I wrote about this on Facebook briefly earlier this week and I thought it really warranted it’s own article. To me the little things will always and forever be the most important, yet time and time again they are what is overlooked.
When I teach I spend most of my lessons perfecting the hand, the contact, the straightness, the softness of the aids. My students almost always go through a phase (or several stages) of asking why it matters. Yet that is still just scraping the surface of the little things that are in fact big. It’s refreshing when someone is open enough to see the value of leading with intention or mindfully haltering their horse because it’s such a rarity.
Let me paint a story for you. You walk out to get your horse from the field generally on your phone and lost in your own world. Almost without thought you grab the halter, open the gate, and go to your horse. For a second you might gain some awareness as you slip the halter on and then it’s back to mindless walking. What you have missed is the harshness with which you haltered your horse that created distance between yourselves without knowing. As you walk your horse tunes out, unable to grasp your energy. He starts to wander at the end of the lead, getting progressively shorter on his left hind, a habit he tends to bring up.
In the cross ties he goes numb in both mind and body as you work around him without actually engaging with him. Tacked up you wonder why his feet drag to the arena. Never for once thinking it’s the numbness you brought to him in the cross ties.
Once you mount your horse is dead to the leg, incessantly crooked, and pissy when you try to escalate to prove your point. Shocking right?
Yet everything you’ve done with your horse so far has lead to him being in this state. Just imagine if you simply … hadn’t.
Imagine you go out to the field emptying your mind and creating awareness through your body. You walk in and immediately connect with your horse haltering him like a slow conscious dance between partners. As you walk you match steps, building awareness through your connection and slowly influencing that stiffness and crookedness that likes to sneak into your horse’s body. Grooming is a loving affection that addresses all the tightness and soreness your horse carries daily. He walks out of the barn tacked up for a ride feeling more alive and fluid in his movement, ready for the work session. Once you are mounted he’s soft, supple, straight, and attentive. You guys move effortlessly together working on your dance.
Amazing right?
It might seem amazing or unrealistic, but really your mindfulness and presence throughout your entire interaction with your horse has created the wonderful horse you look forward to riding. The only thing that changed was your awareness of all the little things that go into setting your horse up for success, yet the impact was huge.
Trainers talk about not wanting to set a horse up for failure a lot, but rarely is that taken to the small details. In everything you do you are either setting a horse up to be softer or more tense and resistant. When you think of your actions that way you can start seeing what a huge difference those “little” things make.
For most of us we will spend the same amount of time fetching, tacking up, and untacking our horse as we do riding. So all those small things end up making up about 50% of our relationship with our horse. If 50% of the time we are asking the horse to be soft and supple mentally and physically yet the other 50% of the time we are making him less that way we aren’t really being fair are we? Suddenly everything you’ve done now seems like it has set the horse up for failure not just for your ride, but in life in general. He never knows whether to be soft and supple or tense and guarded. It’s no wonder problem horses abound!
The biggest thing you can do for your horse is practice more mindfulness and pay attention to all the details in the little things. With time the big picture will come together without all of the fight and drama.
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