I want to talk about something that for most people is self-evident. But sometimes it never hurts to be reminded of things that are self-evident.
Horse training is rarely (if ever) a smooth process. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true in that it is a roller coaster of a process. There are good days and bad days. There are forward steps and backward steps. There is progress and there is regression. Sometimes we even have to count stagnation as a good day.
Horse trainers everywhere know the value of building on a solid foundation of basic work. Progress does not come in leaps, but in incremental layers built on what came before. The trust and confidence we established yesterday are used to gain a slither of better trust and confidence today. The clarity achieved yesterday is the foundation for a marginal improvement in clarity today. And so it goes. Each day forms the basis of small improvements for the next day. Training is a continuum and not just a series of isolated exercises or trained movements.
It sounds simple and in principle, I guess it is. But maybe it’s not so easy. The smooth progression we envisage in our minds when we start a project with a horse gets hijacked by our incompetence and propensity to make mistakes – by our humanness. We get in the way of the training.
A lot of the time we do this with little mistakes that we all make every day in our lives.
We put a horse in a round yard and wait patiently for it to try and take an interest in us. As a little trust and confidence build, it faces the middle to look at us. Then we betray the good try it took for the horse to look at us by moving too quickly or too early. We got in the way of building trust and it unraveled.
When we teach a foal to pick up its feet, it begins with the horse lifting one foot momentarily. Then we get in the way of the trust and try it took the foal to lift its foot by requiring it to hold it up for one second longer than it thought it should or could. Another backward step caused by our mistake.
When our horse crowded us at feeding time we didn’t realize it was because we used treats to catch him. We got in the way of being clear about space.
These are common errors and on the scale of things, they generally create only minor setbacks. But don’t underestimate their importance. But they are still setbacks, and they still cause damage to both our relationship with a horse and the training progress. They are best avoided if possible. The better horse people make fewer of them than the rest of us, but errors in judgment are part of the human condition.
On the other hand, sometimes we make big mistakes that can create problems for a very long time or even forever.
For example, over facing a horse with a task bigger than they are ready for. I immediately think of show jumpers who are asked to jump higher and wider fences too early in their education. This can cause a huge amount of anxiety that burdens them for life – and not just with regard to jumping, but also with most of what we do with them.
Another example is the damage that is caused by a saddle slipping under a horse in the early stages of starting. Very often when this happens a horse struggles for years or even forever to be comfortable with being saddled.
I recall an incident where I was guilty of putting my horse in a situation that she was not ready for. It was my first ride out of the round yard on my mare, Chops. We rode along the dirt road that passed the front gate. Things were going well until we came across a large puddle. I figured this was as good a time as any to start Chops on water hazards. She was not very sure about the puddle, but I just waited and waited without putting any pressure on her except to block her from trying another route home. Finally, after several minutes I felt her get ready to step into the puddle and I got out of her way to allow it to happen. As her front feet took a forward step I felt her sink down to her chest in mud. It was a sinkhole. She scrambled with all four legs flailing in every direction until she finally manage to reach solid ground. We were both covered in mud and had shocked looks on our faces. I felt terrible that I had betrayed her. Just when she thought she could trust giving it a try, I proved to her I couldn’t be trusted. It was only due to her amazing heart that we were able to negotiate puddles successfully later in the ride.
I think the point of this post is that I want to highlight that mistakes are part of training. They are why we sometimes go backward as well as forward. But mistakes are also part of our learning. They are important in teaching us what not to do, as well as what to do.
Most people see the big mistakes they make. They know when they tie their horse up and it flips over they made a big mistake. They know when they ride with 200 hundred of their closest friends and their horse is out of control with anxiety, they have made a big mistake.
However, so few of us are aware of the small mistakes. We miss seeing how our horse grimaced when we patted it too hard. We are unaware that when our horse comes into us on the lunge it’s because we are moving our feet in the wrong direction. When don’t realize that our horse is difficult to bridle because the browband is too small and the bridle cuts into the back of his ears.
Paradoxically, it’s often the small mistakes that are the biggest hurdle to overcome because our lack of awareness of them means they persist for longer. They are a constant source of trouble that gets in the way of training forever or until we discover them. We are aware when we make a big mistake and do everything in our power to correct it next time. But with the small mistakes, they sometimes slip under the radar and become a thorn in the side of our relationship with our horse that persists for a very long time. Pretty soon a whole lot of little mistakes accumulate to make it seem like something really big has gone wrong in the training.
I guess the take-home message is that we should learn to see the little mistakes as much as we are aware of the big ones. This means every response and every behaviour of a horse should have importance to us. Each response, each gesture, and each behaviour tells us something about us as much as about our horses.
