You CANNOT bully a horse into Connection – you have to INVITE them into a Connection. I tell you, if you push a horse, if you MAKE them, if you bully them – they will LEAVE the connection with you.
Leadership does not bully them, or push them around or make them do something – that’s DOMINANCE. And if dominance is what you want, then that’s OK, but it’s not what we do here.
If dominance (also called the alpha horse) is your thing … you should also know that some horses get very good at dominance games. 500 kg of horse playing dominance games back on us, is seriously not fun. (And that’s one of my classic Aussie understatements.)
For me personally when I went through the stage of using dominance when I was looking for the solution to my difficult horse, it was incredibly frustrating.
I would feel like I was winning for a while, but I had to constantly learn new ways to beat him. The resistance in Bobby’s body was phenomenal and that resistance had him physically breaking down so often, from the tension of all that stress.
Dominance does not produce a happy horse in self carriage, with their strong back lifted up to carry you with ease and grace.
It’s CONNECTION that is going to satisfy your soul and give you what you’ve been looking for since you were dreaming about horses as a child.
And if you haven’t got it BEFORE you get on, I doubt you’re going to find it afterwards.
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