Working with Tendencies

Ah yes, there is my gifted, gorgeous and most perfect Breeze – Who makes having a horse look like a job done with ease.

Working with your horse’s natural tendency will get the best results. If you try to do upper level dressage with a cow pony, chances are you aren’t going to win many Olympic medals. Can the pony learn dressage? Probably, to some degree and may even get pretty good at it. He will do much better and be much happier doing a job that he has a natural talent for and you will be a whole lot less frustrated. When we ask our horses to do something that is new or foreign to them, they need our patience and encouragement all the more. Getting upset and punishing wrong moves is not the best way to teach correct moves and certainly kills the want-to-please incentive for the horse. It is not perfection you are striving for at first, it is the try that needs to be recognized and encouraged.

I was reminded of this basic principal this morning when I attended my 5 year old grandson’s very first baseball/T-ball game. The players were all decked out with a new uniforms, shoes, helmets, bats and gloves.  They all looked the part but when the game started it quickly became obvious they were not all naturals. Some had the confidence but lacked skill. It was obvious that with some work, they would be great players some day if they chose to.  There were the more advanced players who could already hit and knew the basics. They probably had sports-minded family or at least had a lot of extra help. They were the naturally good players. It looked effortless and they were truly having fun. There was a combination of these and then there were the few who just did not want to be there. Scared, tearful, reluctant little guys who had to be pushed out to the diamond when it was their turn. One particular little boy who comes to mind that I watched this morning and there was no miraculous transformation when he got up to bat. He did horribly. He swung at the ball with barely enough enthusiasm to knock it off the T-stand. He just wanted to get it over with and be done with it. Of course, the parents were shouting and wanting him to get fired up and show everybody he had the stuff. Didn’t happen. The child had absolutely no desire to play baseball and therefore had even less tendency to do well at it. He left the field feeling even more dejected after being tagged at first because he wouldn’t run to the base. This brought to mind a book I read last winter about a guy who lived to rope cattle. His whole male side of the family were hard-nosed horse trainers who specialized in getting horses ready to run cows. Then one day, he saw the horse of his dreams and just knew this was the one with the natural talent he had always wanted to excel at the rodeos. Problem was that his horse didn’t share the same dream. He didn’t like cows and hated his job. Hours, weeks, months and years were spent practicing to perfect the horse. He had the looks, he had the speed, he had the breeding – he did not have the tendency. Could he do the job? Of course, and he could do it extremely well. He proved it to him and ran perfectly  at one show winning the highest awards that day. He ran like a well-tuned machine with innate instincts. It was like a miracle. Never before that day and never after. The cowboy got so frustrated that he actually hauled off and kicked the horse when he couldn’t get a repeat performance out of him. He didn’t know how to make that horse want it as badly as he did. That was all I could think of today as I watched that game and saw how it will be for some of those kids and parents I watched today.  Some of them will be great – the ones that want to be. Some will be pretty good – the ones that are doing it for fun or that practice enough. Some will never be good ball players and never want to be. They will have other desires and talents to work with. Same with your horse. Whatever it is you want to do with your horse, keep in mind that to get the best results, it has to be good for him too and don’t try squeezing a square peg into a round hole.

Galloping on Guilty

 

 

You Are My Sunshine

Now if the forecast is not fairly decent and the temperature promising to be mild – I find myself making up excuses and reasons, painfully aware that I am no longer a child

It is the middle of February and it has been rainy and gloomy for the past few weeks here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia. I feel like I have been trudging in mud for months. Suddenly, here comes the sun in all its glory. My grandson paid me a visit and helped me feed the horses. His job was to break the ice up in the water tanks which he tackled with all the might a 3 1/2 year old with a big stick possesses. Then our attention turned to a big patch of newly blooming daffodils in the pasture. It was such a wonderful and uplifting sight and drew us in like a magnet to steel. Here, in the middle of winter with ice cycles hanging from the eaves, was this incredible vision of new tender life pushing up to feel the sun on their faces. Sunshine was just what we all needed along with the promise of spring. As we began gathering some blooms, my colt couldn’t resist and joined in the fun. I watched as Wyatt picked the flowers with Eddy-O looking over his shoulder and occasionally sniffing the flowers.

Eddy-O and Wyatt enjoying the sunny day

I thought about how lucky I am to have these times. The things I love the best – my farm, my grandson, my horses, nature and warm sunshine – all wrapped up in a few chosen moments that would probably go unnoticed to most people and surely forgotten once they have passed. It really is true that we miss the best times when we don’t stop to smell the flowers. It is also true that it is not the biggest events that shape our lives. It is the small, everyday occurences that we choose to acknowledge or pass up that determines our happiness. One of my favorite sayings is  “our lives are not defined by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away”. This was one of those moments. Nothing earth-shattering or eventful – just pure joy in the moment that made my heart sing. As wonderful as the sun made us feel that day, I know that my sunshine did not manifest due to the appearance of that heavenly orb of burning gases. My sunshine was already here in my heart.