05/27/2023
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Developing Empathy
Frustrated by your horse? Try this---
Go for a run. Yes, you, human rider. Intersperse your run with sets of push-ups. See how long it takes before you lose athletic buoyancy, before you “just can’t.”
Fatigue in a horse, which is pretty much the same thing that you just felt, creates leaning, tripping, stumbling, slow reactions, poor coordination, lugging on the hand, all sorts of what you may be mistaking for “bad behavior.”
The tired horse will feel just like a “disobedient” horse. And then what will happen to that horse if the rider doesn’t tune into the horse’s fatigue? You know exactly what will happen to the horse. It will get drilled on. Drilled on just when the exact opposite should happen.
Trainers who lack the ability to sense what the horse is going through are among the worst drillers, and they create tense, scared, resistant horses, and they then do something even worse, they blame the horse.
Change your mind set. Think how YOU would feel if you had gotten beyond your limits and then got ground on and punished to fix your bad behavior.
You think I’m kidding? You think this isn’t going to happen today, all across the world where people ride and drive horses? That unfit for the task horses won’t be cranked and pressured? Dream on.
The best thing that you can do if your goal is to become a competent trainer is to constantly be aware of your own frustration meter. And stop before you create damage, physical and emotional injury and distress. Get a little and end on that. If even a little seems elusive, DO NOT GRIND. Go walk, try again tomorrow. Don’t add fear and anxiety to the training process.
I will say this one more time---“Don’t add fear and anxiety to the training process.”
Why am I saying this so often? Because if I had learned this decades sooner, I would have been a far better trainer and horse person---That’s why. Learn, if you are capable of doing so, from the mistakes that others have made. Do not drill your horse.
