Learning is messy

I think for many people the idea of making a mistake and getting things wrong when training our horses is a cause of anxiety.

We’re not only inundated with stories on social media of horses being “fixed” in one session or supposedly transformed in a few weeks, there is also the heavy social pressure of being watched and judged on livery yards. I’ve talked a lot in the past about the bullying and shaming that goes on in the industry when you want to be softer and kinder with your horse. It can feel as if people are waiting to see you fail so they can say “aha! I told you so! You need to be firmer with him!”

When we train with more pressure and expect more of our horses, the tension and stress they’re under increases. So while it may feel better for us to be harder on them so we can get a quicker “result”, there is always a price to pay.

To give an example, it is common to be taught to sharply back your horse up out of your space with a flag/rope/whip. You can get a quick response and a very visible result. This is easy, anyone can do it, but how does the horse feel about it? How is it affecting their posture? Which muscles are they recruiting? Are they learning to be soft or are we slamming tension into their body and creating hypervigilance?

If we train asking for a back up softly, waiting without increasing pressure, releasing for even a shift back in weight, it might look from the outside like you aren’t achieving much, but we are preserving their emotional state, keeping softness in their body, are able to influence their posture healthily and we are also making it so easy to get the “answer” right that our horse is going to have more positive associations with training.

This way of training requires more skill, awareness and emotional regulation on our part and can feel quite overwhelming when its new to us. I try to just give clients one or two specific things to work on and we can build in the rest over time.

When we’re training gently like this with our horse’s emotional state in mind it really doesn’t matter when we make mistakes. The kind of mistakes you make when doing this kind of training are unlikely to damage your relationship or frighten your horse.

I accidentally knocked a client’s previously very nervous pony in the face with a target stick the other day, within 30 seconds all was forgiven and he was back to confidently engaging with us. This isn’t a coincidence, we have put a lot of positive experiences into the bank with him.

The only opinion you should care about when training is your horse’s, and I promise he doesn’t mind your mistakes when you’re training him gently and with patience. You need to have patience for yourself too. Do not be afraid to ask as many questions as you need to. Let it be messy. It will come with time. 🐴