Mutual Trust

Round and round and round. How many of us have witnessed this? I know I have. It has been my observation that many trainers and riders take their horses out of the stall, and lunge for forty five minutes, "to take the edge off" they say. Yes many times we have horses that are a little bit more high strung than others, and at times, especially when we are first starting out a young or green horse we must take the edge off. Sure, safety IS first. But what about the seasoned horse that has been in training for three years? Why put the poor horse through the boring routine of going round and round? Shouldn't this horse be really good by now? It happens more often than one might think. With this I do not mean just in Western Horse Barns, I see it too in Dressage Barns, and other disciplines.

The question is simple: Why?

The answer is more simple, lack of trust. Like I said before with the young horse and with the green horse, or with the horse coming out of retirement or injury we might have to lunge or ride in large circles to warm him up. But, as time goes by, we should strive to give the horse more trust so that he can trust us as well.

It is my personal opinion and many horse professionals might disagree, but it is my opinion that every good horse should learn all good basics, and trust regardless of what his future career will be. By this, I mean

hat the horse likes and enjoys his work and does not object to the slightest change in scenario, or training pattern.

The Patterns... many professionals train their horses to be robots. They do not truly train the horse, but rather teaches him to perform a certain pattern for many months and then when the horse is taken out of his comfort zone, he performs badly or unsatisfactory. Why? There is no trust. No mutual trust. With this I don't say a horse should never act up, well they shouldn't, but once in a while they do. And that is O.K. because they are horses. Horses by the way are like small children, when you least expect it the do or say something (children, horses don't talk, not always) that embarrasses you or puts you in a difficult situation. Maybe the horse a some time or another acts up and puts you in a bad spot. Horses have bad days too, just like people. If we think we have the best horse in the world, we must always keep up his training to make sure he continues to be the horse in the world. If our best horse in the world turns bad one day, lets work with him to turn good again.

We give trust to our horses by the treatment we give them. Bringing the spur, and/or the whip to him in a necessary time is not cruelty, given that it IS done with care and love. The horse learns what discipline is, and why he is being disciplined. We teach the horse trust by saying with our seat and legs, "we need to go forward" the horse says, "no thank you by holding back" we apply the necessary aids, with the necessary amount of pressure and the horse complies. When this happens, the horse learns that even at times when he is scared, he can trust that you will not take him to a dangerous area.

If on the other hand we allow the horse to go anywhere he wants, when he wants, we teach him that we do not have enough authority over him as a herd leader and therefore teach him he cannot fully trust him. This is not kindness. This is not mutual understanding. Sure at times we must step back let things go, but there is always a time and place for the latter two.

We ride for joy, for therapy, for hobby, for money, for fun, etc. The horse knows that he is to perform a job, and knows that it's job is to do what we ask. You see? ASK.

We must not say MUST, we should never say you must do this horse. Because if we do, we find ourselves more frustrated, and in the end the horse WILL win. We must teach the horse to trust us, so that no matter what we ask, the horse will say, "Sure."

Because, how many of us have children or parents, or siblings, or friends that ask us to do a task we don't want to do? But we do it anyway. Because we love, trust and respect them. Am I right? Yes I am. So our horses should be happy performing their work. Doing boring patterns, over and over every day is not a fun way to work, neither is going round and round and round. How would you like to do the same boring thing every single day, for months or even years? Even if you do that already, or if you like that kind of life, does not mean the horse likes it too.

You might say, "yeah, I warm my horse up under saddle in the rising trot for a half hour" and to this I would also say that it is over kill. The horse in this case WILL with time get so sour of working so much that, again, he will become a robot. The horse will loose trust in his rider if this is continually done.

Mutual trust, will come with time. We must trust the horse first though. We cannot expect the horse to trust us at all, if we ourselves do not learn to trust the horse first.

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