At every clinic, some people come along to have a problem addressed that is not the problem they need to address. It is a very long list of behaviours that fall into this category – saddling problems, float (trailer) loading, mounting, tying up, catching, bridling, separation issues, crookedness, and so on.
People struggle with solving these problems because they get in the way of moving on in the training. Each little problem has a wider impact on the quality of the rest of the training. This is because when we have resistance and an argument with our horse, it affects our relationship, which has implications on how much try a horse will have for the next thing we ask. When a horse repeatedly sees us as the source of the trouble, it sets us up for more trouble in the future.
This means that no problem should be overlooked or ignored. It means that every little issue is important. And it means that no training is ever finished.
However, there is an easier way to troubleshoot many problems we commonly face with a horse. A person doesn’t have to always tick off each resistance one at a time as they come across them.
The problems we come across with our horses are like a family tree. By that I mean each person has a heritage. We all came from someone else. Likewise, with regard to problems with horses, they all came from something else. In other words, the way things were working before we noticed the problem is where the problem began. It is a basic fact that most times the problems we see are no more than symptoms of something else. Often the root cause lay somewhere else. We tend to focus on fixing the symptoms because the real cause went unnoticed.
Again let’s look at the family tree. Two people come together and produced several children (you didn’t know this was going to be a birds and bees post, did you?). Then those children all produce several children. In a short time, there is a population the size of a village that stems from just two people. Each person can be traced back to the two people who started it all in the beginning.
Horse training can be like that too.
For example, say your horse is a little sluggish on the lead rope. He doesn’t follow the feel of the rope very well. This leads to problems with tying him up or pawing in the float or lunging. So you work on these problems and one by one they get a little better. However, you also notice he doesn’t stand quietly for the farrier, he sometimes stops to graze when you lead him from his paddock, and he drifts to the gate of the arena when you ride him. So you work at addressing each of these problems. Then you discover that he is sluggish to ride down the road, he shies at ghosts, and is terribly upside down in his top line. So once again you spend time fixing those problems.
One by one you tick off these training issues so that you can move on to the more advanced stages of your horse’s education.
But what if you had a crazy idea and decided to take your horse to a horsemanship clinic just to get another opinion and some ideas on where to go next?
What if the clinician were a brilliantly insightful Aussie horseman (who shall remain nameless but with initials RJ) who told you that your horse has separation problems and all the difficulties you had been working on actually stem from a lack of focus? You were working on tying up, lunging, straightness, etc, and hadn’t given a thought to focus and separation anxiety. A lack of focus led to separation anxiety and this led to trouble tying up, difficulty with the farrier, problems with trailer loading, crookedness in the circle work, and made your horse tricky to catch.
Kapow!! It would be like a lightning bolt of clarity.
How much easier life would have been if instead of addressing each symptom, we addressed the root cause. By giving priority to our horse’s focus and quiet emotions, perhaps things like tying up and shying would have been much smaller training hurdles to overcome. Each hiccup along the way is a reminder that the issues that came before are not yet good enough. Any trouble in our training tells us that what came before needs to be better.
When I’m helping people with problems like saddling or float loading or whatever, I urge them to think that their job is not to get the horse saddled or loaded into the float. Rather their job is to get the horse ready to be saddled or led into the float. When the horse is ready, the rest will happen. People get fixated on getting the job done, instead of getting the horse ready for the job.
When the fundamentals are all in place, it is amazing how many of the routine problems that other people have, are bypassed. People will see how well your horse is going and curse you for being lucky enough to own such an easy horse. But few people will think to ask you how your horse came to be that way.
Bonnie is a 26-year-old mare that has always been difficult to float load. Previously people had taken hours to load her. But it took about 30 minutes of working on her leading for Bonnie to walk into the trailer. Bonnie’s problem was not float loading, but leading.