10/15/2026
This might be the best test I know. A portion of this was posted earlier, but here's the expanded version with more explanation.
From the time you catch your horse until the time you get off, count how many times there is movement that you did not create.
Any movement. If a hoof comes off the ground while you're saddling, that counts. If you're walking along and he looks off to the right without you asking him to, that counts too.
Five or less, and your horse is starting to know something about being mentally centered, present, and in the moment.
The higher that number, the more trouble you're going to have.
Now, before you go count forty and feel sick about it, let me tell you what a big number actually is.
It isn't a grade. It's a list.
Every one of those movements is something you can now see that you couldn't see an hour ago. You have probably never counted this before. Nothing in the horse world asks you to. So that first number isn't a report on how bad your horse is. It's the first time anybody ever measured it.
And here's the part I want you to notice.
Counting changes you faster than it changes him.
The minute you're keeping a tally, you quit looking at the whole picture and start catching the small stuff. A foot that shifts. An ear that goes. A head that comes up half an inch. Those are the ones that pile up until one day he does something strange and it feels like it came from nowhere.
It never comes from nowhere. It comes from all the small ones nobody was counting.
So what do you do about them?
Bring him back. Every one.
He doesn't need punishing for it and you don't need to make anything of it. You just can't let it pass. A foot moves, ask for his attention. His head swings off to look at something, ask it back. Something small, right then, and then leave him alone again.
It is going to feel like micromanaging for the first week or so. It isn't. What you're building is a habit, and the habit is being mentally centered and present.
A horse falls back on whatever he has practiced the most. Up to now he has been practicing drifting off, because nothing ever came of it when he did. Give him a few weeks of practicing coming back and that turns into the thing he does instead.
