Why did I never see that before???

Sometimes we become blinded to our own ambition. We work so hard to try to get something fixed up that we lose sight of the bigger picture. Lose site of the things that are really important. Basically we just get in our own way.

This happened with Marshal and me… You see the last lesson I had with my Teacher she was trying to explain to me that I was moving to fast for Marshal, that I needed to build up my cues for him so he could understand and internalize what I was communicating to him.

Here is an example. In order to get the stop, I basically stop riding. I let the life in body relax down to my seat bones and I apply gentle pressure with my thigh near his shoulder.. Slow down.

Well what my trainer noticed is that yes he would stop, but he would be chomping on the bit.. chew chew chew… Well there are some tricks to get them to stop doing that and actually release the tension they have built up.

What my trainer recommended was to start with the rein, which I was not doing, and then move to the seat after he pressed into a soft feel…

No Chew…

Ok.. so I had to walk away with that, thinking what in hell did it all mean.. I was a failure because I had not seen it..

Then I had a gal riding Marshal in the round pen and for the first time I was able to watch him with another rider on this back.. And I noticed he was tight in through the mouth and up through the neck. In fact as she rode around it look like the little guy was not breathing at all…

I asked her to stop riding and give him a rub down his mane, and he released a big sigh… Hmmm something is brewing in that little guy brain of his.. He is tense because ….

Well now that’s what I need to figure out.. I know it goes back to communication. I know it goes back to the fact that not all horses are the same… it goes back to the rider..

So later in the day a gal was riding her horse trying to get him to move into a soft feel. He was rooting around and she was pressing him back and basically they looked like a drunk driving a semi truck… Just kinda all over the place.. She was saying she was trying to get him to move unified…

Well I said, if it was my horse, I would first start working on just getting him to stop rooting around…

But you see, there is the dilemma we all face.. We are trying to fix something up, and we get so focused on trying to fix that up that we don’t “SEE” the other things we should be working on…

IE my horse needs to back up straight… well we work so hard on that, that when someone watches us, the darn horses head is up in the air and his feet are not moving in correct cadence, but yup he is moving straight, and guess what ! You just built in a ton of stuff you got to build OUT again.. which by the way is 2x as hard as not getting it started in the first place..

HiHO!
LW