02/07/2018
A thought for the new year
Hi All…
I wanted to take a minute and share a horsemanship thought that I hope will be of some help to you and your horses as we come into the New Year.
I have had the great honor and privilege of working with horses for a very long time. Over a half a century all told. I like to believe that through all those years my horsemanship journey has been a thoughtful one, although admittedly there have been times that were more thoughtful than others. In other words, I have made my share of mistakes with horses - in some cases bad ones - and have had plenty of days that I wish I could take back, do over and do better.
But then, such is life. Sometimes we do our best and get the best in return, sometimes we do our best and still fall woefully short. So, we come back the next day and try again, hopefully with a little more humility and a little more internal clarity. At least, that’s how it’s been for me.
As time has passed, that internal clarity has caused a slow but steady shift in what I find important when working with horses. Early on, the importance was on getting the horse to respond correctly. That soon morphed into getting the horse to respond correctly with understanding. Then it was developing the horse’s understanding first so they could then achieve the desired response with less stress. Then it was pinpointing why a horse might be distracted or worried so we could fix that and help them through their trouble and ultimately achieve the desired response. Eventually my focus moved on to trying to find ways to help the horse relax internally before moving on to any actual “training.”
All of these stages were, and still are helpful and absolutely key for (at least my own) growth. However, over time I also came to realize each of these stages were at best, one sided and indeed one dimensional. What I mean by that is they all focused on the horse doing or feeling better so the horse could achieve the desired response. Or I suppose if we want to make ourselves feel better about it, saying we achieved the desired response together.
But by initially focusing on what the horse is doing, thinking, or worrying about, we are in a sense working from behind. In other words, if the horse is thinking or worrying about something, and then we are analyzing what they’re thinking or why they’re worried, or trying to get them to let go of the worry so they can focus on us, we’ve already lost them. Because they are already gone, we can then end up spending the majority of our time trying to get them back - thus, working from behind.
Then, sometime back I began developing an understanding for a principle that, for me, has had the biggest impact in creating a more positive change in that particular dynamic.
Put simply, the principle I’m talking about here is our own self- control/awareness. In short, it’s the ability to stay focused on what we’re looking for from our horse at any given time, rather than focusing on what the horse is doing, thinking or worrying about at any given time.
Does focusing our own self control/awareness mean that we don’t take the horse into consideration when working with them? Of course not. The horse is always our primary consideration and understanding what is going on with them is always paramount in being able to achieve a positive outcome.
But it helps to understand that when horses don’t feel good about something, all they want is to feel better. If we go into our work with them focusing on the fact that they don’t feel good, then all we’re doing is feeding into that state of mind (in both of us) and in some cases actually making the issue much worse before it gets any better at all.
By staying focused on what we are looking for with them instead of focusing on the horse’s struggle or the cause of the struggle, we can not only get ahead of the issue but also provide a clear path for the horse to follow. Another way to look at it is we are providing leadership that the vast majority of horses are looking for when they are having trouble in the first place.
I think sometimes we underestimate the power that our own self-control/awareness provides, especially when it comes to the leadership our horses are looking for. In fact, we often underestimate the power our own self-control/awareness provides just in our everyday lives.
Here’s a quick example: in most of our Aibado (Aikido for Horsemen) courses, we introduce a simple, although unfamiliar, movement exercise to the students on the very first day and then we practice the exercise both with a partner and without a partner numerous times throughout the three day course. On the last day, and as a group, we ask all the students to perform the exercise with a partner in a relatively specific manner. In almost every case the exercise quickly turns into a mild chaotic event with lots of talking, nervous laughter, running into one another and so on. What is happening is even though the students are well practiced in the exercise, for some reason they end up focusing on everything in the room except what they have been asked to do. As a result, the exercise quickly falls into disarray and the longer we let it go on the worse it gets.
We then stop the exercise and make one simple suggestion. We ask that each student ONLY focus on what THEY are doing - not on what everybody else in the room is doing and not even on what their partner is doing. Simply focus on their own movement. We then begin the exercise again. In every case and in less than 30 seconds into the renewed exercise, everybody in the entire room has organically synced up their movement with everybody else in the room, causing all of the students to move as one.
Interestingly, this is almost always the same result that occurs when working with a troubled horse. As the person chooses to stay focused on what they’re looking for from the horse instead of what the horse is offering, the horse more times than not will begin following the rider/handler’s suggestion, and do so in a relatively short period of time and usually without the behavior getting worse before it gets better.
Of course I’m not trying to suggest here that self- control/awareness by itself is some kind of magic bullet that will fix every issue we come across, especially if we aren’t coupling it with positive guidance in the direction we’d like the behavior to go. But what I am saying is that it is a great jumping off point. It’s a great way to create the roadmap, both for us and our horses, to where we’d like things to ultimately end up. After all, it can be pretty hard to reach a destination when we don’t know where we’re going to begin with.
Anyway, just a little food for thought as we enter into this New Year.
Take care everyone and we looking forward to seeing you all sometime soon!
Mark
(Photo: Bo Reich)
