26/06/2025
There’s often days when I feel like I’m wasting my time doing this job. Times when I feel like there’s no way in hell that I’m good enough to be starting horses under saddle. Today for example, it was windy, all the young horses were on edge, and I felt like I didn’t get anywhere near the point I wanted to with each for the day. By about 12pm after 5 horses, I had just about given up with the horses, and wanted to call it quits.
The most important thing to remember with horses though, is to work with the horse you have today. It doesn’t matter if yesterday you were able to have a perfect canter with lovely engagement etc, then today you can’t even get a walk good. Horses are animals, they don’t fit a mould. That’s the beauty of them, and it’s also what makes them difficult.
I’m not innocent regarding screaming in my head saying, ‘Why aren’t you perfect today like you were yesterday!’ I’m only human. I get frustrated, disheartened. Sometimes it’s just not yours or the horse’s day, and it doesn’t always go to plan. If you push a young horse to make it do what it did yesterday, when it’s clearly struggling with the smallest thing, then I wholeheartedly believe you are asking for trouble. If instead you get through that small thing, and call it a day, normally the next day, they are back to normal, or better. Why? I believe it’s because you haven’t broken their trust. If you push them to do what they weren’t ready to do, then you broke their trust.
I try to listen to horses, as much as I ask them to do things. If they tell me they aren’t ready, then I believe them. Doing things this way, is definitely slower, but in my opinion, has a much better outcome. The horses end up having a lot more trust in you, because they know that you wouldn’t ask them to do anything that puts them in harms way. Eventually, you can canter down to the scariest jump in the world, and they’ll give it a crack, because you asked them to. A horse trained with pure force, will never jump for you, the jump is much scarier then you. If the relationship is there, they’ll walk through fire for you.
So at 12pm, when I’d had enough, I made myself keep going. I’m glad I did. I finished my day with the one and only, Iceman, and he made me remember that it’s all worth it. Iceman has been solely trained by me, so I tell myself, if I can produce a horse as wonderful as him, I must be ok.
It’s so important to push through the bad times. If we all gave up as soon as times got hard, we’d never get anywhere. That doesn’t only apply to horses, it applies to everything in life. Remember, tomorrow it will be better.
