I was flipping through my stack of horse magazines today trying to whittle down what I wanted to file away and what could be recycled. One article that made it into the "to be filed" pile was worthy of sharing.
In an article entitled "Recipe for a Riding Horse" written by Bob Orton for the January 2012 issue of Dressage Today Mr. Orton discusses his method for taking a completely green three year old from pasture to respectable training level test in three months. While many would prefer to stretch out such a project over 6 months to a year, the article's advice provides a nice guideline for priorities and methodology. The gems for all riders no matter what age, level, or discipline are what he calls his golden rules:
1) Be black and white about the behavior you expect.
2) Never correct or discipline your horse with anger.
3) Keep things as simple as possible and always set your horse up for success.
They seem simple but how often have we all had occasional lapses with one or more of these? How often have we seen other horse people forget these? Yet in these three things there are so many critical lessons to be learned in horsemanship. Heck, in life. These same ideas are pretty much what the Super Nanny and the Dog Whisperer keep telling people.
Haven't we all experienced frustration in dealing with someone who gives us vague or conflicting directions or requests, then gets mad when we didn't do what they wanted us to? We don't like it, why do we think our horse's don't mind?
Sometimes riding doesn't go as planned. We've all been angry at a horse we've ridden at some point. Many of us can look back with shame and regret on at least one incident where we yelled, spurred, or popped that whip a bit harder then was strictly necessary. Outside of the barn, how often have we said something we didn't mean to someone we care about because we were angry?
How much better would our world be for people and horses if we would all work harder to create clear, simple, reasonable expectations? What if when a horse or another human did something contrary to those expectations we were to take a deep breath and instead find a response that helps to correct the situation rather than simply venting our frustration? Mr. Orton's golden rules could be the most valuable lesson horses have to teach us.
For those of us who teach riding, sometimes we get hung up on the mechanics of riding and forget that even problems encountered provide a valuable learning experience. How many times have we had a horse and rider stuck on something. The student can't figure out how to communicate what they want effectively. The horse and rider are frustrated. The more frustrated the rider becomes the angrier and less reasonable they become. The more frustrated the horse becomes, the more they resist. As teachers what do we do? Do we get on the horse ourselves and attempt to fix it? Do we just throw our hands in the air, tell our student they'll get it in time and call it a day before someone gets hurt?
I wonder if the better path is to use such moments as an opportunity to teach the student the golden rules. How to take a deep breath, talk through their frustration and analyze what has gone wrong. This takes time, and patience, and it could mean the lesson plan goes out the window. But what a valuable example to plant for even a very young beginning student that if things are going wrong, stop, breathe and reassess before you act. If we can teach our students that, we can teach them not just a valuable horsemanship lesson, we can teach them a valuable life lesson.
