Never Say Never

Horses have taught me a lot in the past 50 years. In particular, I have learned that there are three things to keep in mind when it comes to horses:

Never say never.

Never say always.

Always plan for the worst case scenario.

Horses will always make a liar out of you. If you say that a particular horse is perfect and well-behaved, chances are he will embarrass you momentarily. If you take great pains to describe how bad your horse can be, he suddenly turns into a perfect angel. Have you ever had this experience with horses? I have a bunch. Enough that I do not believe it is coincidence. Somehow horses know when you are bragging on them and they know when you’re not and they have an uncanny ability to make a liar out of you. One of these days, I am going to figure out how they do that.

For example: recently, when showing a buyer a horse I had for sale—a mature and experienced trail horse, the buyer asked, “What does he do when he spooks?” My answer, in a moment of stupidity, was, “He never spooks.” Of course, you can imagine what happened less than 15 minutes later. Note to self: NEVER say a horse never spooks. He was a good horse and I did sell him to that buyer regardless, but you’d think by now I would know better than to say something like that.

Another example: for the TV show, time and time again, the subject horse becomes instantly trained as soon as we turn the camera on. We have learned to always shoot the “Before” footage first because unless we can capture the “problem” on tape, we cannot really make an episode out of it. Twice now, we have had horses lined up that have supposedly had a “problem” crossing water. The owners have emphatically stated that, “He always balks and refuses at water.” And twice now, our unused “Before” footage shows the horses walking straight into the water obstacle without hesitation and we subsequently ended up taping an episode on totally different subjects. Interestingly, the secondary topics have ended up making very popular episodes—one was about saddle fit, the other about training a horse to side pass.

And one thing my father taught me about horses, was to always keep the worst-case-scenario in mind when you are doing things with horses. For instance, I remember being on a pack trip with my father and we stopped for lunch at a high mountain lake. He tied one of the horses to a huge dead tree trunk laying on the ground—this thing was two feet around, thinking it was surely an unmovable object and therefore safe to tie to, having not kept in mind the worst-case-scenario factor. Naturally, something startled the horse and he pulled back, moving the entire tree trunk and causing a much bigger spook in the horse. The wreck ended when something finally broke. If you keep in mind the worst that can happen and readjust your actions, you and your horse will be much safer.

I think about this every time I see someone leading a horse wearing sandals or opening the horse trailer door before the horse is untied. The more experience with horses you get, the more you come to understand how easily things can go wrong. Do you ever see someone doing something that you know can cause a major wreck and wonder how they get away with it? What’s the biggest bonehead thing you’ve seen someone do? I can tell you, from my life time of experience with horses, that it pays to have an abundance of caution. What have horses taught you?

Enjoy the ride,

Julie

"My horse pins his ears at me"

When I am at clinics and expos (about 35 weekends a year), I spend a lot of time talking to people about their horses and the problems they have, trying to offer advice about how to improve their situation and hopefully give them a better understanding of why their horse is acting the way it is (and often explaining that it is actually a horse with a human problem, not the other way around). You might be surprised at how often the same questions/problems come up and I find myself repeating the same advice over and over.

A surprisingly common complaint/question is a horse owner whose horse pins his ears at her and should she be concerned at that, even though he never does anything bad? One of my first questions in this and many other “problem” scenarios  is usually about what leads up to that behavior—it’s what happened before that happened that is the key to the solution. Do you know what I mean? With an alarming amount of frequency, the horse owner will finally divulge that the horse is eating at the time he pins his ears and that the owner is trying to groom, pet or “bond” with the horse while he is eating.

There’s a real simple solution to this problem, JUST DON’T DO THAT! Leave him alone when he is eating. It is not the time to be training, handling or otherwise messing with a horse and I wouldn’t blame a horse for expressing his irritation in this circumstance, would you?

Yes, its’ true that one way in which horses establish dominance in the herd is to control the food; therefore, it seems logical that if you are dominant over your horse you should be able to do whatever you want with your horse when he is eating. In fact, you often hear trainers talk about putting a person in the pen with a horse, armed with a whip, to keep the horse off the food as a way of proving once and for all that the person is dominant over the horse. Ever hear of this technique? And while I would agree that there may be extreme circumstances in which this scenario might be useful, I think that, in general, there are better ways to attain the leadership role with your horse.

