Pan was scared of vehicles, so that needed fixing.
Photo: Sue wants to be able to ride out on the trail, happily and safely. To do that, her horse needs “seasoning” – he needs to be able to cope confidently with all kinds of things and even on quiet bush tracks, that includes the occasional four wheel drive and motor bike. At our age especially, we can make these things safe BEFORE we throw our horse in the deep end – in other words, the smaller our Comfort Zone, the bigger we need our horse’s.
The Lesson
I love riding out and so does my horse. And we love riding out because we KNOW that we are as safe as I can make it.
That feeling of safety is a VERY comforting thing as I ride out along the bush tracks where we live.
AND in that feeling of my and his safety, his back is elevated to carry me with strength and grace and his stride is softly rhythmic, which is lovely and comfortable for me too AS WELL AS giving him a long life with healthy joints.
Joints are eventually damaged when a horse is NOT in self carriage, because of the jarring and bracing that occurs to some degree when a horse is not in self carriage and I want Comfort Zone and self carriage out on the trail just as much as I want it at home.
Safety around potential traffic – cars, motor bikes, tractors and the like is not the sort of thing I like to leave to chance and my horse’s generosity.
I personally do not enjoy riding on the road – cars and trucks at speed make my safety alert come on – but even out in the bush we will come across 4 wheel drives and motor bikes and I am sure that it’s the same where you live too.
So let’s prepare for being out on the trail safely – this Lesson is about the preparation to make these enjoyable activities as safe as possible.
Keys to Success
1. If you’re waiting for the chew for a long period of time, then you’re likely to be working in the RELEASE stage, so pay attention to the way the inside of your body Feels and stay gently Present. We tend to do a lot of work around this on Live Seminars, so do join in either live or on recording. The energy on recordings is gorgeous too.
2. The chew tends to come quicker in the Learn phase.
3. And don’t forget to soak up every good feeling and appreciate the heck out of it, because THAT’s what creates the new muscle memory so fast. You may need to attend to more layers on some really big deal things with multiple layers of fear around them, but the job is done when you bask in those good feelings with your horse.
4. You need to establish clear hand signals with the other person and you’ll get the best outcome fastest if they’re both willing and happy to help. You’re creating an energy here and all three beings are feeling the emotions and energy of each other while you’re working like this. 🙂
5. YOU need to feel good about it BEFORE you start. Which means that you and your horse have to have a Comfort Zone together before you start doing this job. You can’t expand a Comfort Zone that doesn’t exist.
6. Follow the good feelings, the confidence, the humming together that’s possible and use ALL five of the ways that you personally might experience the early warning signal that something is Not Quite Right as a signal to change something. The change might be grounding yourself and flowing the energy of the feeling of excitement, making sure that your joints are springy, making sure that excitement isn’t getting blocked, giving that energy somewhere to go – or the change might be back off and wait for the Chew.
7. Be present, keep your attention gently aware of what’s going on inside yourself, so that you ARE aware of your horse communicating with you as early as possible. Make sure your eyes stay soft and your breathing relaxed and even – and if it’s not, then that’s one of my signals of a Not Quite Right and it’s a signal to back off.
8. The key to world class Feel is a big deal here – you can see with your eyes that your horse isn’t comfortable and keep going IF you’ve checked inside yourself and you’re still humming. And typically you wouldn’t stay out there for too long – your early warning signal that something is Not Quite Right will tell you how long is perfect for this horse THIS time.
9. If in doubt, back off – literally take steps backwards. If I or the person with the car or motorbike made a mistake, then I prefer to back off rather than turn around and walk away, because backing away from something generally speaking allows more control of the situation. So a good back up is a pre-requisite to this task – Back-up lesson.
10. You also want a good hindquarter yield and your Pay attention to me please in a halter happening nicely before you put high energy pressure on yourselves – i.e. you want Pay attention to me please in your Comfort Zone before trying to expand the Comfort Zone. Wry Aussie understatement there!
If the video is slow to load, click on “Youtube” in the bottom right hand corner and watch it in youtube.
p.s. I make an admiring comment about Morgan horses in this video – about how brave they are. As a breed, Morgan’s tend to be the caretaker type of horse, and like all other caretaker types, we have to take special care to listen and take action on our Not Quite Rights rather than relying on what we see with our eyes.