When Deja first arrived at SAFE, she was reluctant to be caught, and absolutely petrified of the flag. Even keeping it at a distance and waving it as quiet as possible saw Deja pulling at the end of her line, desperate to get away. Petting her with it was also an absolute no go, a concept that was very difficult for her to consider. But Deja has come a very long way from those first days here, and it has been truly amazing getting to watch her grow in her confidence and, as a result, let down in her physicality.

Deja is a very intelligent horse who picks up on things very quickly, and it has been neat to observe how much she holds on to from previous sessions. Each time I pull her out, she starts a little further than she did the previous day. It’s been great watching her progress in such broad strokes. As of late, we have been closing in the boundaries a bit more to challenge her, and she has been taking it in stride. While the flag is not the great villain it once was, she still does not care for it on her neck or above her withers. Fair enough, as these are blind spots. But in getting in and getting out, she is learning that she can move her feet away from the thing that makes her nervous, and that it is not going to bite her. Quite the opposite actually, for flag pets must feel rather nice. Deja has reached a point of understanding with the flag where she wants to stop with it petting her — a previously unheard of concept. There are more than a few moments in there where I have to ask her to move, because she is content to let it rest upon her. Content is truly the word here, because there is no longer the bracing fear, deer-in-the-headlights kind of scenario when it touches her. Or at least, not nearly as much.

She is learning to move away with more balance and intention, and you can see it in the set of her head as she walks around in a circle. Just because she is a Tennessee Walker does not mean her ears have to live in the clouds. It has been nice to watch her mellow out and literally let down.

One thing we are still working on is the separation of her and her best friend (and potential mother?) Cleopatra. Having lived together all their lives, these two are understandably bothered when separated from one another, but they are both learning to find peace and security with their handlers. I have been working on taking Deja further and further from Cleo, and bringing her attention back to me when it drifts. Each time she feels the need to call or gets a panicky look in her eye, I gently bring her attention back to the work we are doing and remind her that I can help to support her. And she believes me.

It has been very rewarding working with Deja, seeing the massive changes she is getting, and watching her relax into herself a little more, day by day!

Having the chance to work with Deja Vu — a horse who has not had much in the way of experience with this style of horsemanship — during the recent Joel Conner clinic was a challenging and tremendous learning experience for the both of us.

At first, working Deja was like working a 2x4. Her rigidity was based entirely in insecurity, an unwillingness to let go of any part of her field of vision. As Joel says, ‘a horse’s emotional stability comes from their physical mobility,’ meaning their freedom and peace is tied directly to how able they feel to move in any one direction at any one time. Deja might as well have had concrete blocks attached to each hoof with how stuck she felt. I was determined to begin chipping away at them and reassure her that she could move in ways that had been previously unexplored by her for the fifteen years she had been on this earth.

Fifteen years is a long time to become set in your ways. But horses prove time and time again just how willing and able to change they are, even when their habits become calcified. The five days of working with Deja would be a perfect showcase of a horse’s tremendous capacity to learn and adjust.

I had been working with Deja on catching in the paddock, and so getting her to hook on to me at the beginning of each of our sessions was less a mountain and more a hill. The act was made a bit more complicated by the addition of her paddock mate Cleopatra, the two of them liable to get running if pressure was applied to just one. But as a testament to the hooking on work we had done previously, Deja was quite willing to look to me with very little prompting, even as her friend skittered around her.

On the end of a line, Deja was a bit less willing to forget about her herdmate. If the two strayed too far from one another, it was all craning necks (and that Tennesee Walker headset is HIGH) and ear-splitting whinnies. It took many gentle reminders of what we were doing (your hindquarters please, Deja) to get her flaxen head back in the game, so to speak. Over the course of the clinic, we moved further and further away from Cleo, and Deja was able to find support in me when she began to get nervous about being away from her friend.

Deja is also tremendously heavy on the forehand. As soon as she stops any motion, she shifts all her weight forward, dumping all 900lbs onto the front half of her body. A main focus of the weekend was trying to help her readjust her weight backwards over her hind, and while there is still far to go, we did make some forward progress. Sometimes she will end a motion by picking up her front hooves instead of planting and twisting them with enough force to change the earth’s rotation. How? Hindquarters, hindquarters, hindquarters. Hindquarters to forward back to hindquarters, trying to get her to redistribute her weight a bit more evenly and feel more secure in her ability to move her feet. With repetition and some decent releases, she began to gain an understanding, and became a bit more soft and responsive to my asks – and start to shift her weight back, sometimes.

