THE FOUR TRAITS OF SUCCESS WITH HORSES

THE FOUR TRAITS OF SUCCESS WITH HORSES

Whilst my own journey learning about horses has taught me so much about myself, it has also been fascinating helping other people who have come to me seeking help with their horses. The demographic of the people I have worked with over recent years are mostly female, their ages range from 9 to 75 and they come from a range of educational backgrounds and careers. While all of these people have improved their horse training skills to some extent, some have improved at a faster rate than others; in fact some have been astonishing in their transformation. The ability of these people to improve their skills in an accelerated fashion does not correlate to a particular age group, the individual’s educational background, career, their horse’s issues, how long they have been riding horses or even their level of fear or lack of confidence they had concerning the issues they were experiencing with their horse when I first met them. In fact a lovely lady called Anthea who on our first meeting was so incredibly nervous she temporarily forgot her horse’s name has ended being one of the most amazing accelerated learners I have ever met! What I have discovered is that Andrea and others like her consistently have the four following traits and I thought I would record these traits in this article.

1. SELF FOCUS

While many of these individuals initially came to me seeking a fix for their horse’s behavioural issues, they very quickly turned their focus from fixing their horse behaviour to fixing themselves. They identify they had many misconceptions about how to handle and train horses and were making many errors. They identify the need to control their body, coordinate their tools but also refine their thinking and how much impact these were having on their horse’s behaviour.

So much focus tends to be on the horse, ITS training, ITS behaviour, ITS problem, yet the real deciding factor of any horse’s overall learning and performance is the skill and experience of the person sitting in the saddle or hanging onto its lead rope! Horses simply reflect our knowledge and skills. As Ray Hunt said – “a horse does one of two things – what he thinks he is supposed to do, or does what he thinks he needs to do to survive”. Therefore, in reality it is all about us, OUR skills, OUR abilities, and OUR experience and whether that matches the needs of the horse you are working with. Identifying that the horse is a reflection of one’s own skills is a key distinguishing feature of people that demonstrate rapid improvement of their ability to work with a horse. Anthea, who I mentioned early who forgot her horses name due to nerves, may have been full of fear but her attitude that day gave her a performance edge that I believe put her ahead of others and has seen her transform herself in such an accelerated fashion. That day we met she came with an awareness that she was doing something wrong, she had two previous dressage horses that had developed behavioural issue and while the first horse she decided must have just been a bad horse when the next one developed the same problems she identified the evidence pointed to her being a common denominator in the situation and didn’t do what many people do and see it just as another bad purchase. Anthea was a step ahead of most people because she turned up to my property that day ready to change herself and that is why last week the lady who was so nervous she couldn’t remember her horse’s name just competed in her first camp draft and had a ball!

2. EMPATHY FOR THE HORSE

There is a great quote that epitomizes the basis of this trait in Douglas Adam’s novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency:

“It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion on them. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.”

I enjoy watching people being blown away by the realisation their horse has a mind and that they can communicate with that mind easily and get the horse to perform things off simple cues by using consistent presentation and release of pressure which renders unnecessary the struggle to manipulate and fight with a horse and its body with stronger bits, bigger spurs and more tack for more leverage or more constraint. Or that the horse they labelled as difficult, nervous, timid or sensitive becomes relaxed, calm and confident when you remove the horse’s frustration from the training equation. People that accelerate their learning develop a strong sense of empathy for the horse and a desire to improve things for their horse. They start thinking about that “creature they sit on top of” and they come to the sobering realisation of why their horse has developed behaviour issues. They realise the issues are not because the horse was stubborn, or sensitive, or hot, or dominant, or pig headed, or because it was a certain breed….but from the horse lacking clarity and the mental and physical discomfort this created.

3. PREPARED TO STRUGGLE – THEY DON’T FEAR FAILURE

Another defining trait of these people that have accelerated their horse training abilities is that each has been prepared to struggle to learn to be good at horse training. I say struggle because they don’t give up when they discovered there is no “quick fix” to their horse’s problems and that working with a horse well is “not as easy as it looks”. They turn their focus from their horse to themselves and let the horse give them feedback on the progress of how they are performing. They don’t fear failure, they put in hours of practice, they may video tape themselves, they may send me messages outlining what they have learnt to observe in their horse, how they interpreted it and what they did, their evaluation of the outcome, their plans. They tell me when things go wrong, when they feel frustrated or out of their depth. So they tell me not just what they actually did in terms of technique, but what they think and feel. All these things indicate that they are using their human superpower of a tremendous ability to learn and improve themselves regardless of the struggle, the hardship, the success or the failures – they try their hearts out and see everything as a learning opportunity and a process of refining themselves from the way they swing a rope to the way they sit in the saddle to the way they make decisions.

4. COMMITMENT TO THE PROCESS

As the saying goes “motivation is what gets you started and it is commitment that keeps you going” and the final distinguishing trait in successful people is a commitment to the process. Therefore, if a horse needs to step back in its training to gain clarity or confidence these people go back there, they put aside their desires and frustrations and do what needs to be done and they are thorough. My best example of this is a very extraordinary person called Anne-Maree. Just over 18 months ago I met Anne-Maree and her big chestnut warmblood gelding called Max. Unfortunately Max was 17.1 hands of negative thoughts and he had learnt to act on those thoughts and Anne-Maree was out of her depth. Anne-Maree had made some progress on the ground by engaging him in some liberty training which made him better to handle on the ground but under saddle he was dangerous. Over the last 18 months I have watched Anne-Maree meticulously unpick Max, digging deep into his responses in ground work and then take those positive changes into the saddle where she has built Max step by step. As a result she has replaced Max’s negativity with confidence and willingness. The photo attached to this article is of Anne-Maree and Max taken just a few weeks ago by photographer Sarah Bevan and the image is in stark contrast to the horse I saw the first time I met him. This image is not just a beautiful photo but it also represents the transformative power of good training approaches but also of Anne-Maree’s commitment.

Therefore, from these observations I believe that inside everyone is a tremendous capacity to learn to be exceptional with horses. The amazing thing about these four traits is that there are no barriers to these traits. They are not age related, experience related, income related, education related, country related, they don’t even cost anything. I think about the transformation of Andrea and the incredible training feat of Anne-Maree and all the other incredible people I am witnessing making amazing changes within themselves and as a consequence within their horses, and I know I am seeing a revolution taking place. Maybe the revolution will be limited to my own home town but I have a feeling that it is going to be bigger than this….