I was late to the mechanic today. My car was booked in at 8am sharp, and I rolled in the driveway at 8.05.

Many may read this and think that ‘5 minutes’ doesn’t really matter, and I guess 100 years from now it won’t. It did however get me to thinking about something my mentor said to me many years ago.

I was attending his clinic, and I was already ready to go in the arena, like many others. It was about 8.55am for a 9am start and I was chuckling about one of my fellow attendees who was ‘faffing about’ still brushing her horse and saddling up. I said “I don’t think she is going to make it” as I saw his gaze cross over to her. “You watch how it reflects in her horsemanship” he said - and then he had my full attention.

I must have looked at him with a quizzical expression because he went on to say “it’s true. If you watch the people that are late, then watch them with their horses and you will see it makes a difference”.

Over the years I have learnt that there are many areas where this is reflected.

Rushing. Usually when you are running late you have a ‘hustle’ in your movements. This is picked up on by the horse and can translate into confusion in aids and a general air of anxiety in your interactions.

‘Good enough’. If you thought that 5 minutes wasn’t really a big deal, this can translate into a ‘good enough’ attitude. “Oh he did the movement, it wasn’t perfect, but it was ‘good enough’. Good enough is the enemy of excellence.

Loss of training and learning time. Every 5 minutes is 5 minutes you could have learned something, trained something or taught something. Did you know that if you miss 5 minutes per day on a 5 day week, over the year that is 21 hours of training!

It would be remiss of me to not mention the impact to others. Turning up late to a clinic or lesson is not only disrespectful to your coach who has made the effort to be on time, but is disruptive to your fellow students.

Back to my being late to the mechanic. I had allowed 1.5 hours to get there, and it is usually about an hours drive, however certain things happened at home which caused me to get on the road late. At 7.55am I was still all set for being on time, but then was caught in roadworks just before the mechanics shop. This caused a delay of 10 minutes. I could ‘blame’ the roadworks, but at the end of the day preparation is not about leaving 45 minutes before your appointment when you know a ‘good run’ gets you there in 45 minutes. It’s about leaving an hour or an hour and 15 minutes before to have time for any ‘unexpected’ issues.

As we practice this preparation in our day to day life, it is reflected in the quality of our horsemanship.

Tk

Train with

July 30 & 31 - Liberty clinic, Port Macquarie NSW

August 18 - 27 Cadillac horse course 10 days, Glenreagh

September 3 & 4 - Connection & Self Carriage - Gold Coast hinterland

September 3 & 4 - Cowboy Dressage Wauchope

Shine by CEN Horse Nutrition

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

As horse owners, at some point we are going to restrict our horses movement. Tieing him up, trailering, stalling, stabling and riding are all ways we can restrict the freedom of movement of our horses, and a necessary part of horse ownership.

But did you know that the way you restrict movement has a huge impact on your horses mental health, and can promote calmness and confidence or shut down and learned helplessness depending on the who, what, when, where and why?

It is so important that we look past the apparent success of our task, and consider the body language and processes of the horse.

For example, a horse that is tied, trailered, stalled etc and goes through a phase of distress or fight (calling, pawing, fighting against ropes or panels), and then arrives at a place of ‘calm’ could have succumbed to the final phase in the prey animals survival mechanism - acceptance of death, and is simply demonstrating this. It is often after this acceptance phase that ‘learned helplessness’ kicks in, as the horse also arrives at the understanding that he has no further options.

Prior to the acceptance of death phase comes;

Do the opposite of what the predator says

Run away from the predator

Fight the predator

Push into pressure

And finally

Accept your fate.

This is why the idea of ‘letting him figure it out’ in the cases of separation anxiety and situations of that nature can appear to have ‘worked’ as the horse gives up his options.

Restrictions of movement can also result in a horse that appears more trainable, quiet and accepting, as he believes he has no alternatives.

I am not suggesting a world in which we do not restrict the movement of our horses, as this would be both unrealistic and unsafe, but one where we consider how we are training these things.

Take hobbles for example - You can throw a set of hobbles on a horse, let him fight, struggle and figure out he can’t go anywhere, and you’ll have a horse that is ‘hobble trained’, but he will also have a little bit less spirit. Introduce the idea of hobbles through training and confidence building, and you’ll have a happy and confident hobble trained horse.

