touch as many horses as possible

If You Want to Get GOOD With Horses - DO THIS 

Touch as many horses as possible! 

What I mean by this is - work with as many horses as possible, both on the ground and in the saddle.

You don't have to do big extensive things, just small interactions clocked up will help you.

I tell people at my clinics to just perform my very simple "establishing a starting point" exercise (aka backward-forward-yield) groundwork exercise with as many horses as you can.  

What effect does this have on you?

It builds a bank of experiences in your mind of how horses feel and respond to you.

I remember before I developed my expertise and I had only ridden a handful of horses in my life. When I got on a new horse it felt really weird. Their movement and the way they felt would really throw me and make me feel uncomfortable until I got used to it. 

Now days I don't even skip a beat when I get on a strange horse or start working it on the ground. This is because I have a large bank of experiences of how different horses feel.

This helps you because if you only have interacted with a few horses, when there is a change in their emotional state they feel "different". This can really throw you and trigger you to feel alarmed. When you get alarmed, that can create a negative spiral of events. In my book on Confidence and Trust, I call this the "cycle of fear" that can be triggered between horse and rider. 

Besides grabbing the opportunity to ride or work many horses, it is also why being strategic in working with your own horse and learning to navigate different experiences is important. This is because you get to work with them through their different emotional states. It helps your sense of competence at being able to influence how horse's feel and even if they are worried, they don't stay there forever if you learn what to do. 

It is one of the reasons I still encourage people to do some traditional desensitising exercises. Whilst I don't believe they are actually desensitising (and more tolerance/acceptance exercises), they do allow you to learn how to navigate the emotional state of the horse and experience it changing for the better when you make good decisions.

So, get out there and touch as many horses as possible! Ask them to do simple things or go for a short ride, even just at walk.

Or just get out there doing things with your horse to clock up your experience of working through all the different ways they can feel!