The Unspoken Truths

What are some common goals people say when they get their dream horse? “ I am going to go to the Olympics!” “I am going to jump 5 foot one day!” “I am going to go to Grand Prix!” “I want to canter.” “I want to go on a trail ride with friends.” What ever the goal is it is never about the horse but us. Little do we know that the very thing the horse will teach us in life is that it is NOT about you but them! And in the pursuit to learn you will break them. Every rider who as any personal goals will break a horse at some point. The GOAL is not to not have “goals” but to manage your expectations so that you can achieve reasonable goals with a realistic understanding of your partner that you have forced into your journey. The art of being a horseman is knowing how to best dance the fine line between progressively training your horse forward or asking more than what is fair that day. If we never ask for more than the day before we will never move forward but that is a balancing act. Who then is going to tell us how much is too much or too little?

In the beginning of our journey we are off balanced and inhibiting the horse’s motion with our stiff joints and fear. In this phase we shake the horse’s psyche and stiffen their bodies. It takes a saint of a horse to put up with us and not be messed up in some way. Usually the case is that the horse is already messed up in the same ways we are so they don’t mind us. OR we fall off a lot. Then when we enter the phase of riding where we start taking the reins metaphorically as well as physically where we can then start manipulating the body of the horse towards our goals. Like going on the bit, rating our strides, doing fun tricks. This is where if you have an nonathletic horse for the job you are asking they start to break down and if you have a talented horse you start to push too far. How will you know the stove is hot unless you touch it or you have have your mom around you 24/7 telling you not to. When you enter the stage of your riding when you are not having a lesson every time you sit on a horse; I was too poor to afford that anyways; you have to take responsibility of your training as a horse person either mistaking on either side of under-riding or over-riding. Either one causes damage and or un-training. It’s a subject never talked about.

We mess up as we learn it’s a fact. If a horse is our canvas then sometimes the paintings are going to be ugly as we are experimenting with colors. To get to the pretty colors there are ugly moments but the beauty, the outcome, the story, the journey lives in experimentation. We must take ownership in our shortcomings so we can take pride in our accomplishments. There is no success without risk.

The REAL lessons that need to be taught by riding instructors is expectation management of both yourself and you horse. You will break yourself and your horse along the way the goal is not to repeat the same mistake again and learn to foresee mistakes in the future by better understanding oneself and the horse you are sitting on.