My horse can’t deal with that!’ ‘My horse is confused’ ‘My horse is opinionated ‘
These can be justifications for why your horse is stuck or troubled in certain areas or behaving in a disrespectful or dangerous way.
Justifications do not do your horse justice but addressing the obvious issues will.
The first thing we need to do if we want a braver horse is to believe in them-
What does this mean?-
Do I see my horse as a powerful, capable, intelligent creature or am I projecting my own insecurities and fears onto him and diminishing him or her in some way.
Having horses in your life is so empowering if you let it be, they will ask you to step up and be more for them and they show you clearly whether you are on track by the way they behave.
For example if your horse is threatening other horses while you are riding, that might not be because ‘She’s opinionated ‘ it could simply be bad manners in company based on either insecurity or aggression that you have not addressed-
if your horse shows resistance to the bit, is it really that he/she ‘can’t deal with it ‘ is it ‘I need another bit’ or I need ‘NO bit at all’ or could it be that the underlying resistance to pressure that your horse displays hasn’t been addressed in a way that allows your horse to feel comfortable and understand how to deal confidently with pressure in whatever form it takes.
If you get bucked off you can’t always blame the saddle fit.
How many of us have spent hundreds of dollars actually sometimes thousands on new saddles and guess what his ears are still back when we girth him up, he is still trying to bite us and we are still getting bucked off...
It can’t always be soft and fluffy when we are creating a brave horse and we can’t ‘make’ it that way either by letting our horse keep us quiet, we need to know how to be there for our horses as a real leader when it is smooth sailing and when it is not.
He needs us the most when he is troubled and avoiding those trouble spots only lets him down in the future.
Are we seeing the reality of what our horse truly is and the possibility of all they can be or are we holding them back because it’s more comfortable for us to keep repeating our comfy store of excuses and justifications for our horses troubles.
It takes courage but more importantly humility to seek the answers, but in the end for all of us it will become clear as our horse’s behaviour always reveals the truth no matter how we try to explain it away and it’s impossible to cover that up for long, especially when we actually have to ride and perform in front of others and can’t use a glossy still photo to hide behind.
Be willing to ‘see’ and let the real journey begin.