Ive been musing about different hypotheses around deescalation which kind of converged during my ride a few weeks ago.
A whole host of unexpected environmental factors meant Una became very suddenly tense while riding in the open.
I did the mental coin flip and decided to try find a way to desescalate the situation from up top, rather than dismounting. A month ago I would have gotten off and continued from the ground - but Una and I have got a little more of a language around riding now. And I wanted to see if there was someplace in Unas knowledge of riding that was consolidated enough that going there would feel deescalating to Una.
My theory is that if deescalation is a feeling which is constructed from me and my horse going back to a place where we felt good, then the more understanding, confidence and life experience Una gets the more potential paths to deescalation we will have.
Which leads to my second hypothesis that deescalation is almost like the proof of consolidation - anything we can deescalate to or deescalate within is something which has some degree of robustness.
I suspect with happy established grownup horse we can have a little heartbeat of deescalation within a passage - but with a fearful semi feral youngster deescalation might require walking away and leaving them to themselves for 10 minutes.
I dont know if these hypothesises are true. They are just my working theories atm.
I asked for a couple different behaviours which I knew Una had a fairly robust understanding of under saddle, and which I'd noticed she finds deescalating from the ground. I was pleased to find that simple, repeated, halt/walk transitions were constructed by Una as deescalating in that moment.
Next I had a really cool insight.
A minute or so later Una had softened up and was walking faux calmly but I could feel she was still a little bit on that knifes edge - maybe she would deescalate further and properly settle, or maybe her smouldering hill would catch flame, and she would escalate and explode.
Then suddenly, I understood without a shadow of a doubt that all Una had to do was walk another handful of strides and if we made it through that we would be totally golden.
It was an odd knowledge. In the past I have sometimes felt "oh, phew we have just deescalated". And I have sometimes felt "oh dear, this situation is about to massively escalate in 5-6 strides." But I dont think I've really felt before "the deescalation is imminent in 5-6 strides", or atleast not recognized that feeling before today.
But it was! Those few strides later Una shook the tension off her neck, and I could feel her prior concerns about the environmental factors literally fall away. We continued as we were for another minute or so then I picked up the reins and moved us into some new, more difficult behaviours Una has only just started learning about recently - with great success.