01/08/2026
Well said, training is and will always be training, and always for our agenda, even if its with the horse in mind, and yes their are some agendas that are much harder on the horse then others but still all our "thing" we want to do with them.
Our Agenda. Yes, I Said Agenda.🔥
⚠️ Warning: This article may burst a few carefully inflated bubbles. Side effects may include mild indignation, bruised egos or outrage. Proceed at your own risk.
One of the more fascinating developments in modern horsemanship is our apparent determination to pretend we don't have an agenda.
Somewhere along the way, "training" became a dirty word. "Influence" started sounding suspiciously authoritarian. "Leadership" was quietly escorted out the back door, and in came a parade of softer, safer phrases like *co-creating*, *holding space*, *finding mutual agreement*, and my personal favourite, *allowing the horse to choose*.
Which is all terribly poetic until you remember that you've just put a halter on him.
Let's be honest for a moment.
This is our agenda.
The horse didn't wake up this morning thinking, "I'd quite like to spend forty minutes improving my ability to yield my shoulders while Shelley explores her personal growth journey."😜
His plans were refreshingly modest. Graze. Avoid death. Find his mates. Scratch his itchy bits on the nearest tree. If fortune smiled upon him, perhaps knock over a water bucket for entertainment.😃
Everything after that is our idea.
And that's not cruel.
It's not oppressive.
It's simply reality.
The strange thing isn't that humans have an agenda. The strange thing is that we've become so uncomfortable admitting it that we've started disguising it in language that sounds like it was written by a mindfulness calendar.
Apparently, we're no longer teaching horses. We're "facilitating discovery."
We're not asking them to step onto a float. We're "creating an invitation into possibility."
We're not applying pressure. We're "opening a dialogue."
Which is remarkable, because the horse still experiences exactly the same physical world regardless of what we've chosen to call it. Renaming gravity doesn't make you float, and renaming training doesn't stop it being training.😎
The irony is that horses are wonderfully free from this particular human affliction.
They don't care about our vocabulary.
They care whether today's experience makes sense.
Whether it is predictable.
Whether it is fair.
Whether they can discover the answer without feeling trapped, overwhelmed, frightened or uncomfortable.
That's it.
The horse couldn't care less whether your social media bio describes you as an ethical facilitator of authentic equine empowerment.
He's wondering whether your signals contradict each other.
When horses become resistant, anxious or inconsistent, I don't immediately assume they're challenging my authority or expressing some deeply symbolic emotional truth. More often than not, I assume I've made my agenda too difficult to understand or we have some physical struggle going on.
That's a much less glamorous explanation.
It also happens to be far more useful.
Because confusion isn't usually a horse problem.
It's a curriculum problem.
If your student keeps failing the lesson, perhaps stop blaming the student and start looking at the lesson plan.🤷♀️
Humans, however, are spectacularly talented at doing the opposite. We can spend three hours discussing energy, intention, nervous system regulation, ancestral trauma, lunar cycles and the horse's desire to be heard before reluctantly considering the possibility that perhaps... just perhaps... our timing was dreadful.🧐
It's extraordinary.
We've managed to create an entire industry dedicated to avoiding the obvious.
The beautiful thing about admitting that this is our agenda is that it also means it's our responsibility.
Not our guilt.
Our responsibility.❗️
Because if I designed the lesson, then I can redesign the lesson.
If I created the confusion, I can create clarity instead.
That's empowering.✅
Far more empowering than pretending my horse and I are simply waiting for the universe to reveal whose truth should emerge first.
The horse doesn't need me to pretend we're equal shareholders in today's training session.
He needs me to be competent enough that my agenda is understandable, fair and worth following.
Oddly enough, I think that's a far more respectful relationship.
Take this image, for instance. This horse did not wake up this morning thinking, "I hope my human dresses as an elf, glues a unicorn horn to my forehead, and we recreate Narnia for Instagram today."
You might think it's a fun idea and a fantastic photo to capture, and that's perfectly okay.
But let's not kid ourselves.
That was our agenda.
Collectable Advice 264/365.
If this resonated, or if you think we could all use the occasional reality check, please hit SHARE or SAVE. ❤️
