I pulled up this old blog to bring to your attention again, because it’s SUCH a big deal. I’m sick of hearing about people having accidents that shouldn’t happen! Rant alert!
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 and lack of knowledge – sorry, I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings but that’s a fact. I’ve been in that place myself, which is why I feel it’s OK for me to be that blunt. And mannn… it feels good to never be in that crappy feeling place again!
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.
Those Christmas specials on the previous blog are still on til Christmas.
Thanks for this post, it is very timely. My mare has a high preservation instinct manifesting as fear and tension if it’s extremely windy etc. but recently she went off the scale explosive and I feel I couldn’t reach her, which hasn’t happened before. The cause was most likely down to this super charged hay that is the only hay I could get hold of as there was a shortage this year and despite soaking it it had the effect of crack cocaine! After a couple of sideways gallops out of the blue and feeling like I had a ticking bomb underneath me I stopped and went right back to basics, feel, tension release, we worked in the school and finally i sourced lower protein/sugar haylege to mix it with but someone else at the yard had a terrible accident on their horse who was reacting similarly to the same hay when out. Your method wasn’t something I had to ponder about, it was the solution, the only way through the changes, and it was so empowering because I could feel an accident was about to happen, it was as clear as day, the lack of focus, the lack of partnership, like you say, NOT what we get into horses for! British horsemanship is so often about acting fearless on dangerous horses and pushing through regardless the risk. Your method is a santuary from this, thank you!
I’m sooo glad this work validated your instincts and made your lovely preservation possible Joanna! We’d hate to lose you! <3 Seriously though, you listened to your horse, KNEW what the problem was, took the opportunity to deepen your bond together and solved it. Bravo sunshine...
Oh yeah p.s. If that hay thing had happened in Australia, it would have been a mineral imbalance. A lot of lucerne hay will do it for most horses if we don’t balance its high calcium with some magnesium.
Great post, and so true. So many horses are suffering, and riders getting injured or scared.
AT the extreme end of the accident/ behavior scale, there’s so many horses ending up with the dangerous horse label undeservedly, hey?