THE ART OF CONTINUAL REFINEMENT

The Art of Continual Refinement

A big thing you need to learn when you work with horses is the art of continual refinement.

What is the "art of continual refinement"?

It is the practice of going back to further refine more basic or foundation responses to improve a more advanced response.

What happens is that as you progress a horse's training you start to discover glitches or barriers to quality or progress. You might need a better response to the reins, improvement of flexion responses, to forward, more relaxation, better focus and attention, better balance etc.

It happens because you start to care and identify the root causes of glitches or barriers. It is because you have grown in awareness of what you are creating between you and your horse.

Initially it can challenge you, it is something you need to accept because you have to let go of expectations about where you think you should be and how many times you need to refine and improve a response or quality.

The embracing of the art of continual of refinement is a special stage of evolution in your horsemanship.

It means you have progressed a long way from the earlier stage of "lets tighten the noseband, buy a new bit and put on some stronger spurs" to fix the problem!

It means you have reached the point of really appreciating the living, breathing, thinking, feeling horse you are working with. Respecting their need to understand, grow in confidence, build in their fitness and athletic ability....and that takes time and patience.

This photo is of Belinda and Buckarri. Here they are warming up, refining his forward response to the leg and forward and down seeking response to the reins.