Teach a horse to be trailered by loading him and then ‘quickly shutting the back’ so he can’t escape will teach him he can’t leave the trailer - but he may still be worried and tense about it. Teach him to load confidently and with time, and you’ll have a horse that trailers confidently.

Teach a horse to look to you when he is anxious or worried because you know what to do, makes him feel confident and happy in your presence, rather than teaching him he can only rely on himself, even after asking you for help.

In closing, it is crucial that we remember that one of a horses natural coping mechanisms to stress is to move their feet. Taking this away doesn’t remove the desire or need, it simply causes the horse to shut down and look for alternative coping methods, for example stereotypical behaviour such as weaving, crib biting or a complete disconnect to the environment.

Tk xox

I’ve had the pleasure of judging Cowboy Dressage for the past 2 days at @black_horse_lodge gathering.

Over the course of teaching, I meet a lot of riders who don’t compete. They may have competed in the past and no longer want to, or they may never have competed and feel nervous about competing.

I personally gave up competition for nearly 10 years, as I felt it brought out the worst in me, and was no longer a benefit to my horses. I returned to competition when I found cowboy dressage, and more recently ranch.

Competition can offer both the horse and rider great benefits;

🐴 Measurement of progress. Competition can offer us valuable insight into how we are progressing with our training. Judges feedback gives us unbiased evaluation of our and our horses skills.

🐴 Testing our training. Our horses may perform perfectly at home. The competition environment can give us great feedback on how our horse performs with external stimulation.

🐴 Inspiration. Heading out to a competition can help us become inspired as we watch fellow competitors perform on their horses.

🐴 Motivation. A competition deadline can be the motivation we need to continue working our horses in adverse conditions like weather.

The gathering over the weekend was well run, a fun, encouraging and friendly environment for people to show their horses at their best.

If you have been avoiding competition, why not nominate - it could just be the best thing for you, and your horse.

Huge thanks to Leigh and Paul at Black Horse Lodge for their hospitality and organising a fantastic show, thanks to all the volunteers, my super scribe Candy, and congratulations to all the competitors - you were great!

@cowboydressageworldevents

#cowboydresssage

Consent

Not a frequently used word when it comes to our horses, more common we hear

‘Just get on him’

‘Make him do it’

‘Tell him to suck it up’

And truth be known, there are probably many things that our horses might ‘prefer’ if we didn’t do - veterinary treatments, worming, and sometimes riding and saddling. But just because we are going to move on and do something anyway, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take the time to help a horse become happier about something, listen to his concerns, and even help him change his mind about something.

Take this little guy. I’ve been working with him and his owner to help get them working together as a team, and confident with each other. Over the course of a couple of clinics we found a few things that Dusty was bothered by, one of which was the saddling process. But he didn’t show ‘bad behavior’ when it came to saddling - he didn’t do anything at all - he ‘zoned out’ and disconnected from the process.

At the basic level this is a concern to me from a safety perspective - if a horse is disconnected from what you are doing, then they can ‘come to’ at any moment and react badly. But from a connection perspective, I don’t want my horse feeling like they need to ‘disconnect’ from what we are doing, in order to cope with it. I’m not familiar on his history so I can’t explain why he chooses this mechanism to cope, and there are many reasons this could happen.

So we started working around consent - asking him permission to put the saddle on. Now many of you might be thinking ‘of course he isn’t going to want the saddle on’ and this could be true, but the process of simply having this conversation can completely change a horses outlook on life. He goes from “do whatever you want, you are going to anyway” (a form of learned helplessness) to “oh, we get to talk about this, can I have a look please” (curiosity and interest).

With this guy we had to go waaaay back to the beginning and simply wait, hold space and ask him to even look at the saddle. Yes look.

This is a process I go through with all of the colt starts or restarts that I do.

Over time we have slowly progressed to looking, touching, feeling, consent to put saddle on, to the rider. We are essentially helping him change his mind from ‘this sucks, people suck’ to hmm maybe this is interesting.

Consent isn’t just a conversation we should be having with our kids. It’s one we should be having with our horses

Train with us

July 9 & 10 - Vaquero/ Hackamore clinic, Glenreagh

July 16 & 17 2 day clinic Fernleigh, NSW

July 30 & 31 - Liberty clinic, Hunter region NSW

August 18 - 27 Cadillac horse course 10 days, Glenreagh