10/27/2023
It’s not uncommon for me to teach one lesson to a student and then, to never see her again. I say ‘her’ because it’s very rarely, in my neck of the woods, that men will take basic horsemanship lessons.
I may have thought that we got along well and that my teaching had been respectful and encouraging. I may have seen a distinct improvement in how the horse is working and the rapport between horse and rider from the lesson’s start, to its end. All this and yet, I know that this lesson will very likely be a one ‘n’ only.
The simple reason is that not everyone is ‘our people’. We all have our own goals.
This can be a hard lesson to learn but if we’re in the business of educating, learn it, we must. Everyone who is looking for a teacher is looking for something different. Most everyone who is teaching is offering similar information, with a unique delivery. A surprising number of people want to ride with a particular name and then, move on to ride with the next. Most of us just want to make the greatest strides in whatever time is availed us.
I’m a person who teaches little more than the basics. Over and over, again. I have spent my whole life with horses, polishing up fundamentals that I can remember first learning four, even five, decades ago. Some things that I pass along, I learned last week.
I’ve learned that maybe half of the people who call me and haul in for lessons, are finished after the first one. This used to bother me, until I realized that it was a thing. That the average beginning-to-intermediate rider craves going on to the higher levels quickly, while the advanced riders, naturally in the minority of people taking lessons, want to nail the basics until they become second nature. Until they become like breathing.
Until the fundamentals can be done with a maximum of feeling and a minimum of conscious thought.
Now, it’s true that the more advanced riders are generally always bringing on young or green horses. This keeps the same old, same old feeling ever fresh. When you are constantly in the realm of making the next good horse, there is very little time or opportunity to feel bored. I say, tired of doing the same little exercises? Show up in a strange arena on a spicy three-year-old!
Whenever we ride with a new teacher, there should be a lot of going back to basics. This means that the horse and rider who come ‘just to work on lead changes’ may well spend the entire hour working on rider position and body control. If this gets going in the right direction, we might spend time on improving bend, or relaxation of the horse, or acceptance of the bridle, or…
Often, their goal isn’t even on the menu that first day. It might be visited the next lesson later, or maybe—and this happened long ago, with my own teacher and a running fool of an off-track Thoroughbred—the next year!
Slowing things down isn’t a stalling tactic, meant to make your coach more money, nor is it usually an oversight. Those of us who teach this way tend to solve major problems with little fixes. We’re big on seeking the 1% improvement with each ride. One student, after being gently reminded of this, stopped dead in her tracks.
“You mean, I have to work on this, at least one hundred times?!” Surprisingly, she became a regular student.
I may ask you to spend a disappointing amount of time at the walk, just guiding the horse, shaping different parts of his body with your own. Maybe, we’ll seek sustained cantering without any contact whatsoever, until the horse learns how to handle his own body and speed control, without rider input. Until you learn to leave him alone. This fundamental step isn’t pretty, or graceful, and it has precious little to do with riding the horse ‘on the bit’.
When we’re peeling layers, it isn’t uncommon to have the feeling that we’re actually going backwards. Many times, things get a bit ugly before they get better.
As a naturally ‘feely’ rider, the geometry of riding in a school never fails to challenge me. Always trying to marry sensation with precision, I have never once schooled my horses and grown bored. Never once.
Long ago, I learned that the better my horse understands me, the better and safer we will be, out in the real world.
To my horse and me, this fundamental work represents the deposits in our joint account. We will draw upon them, time and again. I know, all too well, what happens should I make only withdrawals upon this same horse, for the sensitive personality who does nothing but mentally and physically demanding work, day after day, will soon start to come undone.
The longer we’ve ridden and the more we know—the more ‘expert’ we become, if we even dare breathe such a word—it seems the more we’ll crave revisiting our basics. The students who come back to me, year after year, tend to be those who have ridden for a long time, people who want to go back and make a study of their foundation. We ride, experiment, discuss. This is especially true with the same six or eight students who join me weekly to ride with our own trusted mentor. We know what’s coming. We hear his voice in our heads, before he speaks. We fine tune, we improve, we do it all again with the next young horse…
At first, riding is all about the destination. We want to arrive already, before we run out of time! By the end, we’re entirely immersed in the journey. Whether we’re opening a gate from the saddle, cantering to a lead change, or loading our horse in the trailer, it’s no longer enough for us that we can…
By going back to our basics, we can see to which point we are right and where, exactly, we begin to go wrong. Whatever our questions and answers, are we in full agreement, with full understanding? Are we simpatico? Are we correct? Are we soft?
📷 Ramblin’ Rose Creative.
