why your newsfeed can make your horse problems worse…

Why Your Newsfeed Can Make Your Horse Problems Worse

To work well with a horse you need a clear picture in your mind of what you are asking the horse to do, how you are going to do it. You also need a repertoire of reactions based on common predictable responses from the horse to help guide them to gain clarity, willingness and confidence in what you are asking them to do.

With time and careful practice you develop more pictures in your mind, more detail to the pictures and a greater repertoire of reactions and predictions. We call this expertise and everyone can develop their expertise. In fact, if you want to help a horse or overcome frustration, confidence issues or problem behaviour - you need to develop your expertise.

Notice how I used the word “careful” practice? Because how you practice is important. If you just go out there and “practice” and just repeat things with no plan, insight or guidance you can be stuck in groundhog day and never progress, solve any problem or grow any confidence.

To actually grow those pictures in your mind, improve your predictions and repertoire of reactions you need to engage in purposeful practice that is informed. Therefore, you need a good coach or teacher that has a well established system of working with horses that has a clear process and path. By adopting the teacher or coaches knowledge and template plus getting their feedback on how you are performing - you are fast tracked to develop expertise.

When you develop a certain level of expertise you can start seeking out other teachers and other ideas and further develop and refine your own process or system.

So, what is the problem with your social media newsfeed?

The horse world social media feed is full of conflicting messages selling solutions, advice, wisdom, devices, tack, pills and potions and quite a bit of fluff. For someone who is struggling, lost and experienced failure after failure - you can lose your ability to sort out the proven ideas from the fluff and you get desperate and start listening to all the voices. When this happens you get no clear picture in your head, no clear way of how to do it and a path that chops and changes. There is no consistency for the horse who typically ends up even more lost and stressed as they struggle to work out a human that is not clear, predicable reliable or confident.

For example, I had a client the other day that was struggling with her young mare and I describe her problem as being lost between “making the right thing easy and wrong thing hard”, “giving the horse a choice”, watching for “calming signals” (so her horse did not go “over threshold, in the hope of building “connection” whilst feeling like a failure the horse was not having any “fun”! Therefore, no clear picture in her mind, conflicting approaches and ideological markers of success instead of practical ones.

But there is more….besides all the conflicting voices and messages you are constantly been sold to by social media algorithms that decide what you are interested in and what you might like to buy. People’s attention spans are dwindling, so if I want a message to get out to you I need to keep it brief, short reading pieces or video clips. To have any chance of making an impact and get your attention I need a controversial heading, attention grabbing photo, and appeal to your emotions to hook your attention. Unfortunately, horse training is a methodical process and building confidence and skills is a slow dedicated process where you have forward steps and backwards steps. Hence, long boring detailed posts or videos that outline visions, systematic processes that promise hard work and dedication are not going to make it to your newsfeed and if they do, chances are you will scroll on by.

So, my advice for those lost in all the mixed messages is to find yourself a teacher and follow their advice, listen to their feedback and be dedicated. You will be able to identify pretty quickly if your mind gets clearer, confidence grows and your horse improves.

How do you know who to pick? Pick the one that can answer your questions and make the picture in your head clearer, not murkier. Good teachers should be able to make complex things easier to understand. A teacher that talks with clear reasons and actionable steps - not just fluffy terms and buzzwords or righteous ideology. Explore the social group of people on their pages. The way they engage on the page, what they share and their support will tell you a lot about the teacher. Look for people that are actually progressing and being able to do what YOU actually want to do with a horse. If you want to ride your horse, you should see people progressing from groundwork to ridden work.

These days you don’t necessarily need someone you can physically meet. I used to think this until COVID-19 came along and I had to work with my clients online. I built courses for them to follow and I coach them online in real time using either Zoom or PIVO (which have been quite easy for people to use) as well as giving feedback on their videos they send me. I was surprised at how successful it was. Therefore, with technology, online courses and feedback support it can be a successful combination, so the world is now open to find a teacher that inspires you and to get yourself off the newsfeed treadmill of confusion.

Share if you know someone who keeps getting lost….