HORSES ARE EASY – PEOPLE ARE.......
HORSES ARE EASY – PEOPLE ARE.......
When you work with people and
When you work with people and horses over time two things happen:
1. You start to realise just how gentle and kind horses really are and how they really should kill people more often; and,
2. People start to piss you off.
A couple of months ago I had a woman present me with a beautiful well-bred 17hh warmblood gelding that she was at her wits end with. It was dangerous on the ground and would run over the top of her and was therefore scary to lead and was difficult to saddle. Under saddle it would not go forward, would not canter and would threaten to buck. The lady had let the agistment centre owner do some ground work with the horse but they had also declared the horse crazy as the horse would charge her in the round yard and when they had attempted to get on the horse in leg restraints the horse had panicked in the restraints and it had fallen over into a fence and injured itself quite badly. The lady had heard about me and brought the horse to me for assessment.
To cut a long story short I had no problems with the horse. I put the horse in the round yard, it never charged me, was able to walk, trot and canter and learnt quickly and relaxed fast as soon as it worked out I made sense and was consistent. I taught it to lead, back up and softly follow the feel of the lead rope. It was when I put the lady in the round yard with the horse that the problem was really clear, she had no timing, no feel and had no conscious awareness over what her body was doing. In the end I had to remove the horse from the round yard and just work on her on coordinating her body to do simple things like point, swing a whip and walk a circle with some kind of consistent rhythm. The horse took me 15 minutes to teach, the lady took me 1.5 hours and she still struggled to be able to point with her arm, start making a clicking sound and then whip using an over arm action and walk a circle…the simple tasks needed to work a horse in a round yard. When I showed her how to lead the horse I had to just about physically restrain her to get her to slow down and stop bombarding the horse with a heap of random pressure and unconsciously inflicted punishment. It was clear this wasn’t a case of a dangerous horse, as soon as the horse had clarity and consistent guidance all its negative behaviour disappeared…..this was instead a case of a horse responding to a wall of inescapable random punishing pressure and it was just doing what it had to do to survive. The horse was just responding to a human that had no awareness over what they were inflicting on the horse and no timing and feel plus difficulty learning to coordinate their body. The horse was actually a really nice horse that responded fast to training, not a complex case at all.
In that first lesson I explained to the lady how I work and that I don’t fix horses, I teach people how to work with horses so they develop skills and awareness so they can solve their own issues. I build peoples skills from the ground and into the saddle and in getting each step of my program good the problems resolve. I explained that I believed it was pointless for me to fix a horse if a person doesn’t change because the problems will just rapidly return. Horses only respond how they feel and if you make them feel uncomfortable or confused they will be difficult to handle because they are upset. The lady thought that all sounded sensible and was just so pleased at how good and relaxed the horse had been. The lady returned a few days later, the horse again went great and the lady improved a little and was thrilled when the horse responded to her in the round yard and cantered.
At that last lesson the lady explained to me that she was moving agistment centres and that was the last I heard from her. Well that was until two weeks ago when she contacted me wanting me to take the horse as it was dangerous. It had bucked her off and she had broken her leg, it had then gone and bucked the new agistment owner off that had been riding it for her and they had also declared the gelding dangerous. She was going to put it down but had remembered I was able to get on with it and therefore I could have it if I wanted to. I told her I didn’t get on with the horse, I just communicated clearly with the horse and the horse was not dangerous it was just responding to poor handling. She explained that when she got to the new agistment place and explained what she was doing with me that the owner had told her that what I did was rubbish and that she would ride the horse and get it going and then give her regular lessons. The lady thought that sounded great as what I was getting her to do felt really difficult and she felt pretty useless at it and was not sure she could even do what I was asking her to do and it did seem like what I wanted to do was going to take a long time.
Did I feel sorry for the horse – YES. Did I want to scream at this lady – hell YES. Did I scream at the lady – No….because she is just being human and here are the reasons why:
1. Humans don’t like being uncomfortable and doing hard things – we don’t. We are programed to talk ourselves out of hard things. Doing hard things requires being courageous and taking action more than it requires motivation as our motivation is normally really low to engage in hard things! This lady definitely struggled with what I was trying to teach her, really struggled. It is hard for most people to learn but she struggle more than anyone I had ever helped. It was not that she was unteachable, it is just she needed to a lot more coaching to become aware of herself and develop some coordination. So when someone gave her another option and one where she didn’t have to change, learn new things and struggle and someone else offered to fix her horse for her it would not have taken her brain long to decide that was a more comfortable option regardless of whether I had made sense in my explanation or had worked with her horse well.
2. Humans don’t necessary believe what you say. We are sceptical creatures and just because I told this lady she COULD learn these skills and the horse and its issues COULD be solved doesn’t mean that she believed me especially when I was telling her that the problem was with her when she believed the horse was a problem horse!
3. Humans don’t hear everything you say – we only perceive from any encounter what we want to hear, see or experience plus we only remember what we want to remember! So just because I explained my process to her, gave her encouragement and demonstrated how predictable and trainable her horse was does not mean that she perceived that from the encounters! Everything we take in from our senses is filtered by our emotions and preconceived ideas.
The reality is that every time I meet someone with a problem horse, which commonly is a horse that is just experiencing people problems, it is not working the horse that is the tricky bit. The tricky bit is presenting a compelling argument that what I can do with the horse they can learn to do it as well, it will not be easy, it will take time, but the rewards are great as it is empowering to be able to work with horses, understand them, teach them things and make them feel better and more motivated to work with us. People own horses as a hobby and hobbies are supposed to be fun and learning skills takes the frustration out and puts the fun back in to horses. I then have to explain how my process builds skills from the ground up and then I have a process that transfers the gains on the ground into the saddle. But mostly my job is one to try and get people to be courageous, to be able to accept their horse is reflecting how they have made the horse feel or just performing what they have taught the horse to do. To many people they can perceive this realisation as failure, to others its facing realisation they have caused the horse to experience negative things, regardless this is difficult for all people and how people handle that is complex and depends on so many things the person has faced in their lives from their sense of identity, to their mindset and to their self-esteem and ethical beliefs.
Bottom line is, I can be as compelling as hell but every time I work with a person I will be forever up against everything that person feels, believes and perceives and all I can do is respect these things and try my best to inspire them. Unfortunately, sometimes I have to try even harder to contain myself when every cell in my body wants to strangle them when all those feelings, beliefs and perception results in people being hurt and a horses life ending up in jeopardy…and that leaves me with the final thing you realise when you work with people and horses – horses are easy, people are fu@king hard!
