Auggie learned to love being
groomed and pampered!

Waltzes For Warmbloods 

Music as a Training Aid for the Anxious Rescue Horse

    With the saddle issue out of the way, I felt that I could better pinpoint some of Auggie's fears and anxieties in the arena and at the mounting block. He did not want to stand still or wait for anything; he was a ball of tension, and I could feel it through the lead rope any time I took him out of his stall. He walked with a purpose, often trying to get ahead of his handler, as if he were late for something very important.

    He had been conditioned to a life of work, work, work and if he didn't hustle up and get to where he was going, he was certain that something bad would happen. He had been treated like a machine for so long, that he was compelled to act like one. His demeanor was still on the stand-offish side, with very little playfulness or humor showing at that point. I could see in his eyes that there was a personality behind the cold shoulder and the pinned ears, but it was quite the task to get it out of him. I may never have a bond with this horse, I thought.

    For no reason at all, it dawned on me that I should try playing music for Auggie. I was sitting on the couch one evening the week following my appointment with Holly, and the lightbulb came on from nowhere. All my life I had always read or heard talk about the effects of music on students for studying and focus, so maybe there could be a similar benefit for horses? I had always used music during my academic, artistic and athletic careers to help set the tone for whatever it was that I was about to do.

    As the night burned on, I set about the task of creating a playlist for the horse. I could only guess what tones or melodies would be pleasing to the equine ear, but I shifted through some of my favorite artists for pieces that seemed rhythmic and even hypnotic. I began with Shostakovich's Waltz No. 2 ( Dmitri Shostakovich) with its repetitive triple meter and Ravel's Bolero (Maurice Ravel) and built up a playlist from there. In a few hours' time names like Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Strauss, Mozart and others began to populate the list for Auggie.  My enthusiasm for the arts could surely prove beneficial in this case, I reasoned.

    I set forth to create a new habit for him; a routine where he was not to be rushed, but to be relaxed, focused and patient. I would use my phone to play his music at just the right volume while brushing and tacking him, either in his stall or in the wash stalls and repeat the same, slow process over and over again until he could recognize the patterns with some familiarity. I had learned from dealing with Josh's PTSD that habits and routines were vital for quelling the anxiety of the unknown and I had no reason to believe that horses would be much different in that regard. It was actually an accepted fact among many veterans that horses could be of great service to traumatized service members due to many similarities in their responses to stress and fear. https://www.columbiapsychiatry.org/news/horse-therapy-helps-veterans-overcome-trauma

    The first day of this experiment, I visited Auggie's stall and placed the phone on the rack just outside his door. I lowered the volume as I scrolled through YouTube for his customized playlist until I came to Dmitri Shostakovich's Waltz Number 2 and hit play. As the melodious waltz poured out from the speakers and into the barn, I saw Auggie's ears perk up in the darkness of his stall. I stepped away from the bars of the stall to flip on the light so I could watch his reaction. He turned from the wall with curiosity at this new sound, putting his muzzle through opening above his feed bowl with a great big sniff of air. 

    I took the phone, still playing music, and entered his stall with it. He was notably calm, but very intrigued about the sound, and where it was coming from. His head bobbed as he looked me over, as if to say, "that sound cannot be you, can it?" And as his eyes glistened with curiosity, I began to see the ice melting from his expression. He reached towards me with no prompting, so I held out the phone for him to inspect as he gingerly brushed his lips over the edge of the phone to analyze its composition. It was not food he concluded, but rather a sound device! It was the first real signs of his personality breaking through the cracks. 

    I remembered the wide-eyed expressions of my daughter when she was just a baby. The overwhelming experience of seeing and hearing things for the first time and having no words to communicate that to the adults around you had to be both wonderful and terrifying to say the least. I recognized this same phenomenon as Auggie experienced something so new and unusual to him, something that I had taken for granted all these years. How many things had I walked by and never really seen?  How many songs had I never really heard before? He was like a new baby, learning all over again in a brand-new life. 

    Every day from that point on, I played his music before I started brushing him. As the days passed, he grew to enjoy this ritual and became more and more relaxed for grooming and tacking. He seemed less concerned with the noises of the other horses and more mellow in his stall. I repeated the process in the wash stalls as well, and gradually he would tolerate longer and longer grooming sessions on the cross ties without pawing or dancing around. Each day he would become more and more patient as I prepared him for his ride. His music seemed to give him some sort of focus or center in which to prepare for training.

    Under saddle he was beginning to tune into my requests. His massive ears swiveled around, tracking a variety of sounds, but mostly looking for verbal cues from me. He had been keyed into voice commands from a driver, not leg cues from a rider. He was literally waiting on me to tell him what to do, so I tried to get in the habit of talking to him. (He knew his "whoa" like a champ) He certainly had a sense for sound, and he responded the best when I chatted it up with him. I was certain that the other boarders or barn employees would think I was crazy, or even annoying with my unconventional training methods, but if it worked, I was going to keep doing it. It became obvious that the horse had big ears for a reason!

Auggie learned to stand in the
wash stalls for a bath like a gentleman!