Touching Deja with the flag up until this point had been a hard no-go. She was tremendously worried about the soft bit of fabric on the end of a pole, worried enough that at first attempt to pet her on the shoulder with it she nearly dislocated mine in time with her attempt to get away. We would have to take things slow, for both our sakes.

The first place she allowed for the flag to touch her was on the forehead, the same area that she had come to recognize as a wonderful place for a pet. Then, with caution, I was able to work the flag down her neck. Next it was about getting ‘out’ when things felt good, and slowly asking more of her. The entire flag exercise is to teach the horse to differentiate between when a stimulus means something and when it doesn’t. Removing the flag when she is in a panicky mindset would only reinforce that the flag is something that should make her nervous. Instead, I waited with her until she relaxed – and sometimes this was a minute change – before removing the flag. By the end of the first session, she had come to accept the flag petting down her back and off her hind, something that would have never been possible at the start.

Each day, she gained a bit more confidence in herself, and by the end of Sunday’s session, she was allowing for more careless pets of the flag, and even coming to an unhurried stop with it petting her.

Deja and myself still have a long road ahead of us, but the tools we gained over the weekend helped to lay a pretty solid and hopefully foundation for what the future will look like. This mare is sweet and smart, and it is a pleasure being able to help her feel a bit more comfortable in her beautiful skin!

We have no shortage of chestnut mares at SAFE. It’s our most popular color, in fact, with no fewer than 10 in our care currently. Deja Vu is aptly named, then, being a chestnut mare herself. Walking by her paddock, you may ask yourself, ‘have I seen this horse before?’ But after spending a bit of time with her, you’d come to the realization that she, like all the rest, is an individual, not to be referred to as ‘just another chestnut mare.’

Deja, as has become her moniker, is a wary, but intelligent gal. While she arrived able to be haltered and handled, one quickly came to the realization that she was doing so in spite of you, not because of you. So recently we have been working on getting her to hook on to a person instead of tuning them out, helping her be an active participant in what is happening versus merely allowing things to happen to her. This is demonstrated in something as simple as going in to catch her. Yes, she will allow you to walk up and put a halter on – if you approach with some caution and finesse – but it is clear from the way she looks towards her horse neighbor or the surrounding environment that she is not at all with you. If you are to raise the energy, she scrambles away, and tunes out your bids to restore a connection that wasn’t there to begin with. She does not yet find peace in humans, despite how she might have originally appeared by being halterable and ‘gentle.’

So each time we go to catch her now, instead of sneaking a catch on her, so to speak, we ask her to hook on to us. At this stage, this looks like a little bit of work. We send Deja around the paddock, sending energy towards her hip in order to encourage her to face us. Once she does, she gets a break as long as she is standing facing us with her attention also pointed in our direction. If that attention breaks or if she feels the need to move off, totally fine, but back to work she goes. The first time we did this, Deja felt the need to scramble around the paddock, changing direction on a whim, and feeling like she was only able to stop in a way where she could have eyes on her friend. But she is a smart mare, and was soon realizing that the answer we were looking for was one that involved looking for us. Soon, she was seeking out opportunities to find us, and by extension, the release.

It’s important to work both the right and left sides of a horse, and it is also fascinating to see how the two differ. Most horses are handled more on the left side (being the side they are haltered and led from in the majority of cases), and while you may think that this might be their ‘better’ side, the opposite can also be true. Sometimes, they have learned more negative habits or tendencies on the left due to poor handling, meaning that the right side is actually the side where they are softer and more pliable. But, it can also mean that they are more comfortable with people on that left side, so even if the right side is ‘better,’ they may want to keep you on the left eye where they are more used to seeing you. Deja is definitely less brace‑y on her right side, but does have a tendency to want to get you back on the left eye.

Each time we go to catch Deja in this new way, the time it takes for her to hook on grows shorter and shorter. She has even begun to take a few steps towards us when she draws in, showing that she is choosing the connection rather than having it foisted upon her.

Just because a horse has been haltered before does not mean it has been done with quality, and also does not mean that we will write them off as being ‘done already.’ We may have to work to undo what has already been done in Deja Vu’s halter starting, but helping to rebuild this foundation will have a massive impact on the quality of communication she is able to have with humans for the remainder of her life. Besides, we may have done this a time or two before – the real Deja Vu!