Often we get stuck on the good or bad our horse has had and we ride our horse according to that. The past and what has been.
Maybe you have had the worst ride yesterday and you get on expecting to have a bad ride today. Maybe you got on your horse and you had to use a lot of leg to get them listening, and now they are, but you didn’t change your aids to fit your newly listening horse because you’re still stuck focusing on what was happening. I often get called to help fix a problem and clients want to give me a whole back story and often my response is it’s irrelevant. Its irrelevant because I don’t care to focus on what’s happened in the past to your horse, but to focus on the fact that the only important matter is what the horse shows me today. Horses never forget, but they live in the moment, and so should we. I can only work with what’s presented in this exact moment. Often the horse is better then the usual behavior the client is used to because of newly set boundaries. Sometimes I reveal behaviors the client says they have never seen, because I hold the horse accountable to be more responsive and respectful for the human. As your consistency, experience, timing of feel improve, so should your horse. Your horse should be consistently getting more and more responsive. With in minutes you can change a horses ability to respond with lighter aid! If you are effective. If your horse is getting less and less responsive or staying the same and nothing is improving, then there is something you are not doing to be effective. You may not be matching your horses learning speed, your timing is off and isn’t helping your horse find a better responsiveness. You might be stuck doing the same ineffective thing over and over instead of trying a new combination. This is so important to becoming a better rider. You can practice the same things each day, and it should be progressing daily. This skill is very important when getting on multiple horses. You must feel the horse you just stepped on, by feeling for the horse, what they are offering, and for their responsiveness. The way your horse needs you to ride to support him/her, might just get you killed on the next. Or the way you ride your horse might not be firm enough to get anything done when you step on another. Every time you get ready to go interact with your horse or someone else’s leave the past memories behind. Be 100% committed to the present moment, and train the horse that shows up in front of you.
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Monique PottsNatural Horsemanship Archives
February 2020
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