Several years ago I audited a colt-starting clinic run by a well-known guru. He noticed one of the participants was very nervous about getting on her horse for the first time. This clearly irritated the guru because he went on a rant for several minutes about how there is no place for fear when around horses and if a person is afraid they should take up some other hobby. It was obvious his rant was upsetting to her and not helpful. So today I want to discuss fear.
Before I go on too much further I want to talk a little about the nature of fear. Firstly, fear does not have to be rational. I believe in most cases fear is irrational. I remember a client who owned two horses. One was a gelding she had owned for many years and had a habit of prancing and dancing with the occasional rearing episode when it was separated from other horses during a ride. The other was a mare she had only owned a couple of months but was calm and polite amid even the most challenging rides. Yet, my client was very nervous about riding the mare and completely at ease with the ‘nutty’ gelding. It made no sense to me, but her fear of riding the quiet mare was real to her.
The second thing is that there appears to be a stigma assigned to fear. People seem to be ashamed of their fear and hide it like the uncle the family doesn’t talk about anymore. It’s the black sheep of emotions.
But I believe fear is a very important emotion. Without fear, the human race would be extinct. It’s what stops us from walking blindly in front of traffic or swimming with crocodiles.
Nobody should feel ashamed of being afraid and nobody should feel like they have to apologize for being afraid. People don’t choose to be afraid of riding horses and if it was simply a matter of getting over it, they would.
Thirdly, I want to say that I feel that people who say they have never been afraid of a horse fall into 3 categories in my view. They may be lying. Lots of men fall into this category – especially men who are professional horsemen. Secondly, they may not have worked with enough horses to meet the horse that scares them. And lastly, they are too stupid to know they should have been afraid. This last category of humans should be prevented from ever breeding other humans who may carry the ‘stupid’ gene. If this gene were allowed to proliferate the human race would die out in a few generations.
Fear is a very common obstacle to people being effective and becoming better horse people. Most of my clients are middle-aged and female, but they are not the only ones who fall prey to the demon voice in their head that says, “What if he….”. Some are young and some are male – although the men seem more determined to ignore the voices in their head
I have certainly met a couple of horses in my life that have scared the manure out of me. It didn’t stop me from working with them because it was the job I was employed to do at the time. But if it weren’t my job I would have found any reason to avoid it.
I think it is important that all of us have a little chicken in us. It will keep us safe and alive. It makes us cautious to avoid doing really stupid things.
However, there is a difference between fear making us cautious and making us paralyzed. When I meet a student who is afraid of their horse it is not my aim to eliminate their fear. I want them to hold on to enough that makes them take the time to cross all the ‘T’s’ and dot all the “I’s” and not be cavalier.
The hard part is to liberate students from enough of their fear so that they can be effective in helping their horses. I believe the secret to this is giving them a better awareness of their horse's thoughts and emotions AND the tools to change those thoughts and emotions if they don’t like them.
If a person can see the worry building up inside their horse before it spills over and comes out through their actions, they can be more effective in quelling any trouble that might follow. The earlier, the better. This takes time for people to learn. It takes a commitment to look beyond what a horse is doing and into what it is thinking and feeling. However, it is not magic, as some people seem to think. It just requires a little help with seeing what is before you and then spending hours and hours and hours observing.
Once a person is aware of a horse's “cup of worry” filling up, they then need to know how to empty the cup. Again, this is a learned skill that comes with good coaching and the time necessary to learn those skills.
Horses have a tremendous capacity to switch off their emotional concerns if they have a good reason – like the trouble has passed. People who carry fear need to appreciate this fact. Once a horse lets go of his worry, all is right with the world once again. With a little training, we can learn how to help a horse calm its emotions.
The first thing I do with every horse and rider is to estimate how much worry is inside. My job then becomes to eliminate as much of that trouble as I can because worry in a human and horse is an obstacle to learning. There is no bigger responsibility than to help a horse and its rider feel better.
When I see a person carrying a truckload of fear, my job should be to help them be more aware of their horse’s emotions and then teach them the ability to change the emotions they don’t like. It takes time and commitment on the part of students, but it is something that the average horse person can learn. Time and commitment not only develop the skills to see and alter the trouble inside their horse but also give them the confidence to trust themselves to stay safe. It is the confidence to trust our judgment and skills with a horse that crushes the fear that paralyzes us.
Fear is not something to be ashamed of. It can be used to help our horses by turning it from a negative that interferes with our enjoyment and learning to a positive that keeps us safe and builds our confidence. But it takes a lot of work.
This is a video I recorded about the Cup of Worry that horses encounter. There are a lot of parallels with the human experience.