Problems with a horse are not fixed because we want them fixed it. For things to change with our horse it must begin with things changing with how we work with our horse.
“You don’t help the horse if you don’t help the owner.”
This is the basis of clinics. Clinics are intended to educate riders, not horses. All the magic needed to address problems with our horses happens at home with the new knowledge we gained at a clinic. Nothing at a clinic is aimed at educating a horse. It’s all about educating the rider.
But why? If we can help fix a rider at a clinic, why can’t we fix a horse too?
It’s because a horse’s old patterns of response are never eradicated. They are never wiped from a horse’s brain. They live on inside a horse forever. You only change an unwanted behaviour by subduing the ill feelings that triggered the behaviour and replacing those feelings with ones of safety and comfort that lead to a new way of responding.
Nothing is fixed or eliminated. We just overlay new patterns over the top of old patterns.
With training, we can reshape the way a horse responds to our questions. We can show it a better way. A safer way. A more comfortable way. But if we allow the old ill feelings to resurface again, the old unwanted behaviours will resurface hand-in-hand.
The better the training, the deeper we bury the old patterns. It may seem that we have fixed a problem because we did such a good job of making sure the old feelings that caused the problem don’t come to the surface. But they are there and will return if we revert to our old patterns.
We can’t let our guard down. We can’t assume our horse is ever “fixed”. That would be a betrayal of our horse. It is not the horse’s responsibility to bear the burden of always being emotionally centred and being the horse we want it to be. It is not invested in doing what we want. A horse is only motivated by what response it perceives will lead to safety and comfort. It’s our job to help make that easy for our horse. It’s never the horse’s failure. It’s always our failure.
At a clinic, Huey is convinced that resisting a feel on the rope works best for him.