It’s always good to think about what is going on from the horse’s point of view. Certainly, that is easier for some folks than for others and for many, if not most horse owners there is an overwhelming tendency to view every interaction with their horse through the prism of human behavior. That’s the easiest thing to do—we know and understand human behavior and it requires a lot more knowledge, analysis, introspection and persistence to think from the horse’s point of view. That’s what I call being hippo-pomorhic (hippo being the ancient Greek word for horse) rather than anthropomorphic (which means instilling human characteristics on an animal). Even with a lifetime of experience with horses and being an ardent student of horse behavior, I sometimes find myself being anthropomorphic with horses. Have you ever caught yourself doing that? We all do it, the questions is, can you recognize when you are doing it?

Even harder than knowing and understanding the horse’s natural behavior is being open-minded enough to consider that maybe the problem is you and not your horse. This kind of introspection is not always easy or fun but most horse owners, given enough experience, eventually come to the conclusion that they are at least part of the problem. If a horse is buddy-sour, disrespectful or fractious, it may not be a dominant or aggressive horse but the result of poor handling and training. You cannot fool horses when it comes to leadership and authority—they know it when they see it and they know it when they don’t see it.

So let’s take the pinning the ears scenario for example and consider it from the horse’s POV. First of all, meal time in a domestic herd is very stressful. In the wild, horses forage all day long, with no confinement and no piles of highly palatable and nutritious concentrates (so there is not much to fight over). In domestication, we group horses in artificial herds and usually feed them twice a day—much higher nutrient feed stuff than they would ever find in the wild, so they consume it quickly and then have to spend another 10-12 hours thinking about when they will get fed next. There’s a lot of stress not only in the anticipation of being fed, but also in the bickering and posturing that goes on in the herd. It is not unreasonable to think that a horse might want to be left in peace while he eats or that he might be a little defensive about his food. When a horse is eating it is not a good time to be messing with him—just leave him alone. If you have important business with the horse that can’t be put off until he’s finished eating, that’s one thing. And if your horse respects your leadership and authority, you should be able to interrupt him while he is eating without any displays of aggression. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to bother your horse while he is eating for no good reason.

Don’t get me wrong. I think displays of aggression at feed time are problematic and it should be addressed. I have written a lot about this before—it’s a simple problem to understand and to resolve. http://juliegoodnight.com/questionsNew.php?id=70   But when a horse is otherwise polite and respectful and simply shows his irritation because you are bothering him while he is eating, I think that is a human problem, not a horse problem. Even if you struggle to be hippo-pomorphic, think about it this way, how would you feel if you sat down for an expensive meal at a nice restaurant that you’ve been looking forward to for some time and a big doofy Golden Retriever comes up to your table and starts sniffing around, slobbering on you and nosing your elbow to get you to pet him? Wouldn’t that be obnoxious? And don’t even get me started on parents that let their kids run wild in restaurants—it makes me pin my ears back!

Enjoy the ride,

Julie

 

Home Again Home Again

Jigety jig. I can’t believe it’s finally over! The fall expo season has been hectic for me, with many weekend trips plus a three-week marathon in Kentucky for the world equestrian games. I have been home exactly two weekends in the past 18 weeks. After returning home this week from Equine Affaire in Massachusetts, I am now home for EIGHT, count ‘em, EIGHT weeks, until I have to hit the road again in January.

I am not yet entirely sure just how much I am going to enjoy being home or how I will best utilize my newfound time and freedom, but I can tell you I am exploring all of the possibilities relentlessly.

