Man I am on my soap box this morning! I am so tense with frustration that I could just about SCREAM and this rant is all that will fix it!
It’s NOT normal for a horse to be spooky.
It’s NOT normal for a horse to be pulling on your hands when you ride.
It’s NOT normal for a horse to be tense around their saddling and it’s sure as heck not normal for them to bite when you do the girth up.
It’s NOT normal for a horse to play up when you ride away from home.
It’s NOT normal for a horse to make themselves sick with separation anxiety.
It’s NOT normal for a horse pull on your lead rope, leap and jump around or drag you around when you lead them somewhere.
It’s NOT normal to have to wrestle a bridle on, or spend minutes trying to convince a horse to open their mouth for the bit.
It’s NOT normal to have a nervous horse on a float.
It’s NOT normal to have a horse worried about picking their feet up.
These things might be COMMON – but they’re NOT normal – they shouldn’t be happening – they are a symptom of a horse’s fear and they are a symptom of us not knowing how to fix it.
AND
Biggest of all… These fears and tensions of all these things and more that I haven’t thought of – they don’t suddenly vanish when you throw your leg over the saddle – they are right there, lurking in the background, ready to bite you on the butt – as soon as anything goes wrong.
Fear and tension and resistance are cumulative – each fear and tension and resistance adds on to the next until you have a spooky horse who shouldn’t be spooky, until a horse is reacting adversely to things that shouldn’t bother it – even exploding – until even a good rider’s confidence is shaken.
I can’t tell you how many emails I get from people telling me about old accidents where they got hurt and how often I hear that it “came out of the blue.” I’m telling you right now that IT DIDN’T come out of the blue. Out of hundreds of emails, maybe one or two really came out of the blue – all the others I could have predicted as accidents waiting to happen.
Fixing any of these issues with stronger gear is an admission of failure.
Writing this article I found myself holding my head in my hands and rubbing my face with frustration and having momentary tears at all these people and all these horses feeling crappy unnecessarily.
Having horses isn’t supposed to feel like that.
Having horses – riding these glorious creatures is supposed to be an act of reverence for the beauty of their soul, it’s supposed to be peaceful and fun and even exciting.
But it can’t be all those good things while ever that crappy list above is happening. You have gotta fix these things folks.
If you think you don’t have the time to commit to the year long Fast Track program, then don’t settle for crap – DO SOMETHING ELSE ABOUT IT. Pick up 10 private lessons that you can have live or video, 10 makes them really cheap (you could transform your life with your horse in 10 weeks) – look at the Ease and Grace program – even find another teacher that has reverence for the amazing beings that our horses are (ONLY a teacher that has reverence for horses) . But WHATEVER you choose…
Just save me sitting here in tears reading about yet another person who has been hurt who didn’t have to be, on a horse who shouldn’t have been so afraid.
I have to keep a very open mind, just hang about to see what she says!
Thank you for this post. Very inspiring. I have just yesterday arrived in Florida with Sam. Hoping during our stay here we will be able to move forward toward your goal for us. It did take 2 1/2 hours to get him on the trailer, the first day and 10 minutes the second. Now I can really get into the togetherness lessons. Just learning the breathing and relaxing has made a big difference. A pair of horses came in to visit. They were feeling anxious, so I went to them started to breath, spoke softly and they seemed to settle.
Onward.
How lovely that you were able to help the strange horses Debbie. And a big woohoo for getting floating from 2 and a half hours the first day, down to 10 mins the second day – that shows what you did and how you went about it was very effective. Well done both of you!!!! What a pleasure to read about. What’s the MY goal thing for you though? I’m puzzled, because I usually think more about people’s goals for themselves. 🙂
Your goal is to help me so I can help them
Ahhh I remember that now. 🙂
go girl I so agree with you, once you have had a horse that is so frightened it chews its own tongue at the slightest small change to their routine and over time released so many of their fright imprints that you can walk at liberty together through a green grass filled paddock and the horse comes to the end of the walk with a smile on her face, you know you are on the right track – thanks Jenny for all your wonderful help over the years not just with Sasha but Frankie and Sierra too – and yes that was Frankie this morning definitely smiling as we came back to Sierra and the gateway!
I’ve enjoyed following Frankie’s journey from such a stressed horse and to hear about her THAT happy – woohoo! Hi five Mary! And Frankie too. 🙂
Frankie still chews her tongue with any change, but usually now it ends with a normal lick and chew, it seems more to be habit than stress, obviously she has still has old associated stress but we constantly work on it. Part of the issue I am sure is cos she must have been hungry for a lot of the time as feeding time seems to bring it out the most- especially any thought that Sierra might take her food
The time will come when she’ll show you where that’s coming from. They make themselves vulnerable to show us deep inside old traumas. We saw what a big deal that was in the recent clinic when Ignite made that SPECTACULAR recovery with a confidence that I’m still shaking my head about. But it was all about Sue’s willingness to be vulnerable and Ignite’s. Evryone’s different. I don’t think Oliver knew why he would flip out so dangerously and then we just went into the right space and confidence one day for all the understanding to unfold and it’s simply not there anymore for him either. As I said – all different… I wonder what Frankie’s is going to be about?