Like many of you, I have worked with many horses in my life. Everything from starting an untouched 17-year-old stallion to helping a brain-fried thoroughbred transform into a kid's pony. If you work enough horses you come across the easy ones and the ones that would scare Satan. Thankfully, most fit somewhere in between.
But it is rare that any two horses turn out to be the same when I finish my role in their education. Each horse will have different buttons, different eccentricities, different strengths and weaknesses, different ways they handle challenges, and different ways they approach work. Even in our herd at home, the differences between horses are as varied as those between me and my siblings (and we have the same genetics!).
It is very common when talking about a horse or a group of horses that we describe them in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. We talk about one horse being a big chicken and another horse being very bold and confident. We think of a horse being a talented jumper and another as too scared to walk over a pole. One horse makes a great polo horse and another is perfect for kids. We talk about them as if what they can do or can’t do is who they are.
Why do some horses fall apart when separated from a buddy and others handle it with ease? Why has one Quarter Horse owner told me their horse could never do a levade and a Shetland owner told me their horse could never work closely with cows?
We describe horses as being something or being good at something or bad at something as if that is what they are. No doubt this is true to an extent. However, what we don’t do is describe our role, with our limitations, in making them what they are.
We train horses in a way we know how to work with them. We make adjustments for their personality, previous experience, eccentricities, likes, and dislikes. But our ability to make those adjustments is limited by our own experience, personality, and understanding. Our ability to help a horse we are working with is determined by or limited within the boundaries of what we know and understand.
When you have 2 horses in training and one is going better than the other it may not be an indication that one horse is better than the other. It could be an indication that our approach to the work may suit one horse more than it does the other. It may be our problem and not the horses.
Maybe the dressage horse that we dare not take on a trail ride could be the best trail riding horse AND best dressage horse we ever sat on if we knew how to approach the training differently. Maybe our QH could display a very competent levade and the Shetland could do a brilliant job of cutting out cows if we only knew how to approach the work differently.
How our horses are is as much a reflection of our limitations as it is a reflection of their limitations.
Michèle has trained both our Shetland (Teddy) and our QH (Birch) to be fat and cuddle. She did such a good job that it’s impossible to tell them apart. As you can see, they turned out identical.