In horsemanship, we think of the importance of timing in regards to when to apply a feel or remove a feel. But there is another very important type of timing.
When I was a young, cocky horse guy I was pretty handy with horses. People paid me to compete on their horses. I could sit any bucking storm longer than most horses could buck. I hadn’t met too many horses that could humble me. And then I met an old bloke from Finland who showed me there was more to being handy with horses than outlasting their meltdowns. That fellow piqued my interest in how horses operated. I wanted to know more about getting along with them and less about how to teach them I was in charge.
Years later, when I became a full-time horse trainer, I played with lots of ideas. Having so many different horses at my disposal made it possible to experiment with new ideas. But I felt alone. No other trainers I knew were interested. There was nobody to talk over ideas and give me input. I sometimes felt I was crazy. Then I met an American, Harry Whitney. I met my horse brother. He was much further along in his thinking because he had the luck of being exposed to a lot more horses and a lot more ideas that were all new to me. We became good friends and spent many weeks together every year. Whenever I returned to Australia, my friendship with Harry kept me on the straight and narrow until our next get together. He stopped me from thinking I was the crazy trainer that so many in my corner of the country considered me to be.
A few years ago, I met a trainer at an event. We chatted a bit. Later we exchanged ideas from time to time. He sent me a video of a horse he was starting and wanted some input. I watched a couple of his clinics and he came to one of mine. But in the end, he rejected my ideas and approach. He felt he gave it a try, but it didn’t work for him. We dropped our friendship with a feeling of friction between us. Then about 3 years ago I got an email from my friend. He apologized for being too quick to dismiss what I was trying to explain to him. He said he met a horse that humbled him and he realized he needed to think and experiment with the sort of ideas I had talked about. He started on a new journey of exploration.
I have mentioned before in posts about my friend, Ellen Kealey. When I met Ellen she had been studying horsemanship with a highly regarded clinician. It had been going well until she realized the amount of worry her horse seemed to carry. She could get him to do some cool stuff, but she couldn’t get him to feel okay about it. Ellen came to watch one of my clinics at the exact time she was re-thinking some of the things she had learned. We have been good friends ever since and I’m proud to see how far she has come in such a short time.
I guess the point of this essay is to highlight that the rate at which our horsemanship evolves is often dependent on the timing of being ready for the next lesson.Some people come to my clinics and find it is not for them. They have a different perspective and agenda. But then there is a large percentage of those same people who come back 2 or 5 or 10 years later. They weren’t ready the first time they saw me, but they were ready the second time, even if years passed in between.
The easy part of being a horse person is learning how to make a horse do something. The hard part is learning how to help them feel something. Virtually nobody starts with the hard part. We nearly all begin by learning the easy part. As we evolve and master the easy part, many of us become interested in learning about working with the thoughts and emotions of horses. But for each person that happens at different stages. For some, it never happens because they see their worth as a horse person tied into what they can make a horse do. And for many, an interest in the hard part begins after several experiences of failure or a feeling that something is missing.
If we are lucky we meet somebody or some horse at exactly the right time to guide us with learning the hard part of being a good horse person - the relationship part - the working with a horse part - the partnership part. If we are unlucky, we meet the right person or horse at the wrong time and unknowingly suffer a missed opportunity.
When we talk about the importance of timing in horsemanship, we don’t often think of the timing of meeting the right help we need most, at the time we need it most.
Harry and I in 2013