How many breaks do you take when you train your horse? And how often do you take them? Would you be surprised to learn that I can take a break even EVERY 15 SECONDS when I train with my horse? And by saying a break I mean a total cool-down, going to the grass and fooling around.
You want to be happy, Calm, relaxed and super-successful when you are with your horse. You also want your horse to be happy, Calm, energetic, focused and present. And such moments can happen for both of you.
The key to successful training lies not in hunting such moments down, or hoping for them to come, but in real spending most of your training time in such moments!
The trick is not to hunt such moments down with exercises designed to “sharpen” your horse’s responses or “tune” him to you, but to manage your training time in such a way that these moments become every single second of your training.
How to do it? – By taking BREAKS.
And by knowing WHY, HOW and WHEN to take them!!!
I get too often hooked on something that feels good to me and completely forget about my horse until he does something to remind me that he has feelings too. I am working hard on my own awareness of the “surround” but struggle with it every day. Would like my “surround” to become more nuanced and part of a moment to moment awareness and not something that feels a bit like breaking the door down. Thank you for this article, will read it every day.