Preparing Horses for Emergencies
I've a weird hunch that I might be able to teach Una the pony to problem solve under pressure the same way I would teach a junior engineer to problem solve under pressure. Its an extremely antropromorphic idea :D
Una has already had one unexpected emergency and it led to a nasty accident. Likely, at some point she will have another - hopefully less dramatic - and I would like to give her the resources to respond to it in a more helpful way.
The traditonal advice I've heard about coping with emergencies in horses is very neurorigid. Either - Drill perfect obedience in a calm environment, gradually move to less calm environments, work your way until the horse responds to your aids on muscle memory without thinking OR - Desensitize the pants off the horse until they never response to anything at all.
First of all, I'm pretty sure neither of these ideas actually work.
Maybe they work a little bit - but in my experience if 3 horses bolt on a trail ride - 1 will stop when asked by the rider, 1 will try dump their rider then stop, and 1 will dump their rider, kick them while they are down and bolt home. And which horse is which has as much more to do with everything else going on in that horses life than it does with which horse had the most time practising stop/go and which horse spent the most time with the tarp on its head.
On a more practical level, Una has a rock solid stop to rein pressure under saddle in normal circumstances, and even after a small spook or while excited. But that stop didnt work at all when she had a saddle under her belly and stirrups flapping against her legs. And Im not going to extensively desensitizate a horse who I want to do dressage with - thats crazy talk. So I need a new plan.
I've heard it said that emergency responses will always be available in an emergency, and I like that idea.
I also work with emergencies for a living. I have a really cool day job. I am part of a small team who look after a website that stores code for other companies. We spend a lot of time trying to apply best practices in our context - lazy experimenting, quiet tinkering, making things faster, cheaper, more secure, more reliable and easier to recover after a disaster. Slow, steady iterative progress - highly creative, with a lot of variation. A lot like how I want my arena work with Una to be.
But - when a problem occurs on our website, it breaks things for companies all around the world and it makes international news. I have an app on my phone which goes off like a siren and I'm jolted into action. I'll have 3 screens open paging between graphs, error streams and documentation, 20 people talking in my ear, scribbling down hypothesises and ruling them out, taking decisive action based on experience - on knowledge - on a hunch.
That is an emergency response, but it is not neurorigid or desensitized at all. It is incredibly creative, collaborative and no two instances are the same. While we do write playbooks in advance describing how we will respond to certain events etc, in practise the emergency is very rarely anything we could have practised for in advance.
We don't follow our written instructions automatically without thinking. We assess the situation, weigh multiple factors, draw from our existing experience plus the logs plus the graphs plus the playbooks and collaboratively create the next steps forward in the moment, as a team.
Sure, there is a lot of pressure. And the hot seat can be an uncomfortable place to be. But it can also be energizing and inspiring. It gives me a deeper appreciation for my craft. It gives me a deeper appreciation for my coworkers. It narrows my focus to the here and now. Its very educational. It can be very, very fun.
Its empowering for me to know I'm good in a crisis. It gives me a lot of confidence to walk into all kinds of weird situations, and the problem solving under pressure skills I have developed at work benefit me enormously in my personal life.
So now what I'm trying to do is think about - what factors make a person good at handling emergencies? - and how can I help my pony Una develop this capacity?
Things which I think are really important to help teams problem solve effectively in an emergency
-
High trust teams. You never blame, complain about, target, shame, point out, acknowledge etc etc who might gave made a mistake which lead to a problem while the problem is still being fixed. You can also propose ideas and look into options without the possibility of being criticized if your hypothesis is inaccurate. No one ever starts yelling at or threatening someone else, and if there is an outside party who wants to yell and threaten we designate a special comunication person to go deescalate that outsider in a different room and leave the experts to solve the problems in peace. Its a very high pressure environment, but its also a very high trust and safe environment.
-
Collaboration. In a major incident decisions are made by a handful of experts, never a single person on their own. That means no one ever feels like they need to know all the answers and the capacity of multiple people can be drawn upon. It also models how to react to signal vs noise from more senior people to more junior people, and so uplifts the skills of the whole team. For me, this has always profoundly reduced stress - nothing is ever all on my head alone.
-
Communication. Even though the work gets very creative and collaborative, the communication style becomes very direct and focused. People say very precisely exactly what they are doing and what they think could be happening, because it suddenly becomes very important to make sure agreed steps are performed in order, key details are communicated and everyone is on the same page. People also say No to each other much more frequently and clearly than in many other professional settings - but its not an angry No, or a shaming No, or a shutting up No. No becomes a brilliant answer because No often narrows the problem space of potential hypothesises and gets everyone much closer to a solution. Its important to emphasize though that its not a leader suggesting ideas and a follower saying No or vice versa - its a team of collaborators going back and forward and anyone can propose something and anyone can give an educated reason why it won't work.
