When your horse is CALM and feels safe, also because he fully understands what you want from him, and your horse has AUTONOMY to decide what he wants to do and to decide to engage in the training, this is the moment when COOPERATION starts.
Cooperation is a mutual agreement that we will help our horse to express himself and our horse will try his best in return. Cooperation is always built on the ground of mutual profit. What that does profit mean?
- For you, the profit is not only a horse willing to do Haute Ecole exercises or whatever you ask him to do, it is also a great time that you have together with your horse and all the changes in your thinking and in a way you understand the Life that your horse will teach you.
- For your horse, the profit is also a great time he has with you and the possibility to express himself as he truly is – his character, personality and inner sense of understanding the Life he is living with you. The Life of humans.
So cooperation is built on the foundation of mutual profit.
You need to understand that your horse is not dreaming about winning the Olympics. Maybe it is your dream and it is absolutely fine to have such dreams in our life. but you cannot build cooperation on such thinking.
To build true cooperation with your horse you have to act from your inner self and you have to think about the Here and Now. And you will see that this is not difficult. This is the most natural and simple process you can experience in your life.
Your horse doesn’t understand the concepts of the past or future. These are concepts created by humans, which are not part of the life of your horse. So you need to focus on what is NOW. You need to focus on feelings, emotions and experiences that we give to our horse and which he is giving to us NOW, meaning second by second.
What will you gain?
You will learn from your horse that the past and the future are not important.
This may sound a little bit esoterically, but to the contrary, this is very practical knowledge. When you spend time with your horse you cannot exchange anything that will be bad now for something good that will be in the future. Also, anything bad that was in the past is not really important, so you don’t need to think a lot about what your horse has done before (during the last minute, last training or last year), because it is not true anymore. If you think too much about this you literally make changes impossible.
What you should think about is what is going on now, what is the part of the reality.
Maybe your horse was misbehaving a second ago, or a month ago, but if you think about this and you label your horse as “misbehaving” you make the change impossible. When people think about change they imagine something that will be in the future, like: “Maybe in the future my horse will be calm”, but the change can only happen now.
And what can change is YOU.
If your horse is not calm or is misbehaving, it is your responsibility to change yourself now and you will see that your horse will change also. And this will all happen now. Not tomorrow, or after few trainings.
All changes happen in the present. And it is a sign of cooperation.
When you start to think and to live this way you will be open to profit from your horse. This means that the horse will be consciously helping you in process of training. But please remember that the past and the future do not exist for the horse. The horse lives in and cares only about the present. And can help you only now. And this requires that you be consciously present in each moment of being together with your horse. When you are with your horse you have to stop thinking about everything that was before and that can be in the future. Why? Because this is the only way that you will start to understand the situation how it is now and stop judging this situation by your past experiences and future expectations.
In effect, you will start to understand what is going on between you and your horse and this way your horse will be able to help you.
This process is like changing the language that you are using. And if you are successful in this you can speak the language that your horse is using.
And what kind of language is your horse using? The language of the Here and Now.
Some examples could be useful here: for example, your horse is showing some frustration during the training, and your mind starts thinking “I have to stop it or else this is going to happen every time I ask for this exercise” or “My horse does not like this exercise” or “It happened yesterday, happens today and will happen tomorrow” or you may even start labelling your horse as “overreactive” and “naughty”. This kind of thinking will not help you. And if you think this way, cooperation with your horse is impossible. Why? Because you are no longer in the moment with your horse. You have been lead by your thoughts somewhere else where your horse doesn’t exist. In this place exist only images and imaginations your mind has produced about your horse before. This place has no connection to reality.
And that is why we cannot change anything from this place.
Instead, you should be with your horse here and now, fully aware of the situation.
When in this place you will simply know what to do without thinking. You will follow what you see and what you experience.
Anytime during the training when you feel fear or anxiousness about the future or about the past, you are not with your horse. And cooperation is not possible.
So how to be in this state of the here and now? It is very simple.
You have to really enjoy the time you spend with your horse and that’s all. You can observe yourself how you think, feel and act if you do something that you truly enjoy. It is also profitable to observe children when they play – there is no fear about the future or judging the past and the sense of the time passing by. There is pure joy and happiness of doing things they love. This means to be in the moment.
When you really enjoy the time you spend with your horse, when you really like your horse magically everything is going perfectly O.K. To let it happen, your horse also needs to enjoy the time he spends with you. And this kind of playing together with your horse is the best attitude to training.
Don’t think about the time you spend with your horse as of “work”. Sometimes I hear people say “I have to work with my horse today for one hour”. This is something that your horse cannot participate in, simply because horses don’t understand the concept of work. Why?
Because the concept of work is artificial and was invented by humans,
and horses are part of Nature.
Horses can understand only the things that really exist, which means that they will not understand anything that is a part of artificial concepts invented by humans. So for you to be more effective with horses, it will also be better not to use these artificial concepts. In effect, you will be amazed how many things that bother you really don’t exist…