I am definitely planning to spend some time in our newly remodeled kitchen/great room, which I’ve hardly had time to enjoy since it was finished back in August. I love to cook so I am looking forward to making Thanksgiving dinner for my family, friends and neighbors and am getting started o nit this weekend. If Mother Nature cooperates, we’ll be skiing over the holiday weekend at our hometown resort, Monarch Mountain, and I’ll get some good powder days in over the next few months. http://skimonarch.com/

Over the next eight weeks, I also hope to get reacquainted with my horse, Dually. I usually set a big riding goal for the winter, once we are stuck riding indoors. A few years ago I rode bareback all winter, culminating in working on the cutting machine bareback. Boy, I sure improved my balance that winter! This year, I plan to refine our bridle-less riding—maybe see if we can end up bridle-less on the cutting machine or master a fun freestyle reining pattern.

But the next two months won’t be all play for me—I still have a lot of work to do. I am planning to dedicate the next two months to finishing some projects I’ve been working on for a while, like new a new ‘Private Lessons’ mounted audio workout, a lengthy audio book about horse behavior and, the piece de resistance, my full length book on equitation (which I’ve been stewing on for five years). That’s a lot of projects to do in two months but I’ve done a fair amount of work on them so far and I am hoping to just make some headway, a little bit every day.

I know from experience that the next two months will fly by and I’ll be pulling out the suitcases again before I get everything done and lamenting, “Where has the time gone?” Next year I have pledged to only travel three weeks a month and to also leave time for horse showing and boating with Rich next summer, so unfortunately I’ve had to cut a few things from my schedule. With each passing year, I feel like I have to make the most of every day.

Enjoy the ride,

Julie

 

 

Horses are a Journey

… not a destination. That was the title of a keynote speech I gave at CHA’s International Conference recently, in Lake City FL. CHA’s annual conference always has a ton of hands-on horse activities and they were held this year at The Oaks Equestrian Center, a David O’Connor signature facility. A lovely place and the conference had many great speakers and trainers. Although open to anyone, the CHA conference is attended mostly by riding instructors, trail guides, program managers and other horse professionals. As always, there are lots of good times and great opportunities for networking.

 

I always do several arena presentations at this conference and this year I also did the keynote speech at the Saturday night awards banquet. It was a reflective and introspective look at my journey with horses throughout my life and not the sort of thing I usually do. Here’s an excerpt,

“The first thing I learned from horses was a sense of freedom and empowerment. Believe it or not, I was a very shy and introverted child. My parents were worried that I did not have any friends and concerned that I chose to spend my time in my tree fort in the horse pasture instead of hanging out with the other kids after school. Riding gave me an incredible sense of power and adventure as a shy little girl.

I was never happier as a kid than when I was in the barn with the horses. I rode like the wind, usually bareback, in my bathing suit with no shoes, totally not CHA-sanctioned. I craved running the horses up and down the long rows of trees in the orange grove, the faster the better. I didn’t need any human friends because I was content to mingle with the herd and whisper secrets into my horse’s neck. This was far more preferable to me than slumber parties and hanging out at the park after school.”

 

One of the highlights of the weekend at CHA was the demonstration by Chester Weber with his four-in-hand Combined Driving team of gorgeous warmbloods. They were spectacularly turned out—just as they were recently at the World Equestrian Games—and gave a great introduction into the sport and it’s three phases. The Q&A session was awesome, with so many professionals asking astute questions. A good time was had by all! Next year’s CHA conference is in Lexington KY at the KY Horse Park, October 27-30.

 

Last weekend we attended the Equine Extravaganza expo in Richmond VA. One of the highlights of the weekend for me was getting to make a surprise side trip to Washington DC to meet my two sisters for dinner at a top-rated DC restaurant. Staying downtown, seeing the monuments, and all the landmarks was cool (even if only from the window of a car) but getting to have dinner with my two sisters was a blast! They had just flown in for the Jon Stewart/Steven Colbert rally an had a blast. The six course dinner was indescribable; the service extraordinary; the laughter and story-telling huge.

 

This weekend I am off to Denver for the NARHA Conference. I’ll be doing a clinic tomorrow on dealing with training problems and burnout in therapy horses. It should be a fun clinic that is a little different for me, so I am eager for the challenge. I am looking forward to working with these gracious mounts to help them and their handlers do their jobs better.

 

Enjoy the ride!

Julie