People like choices. The more choices we have the more freedom we feel we have. We make hundreds (maybe thousands) of decisions each day because we have a multitude of options with every decision - what to eat for breakfast, what clothes to wear today, what route to go to work, what emails to reply to, what brand of soap to buy, etc. We like choices. When we have choices we equate that to freedom and liberty and we like that. We feel we have more control by having more choices.

Or do we?

There is a famous study called the Jam study where people entering a grocery store were given the option of taste testing either a plate with 24 different jams on one day or 6 different jams on a different day. In brief, more people stopped to taste the jams on the plate with 24 options, but more people bought jams when presented with the plate of 6 different jams. The conclusion from the study was that people liked the idea of more choices, but were more comfortable making a decision when presented with fewer choices.

When somebody comes to one of my clinics, one of the first things I ask them at the beginning of the lesson is, “what would you like me to help you with?” I would say 4 out of 5 students find this quite stressful. They are caught in indecision. They know there may be 12 things they would like to improve but are stressed about making the right choice. Most times they are happier if I make a suggestion. I can’t recall a single occasion when I suggested what goal to set for the lesson where a person did not seem relieved.

Compare that to a student going to their first horsemanship clinic where the program is pre-determined by the teacher. It is usually some version of a set of exercises everyone does at the same time and at every clinic. The student is not asked to choose the work. The structure of the lesson is almost entirely decided by the clinician. The choices the student has to make are few. There is minimum stress for the student because the decision on what to work on is taken out of the student’s hands. As long as they have faith in the instructor there is no decision-making stress.

Now back to my clinics. Each session is an individual lesson. Each person is the only person I am teaching for that session. Nobody else is getting the same instruction or the same set of exercises. It can be lonely in the middle of the arena or round yard with the eyes of everyone watching. You’re the only one with a horse. You’re the only one being judged. The spotlight is only on you and nobody else. It’s another level of stress to add to the stress of choosing what to work on.

But it’s different at most other clinics where the lessons comprise several students and their horses all working at the same time. Everybody is basically working on the same stuff. I remember auditing one clinic where there were 33 riders all doing the same exercises. The participants loved it. These clinics are far more appealing to riders than the one-on-one formatted clinic.

Why? I believe it is because you are part of a group. Your struggles are shared with the other dozen or more in the arena at the same time. All eyes are not focused on you. You are part of a community. You are not only sharing space, but you are sharing a common goal. You are in it together.

It’s a contradiction that people all want to be different and special, but still want to belong to a group. There is comfort in being part of a herd, but we still still don’t want to be like everyone else. Clinics formatted for group lessons provide that in a way that individual one-on-one lessons can’t.

Putting aside the abilities of the teacher, when you think of it in those terms, the attraction of the various “schools” of horsemanship and the group formatted clinics is obvious. They appeal to the insecurities we all have even if we are not aware of it. When you have a problem with your horse there is an exercise to fix it and it’s the same exercises hundreds of other students have learned. You have a solution and you are part of a community. There is a sense of safety and comfort in that. You must be on the right path because the community reassures you you are on the right path.

So why do I stubbornly stick to the way I teach clinics? Two reasons.

First, not everybody wants to work in groups. And not everybody believes that horsemanship is best learned as a program. There should be an alternative choice that caters for those kinds of students.

But the second reason is the most pressing one for me. I believe one of the most important aspects of being a better horse person is to be a better thinker. I want to encourage people to think and feel more than I want them to learn how to spin a rope at their horse’s hindquarters. I want to create an environment that takes a student outside of their comfort zone and engage their brain and creative side. I want them to be brave enough to experiment with solving their horse problems that did not come out of a book or a horse training program.

When I ask a student, “what would you like me to help you with?”, I want them to have thought about it and make a rational decision. What are they going to do when they are at home and nobody is around to direct what to do next?

I want people to learn to ask their horse what it needs today and not go through the routine of the exercises they learned at a clinic. I want my students to one day be better horse people than me. They can only do that if I don’t teach each one like they are a photocopy of the last one.

I’m not insinuating people who study various schools of horsemanship and attend group clinics can’t be excellent horse people. But the format itself does not push a student to extend their thinking ability and encourage experimentation. In my view, it encourages sameness. It encourages dependence on the program instead of independence from the program. The best students will break through those barriers and limitations, but the more timid student and those with less drive are more likely to flounder. To me, that’s not okay. I want every horse to have their owner be the best horse person they can be. It is the very least we owe them for dragging them into our life.

Please don’t think I am down on clinicians who teach in groups or run programs of horsemanship. I wish I had the skill to teach more than one person at a time or distill the principles of good horsemanship into a stepwise program. But I don’t. Plus, I believe overall they do far more good than the rest of us put together because they influence a lot more people for the betterment of horses. But I get asked a lot about the format of my clinics and people seem perplexed why I teach this way. Now you know.