Tangent: I think its interesting to think about how in an emergency very direct, precise, black and white communication pairs incredibly well alongside very creative problem solving. But how in a more relaxed, sandbox kind of context very direct, precise, black and white communication can lead to very hierarchial decision making, neurorigid and dogmatic solutions. I muse that perhaps this is partly "emergency handling for emergencies" and partly because in an emergency like I described above everyone is empowered to speak frankly, while often in a non-emergency situation only the person highest on the authority ladder is empowered to speak frankly.
Anyhow, so obviously the better Una and I are at collaborating, communicating, and the better we trust one another the better we will be able to handle emergencies as a team.
Ok sure - but Una is not an experienced human engineer she is an inexperienced young pony.
How would I train a young, inexperienced person to do my job?
-
show them the basics of the relevant systems and encourage them to ask questions
-
give them small low stress problems with low time pressure and tell them to solve them, but not how to solve them *. I'd offer myself as a resource if they got stuck
-
I'd work alongside them and collaboratively troubleshoot some more interesting problems together
-
whenever serious emergencies popped up, I'd invite them in the shadow and offer what they could, as well as see how me and the rest of my team handled things
-
over time I would trust them with more complexity and pressure
-
I would offer lots of encouragement and trust.
-
I would also encourage them to question me, push back on my ideas, offer their own solutions etc etc.
-
while still reminding them of whatever acceptance criteria ** we set for the solution
-
their resilience and confidence would grow
-
until eventually they were able to take the lead in even very complex and high pressure situations.
I suspect this could work on a pony. I could give Una puzzles she could solve. The answers to the puzzles would have acceptance criteria** but the exact solution would not be predetermined and I could not know the solutions in advance. I could monitor Unas comfort/discomfort/distress levels and keep her bouncing between green comfort zone and orange stretch zone. I could give her lots of encouragement and praise her for trying novel ideas.
Over time, the puzzles would get more difficult and I would ask Una to solve them faster
-
for example, start by walking towards two poles at a weird angle, and then work up to cantering towards a whole jumble of poles
-
and then allow Una to find her own method and speed and technique for crossing those poles. If I do this right, Unas confidence and competence should improve as her problem solving skills under pressure also improve.
It might look a little like desensitization to the unintiated, but I don't think it would feel like desensitization to the pony.
There are actually areas of Unas life where she already exhibits very good problem solving skills under pressure. For example she very frequently gets her head into the hay bag, or under her leadrope, or through the rails of the yard, or under the gate. She doesn't panic at this though, she very thoughtfully tries different options and slowly works under way back out of whatever tangle she put herself in. If she can't work it out, she just stays still and looks at me until I give her a hand. I've seen a lot of horses who panic in similar situations, and while I don't know how Una developed her houdini skills I am impressed by what they represent - critical thinking in a stressful situation.
I've actually had a goal I've been talking about for years and years long before Sasha or learning about bodywork or EH, something I've been asking different horsepeople about since 2018.
How can I train horses do that they develop confidence they can use in their own lives, not just confidence which is useful for me? I knew horses who could piaffe on the side of a busy highway but would be spooky and shaking at the sight of a rabbit along the fenceline of their turnout, and I felt it was a real shame that all the work we were putting into horses to make them brave and proud and confident under saddle didnt ever seem to translate into confidence the horse could experience in their own life, loose in the pasture with their mates.
I feel I've made a lot of inroads towards that goal since 2018 but it continues to be a real guiding light in my horsemanship.
This is very much my preliminary musings on a theory, and I don't know if its useful or valid to try teach a young pony the same skills a similar way as I would teach a junior colleague.
(* I very rarely give junior colleagues a problem to solve if I already have a single fixed answer in mind because I see it as disrespectful of their own skills)
(** acceptance criteria is an industry term basically meaning there is a list of standards you want a solution to meet, but the exact solution can be anything that meets those standards. Like for example I might say to a human "solve this problem however you see fit but without introducing this known security flaw and make sure you write down how you did it". To a horse I might say "solve this problem however you see fit but solve it without biting anyone" or "your solution can be any sensitive change as long as it is positive" etc etc. Some acceptance criteria is highly consistent from problem to problem, other acceptance criteria is specific to the question. And if someone offers a solution that doesnt meet acceptance criteria, its not a bad thing you shame or tell them off for, its just like 'whoops remember the acceptance criteria? have a look and give that another go.'
Tangent - actually acceptance criteria is a very very useful way for me to think about variability of response in horse training.)