Oversights when working with my own horses
Last fall I began having challenges with my gelding, Sage, in that he was very reluctant to come to the barn. He would frequently stop along the way, get in “pee stance”, sometimes peeing and other times not. It became clear that he didn’t want to come. I couldn't figured out why at first. Sometimes we would go to the barn anyway, but all I’d do was groom, do bodywork, feed, and love on him. I wanted to make the barn a positive place, not somewhere he’s always asked to do something. Other days I’d take him into the arena or into a flat grassy area to do in-hand work or lunge with the intention of improving his balance and musculature, and he’d do the same thing– stopping, clearly showing me he didn’t want to go. Other days I’d tack him up and if he would put his bridle on on his own, I’d take that as willingness to be ridden, but then when going out to the mounting block he’d stop and stand there. There was a genuine lack of willingness to work with me, and a shroud of shame and guilt began to wrap around me with each instance of the behavior. So many of my clients’ horses come running and can’t wait for our training sessions. I couldn’t fathom why, at the time, my own horse wouldn’t want to come with me and why we seemed to be making so much less progress than I am with other peoples’ horses. What is it about my relationship with my own horse that was so different? What was I doing wrong? Why didn’t he want to be with me?
These thoughts consumed me and I decided I wouldn’t ask him to do anything with me until he gave me his permission and clearly wanted to. One night I went out and fed him and then invited him to the barn. Immediate freeze– he planted his feet and didn’t want to move. Thoughts swarmed my mind. I thought that maybe I should just retire him if he really didn’t want to do things with me. He was only 16 and has so much more left in him, and I wanted to keep training to improve his posture and keep him comfortable. I wanted to eventually teach him piaffe to lubricate his joints so that when he’s an old man he won’t struggle to get up and down. I wanted to reverse and stop the effects of arthritis by keeping him moving in a healthy way. I felt in my heart that everything I wanted was for his health and happiness, and yet Sage kept stopping and standing there, looking at me to say he didn’t want to anymore. I began to feel hopeless and defeated.
Amid all these thoughts, something so obvious dawned on me. What would I do if a clients’ horse did this? I would work on simply leading to and from the barn, and not ask for or doing anything else. When problems arise, I don’t either ignore them or give up with other horses— I work on them without judgment, and explain to the client that training isn’t linear, and if I don’t take the time to release the bouts of tension that arise, they will accumulate within the horse and come out in other moments.
How the horse’s tolerance for tension is like a cup, and if we don’t empty the cup through taking a step back, pausing, waiting, and resetting the nervous system, that cup can overflow.
Our job is to keep the horse under that threshold and listen to subtle signs for guidance in how to support them. I knew this, and yet… Why had this not occurred to me with my own horse?
I realized that I held my own horses to unreasonably high expectations– somehow when I look back at the time I spent to teach them certain things, namely the basics of leading, standing, giving permission and participating in the tacking process, and I expected that those basics were solid and wouldn’t need to be revisited. After all, the last session in-hand with Sage, he was learning half-pass. I knew in my heart that it doesn’t matter if a horse is learning piaffe and passage– if the basics need attention, that’s all that’s needed.
I could feel my own resistance to go back to basics due to a sense of unhealthy pride– being at a boarding barn with so many people I respect led me to want to hide these problems I was having with my horse and present only the highest level of training and keep going up from there. But that’s not how training horses works, and I knew that. In fact, this isn’t how the learning process for anyone works– the fancy stuff is just all the basics done really well. There should be no shame in going back to basics, and if there is, that’s time to go back to basics with myself and meet my own needs.
My inner critic asked “but what will people think if they see you simply training your horse to lead? Your 16 year old horse that you’ve had 9 years and he can’t even walk with you to the barn?”. Well, if I think about how I feel when I see other people training basics, I really admire it. I find it validating that someone else sees the value. It’s humble and wholesome and I can see the horses thanking their trainer for not letting tension build just to come out in some explosion while practicing the more complex movements.
So, I began asking Sage to walk with me, and whenever he walked forward I released the pressure on the rope, thanked him, pet him, and allowed him to graze a bit. I did this a few times, sometimes needing to swing my rope towards his girth to get him going. Then I’d walk back to the pasture, where he really wanted to go, and of course he would walk forward without resistance. I made a huge deal out of him and then turned to walk back up towards the barn. At first he stopped every time the compass of his head pointed behind him— he was magnetized towards his pasture. We worked our way up doing circles and figure 8s getting farther and farther from the pasture. I decided to ask him to trot towards the pasture and walk away from it, thinking I would be making the desired response easier by doing so– Sage surprised me here. I when I got to the pasture and turned around to walk back up, he looked at me in the sort of way a dog does when they’re rough housing– serious and playful all at once– and then he picked up a trot… towards the barn. I lit up, immediately recognizing his playfulness. I laughed and ran past him– he was racing me to the barn. We did this several times. Sometimes he won, sometimes I did because it was dark and he tripped. The final two laps I asked him to stay at a walk to make sure I wouldn’t create a habit of rushing to the barn. He was so satisfied. He made a game out of it, and I was open enough to play it with him. I would have never picked up on this if I had remained in my agenda driven, goal empowered state of mind.
I thought back to a week before when I tried making a game of walking into the indoor arena, where his resistance was showing. It didn’t work. Why? Because I had failed to address the challenges of the even more basic step before– walking to the barn.
From there forward I set the intention to see my own horses as just other horses I’m teaching. Of course I love them early and know that they are very special horses to me, and special in general, but it does not do them justice to allow this special treatment to lead me to believe they don’t need the same reeducation and attunement other horses need. I pledged to try to let go of my goals and expectations and see my horses as who they are.
Each day, I want to approach my horses with a clear mind, unclouded by the judgments of how I think they are and what I think we will accomplish together based on what we’ve done before and what I long for in my own personal dreams.
These sorts of judgments keep me from seeing and hearing them for who and how they are in each moment.
For all you trainers out there, do you find yourself having challenges with your personal horses that you don’t have with client horses? What are some ways that you center yourself and open your heart to where and how your horse is each day, instead of carrying the memories and expectations of them?
What are we doing these days? Well, for starters, I don’t even halter Sage when I go into his field and ask him if he wants to go do something. He will either walk with me enthusiastically, or he will say no and prefer to continue grazing, in which case it’s up to me not to take it personally. If I have the time, I’ll go meditate and perhaps come back, even if I just feed him his dinner that day. What a gift it is to have a horse tell you they want to leave their field and friends and spring grass to spend time with you. (And that can’t feel like a gift if I’m expecting it.)
What a gift to trust a horse enough to open the gate and walk together, without as much as a rope around the neck, into the darkness, and allow the relationship to shape the future more than my ideas about what it’s supposed to look like.
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