Finding the Magic in Horse Training

Narnia is all about magic. Those of you that know me well know that you will almost always get a unicorn emoji in a text from me. I have calendars with unicorns and fairies hanging in the tack room of the barn. My sister even bought me a pair of unicorn underwear this week as a gift. Maybe it’s my Celtic heritage, maybe it’s my love of fantasy stories from my childhood like the Chronicles of Narnia, or perhaps it’s just the need to find a little magic in a world that has a lot of tragedy and sadness. I think in reality it’s probably a combination of these things that keep me looking for a little magic and fantasy in the routine of daily life. I will continue to refer to the magic of Narnia, our talking creatures, and our unicorns as I do believe everyone needs a little mystery in their life, even if it’s just in our imagination.  It keeps things interesting.

 Despite my love of the mythical and enchanted, one thing you will never hear me refer to is the mystery of training.   In fact, I do my best to demystify it. Although I love the photos from some of the accounts I follow on Instagram of a good fantasy shoot where horses and humans are dressed in beautiful medieval garb, you won’t see those from me. Well, I’m not saying never – no one has actually given me the opportunity and quite frankly, I can’t see myself having the time or desire to get all dressed up in costume. In all seriousness though, I do post a lot of photos and videos from my daily work with the horses on my Facebook and Instagram accounts, but they are just that, me in my daily training clothes, in real time, and are often questionable video quality as they are taken from my phone sitting on a tripod or from the security camera footage in the indoor.  That being said, they are real examples of a work in progress and how I work, train, and interact with my ‘unicorns’ here.  I post them to give people insights into the training process.

 I believe there shouldn’t be any mystery to horse training, especially liberty work, which is often made out to be quite mysterious. A lot of it is a bit smoke and mirrors and performance based for my taste. Good horsemanship requires you to take the time to study theory, understand correct posture and biomechanics, and know how the exercises you are training can benefit your horse. It requires you to have a knowledge of training principles and the science behind it.  After you’ve done your studies, all the knowledge in the world won’t make you a good horse trainer.  It is the experience with the horses that will ultimately teach you the most, which is why having my own horses to develop and work with is so important to my own education and progression. It is one thing to be able to help a student in a lesson with the horse they have that day and another to be able to continue on a path of progress, develop a relationship, learn how to deal with the ups and down and challenges of training with a single animal.  This is what is so important to me and I believe essential to the lifelong relationship that I embark on with my horses that I value so much as part of the learning process and eternal commitment to the art of horsemanship.   

 One of the biggest insights for me in training in recent years has been to be able to recognize and reward the progress along the way. We so often have the end goal in mind. For example if I want to train my horse to do a half pass in work in hand, I cannot just take a horse out of the field that I’ve never worked with and expect to have that happen in one session. It may takes weeks, months, or even years to fully teach an exercise depending on the individual horse. People so often have the end goal in mind, which is important as you need to have clarity in what you are looking for, but more importantly you need to be able to recognize the achievement along the way and break things down into easy to understand steps for your horse. Once I stopped trying to achieve unrealistic goals in a single session, my horses began to learn much more easily. They also became relaxed and more willing because things made sense. Neither of us were becoming frustrated with the training process.  That’s the thing, once you start really understand the science behind training, the anatomy and biomechanics of a horse and what healthy movement and posture can achieve, and then apply it to the natural progression of dressage exercises, everything starts to fall into place. It takes time, energy, patience, and experience. It takes making mistakes and failing and having to change your approach. The more you learn to love the process and know that the journey of good horsemanship is a lifelong quest, the better things will become and that is where the magic happens! The art, the relationship, the humbling experience of learning to become a better person both physically and emotionally, that’s the magic in it all. The science and theory behind good training should never be magical or mystical. When I study and follow trainers that I respect, I realize that every trainer, professional or amateur, will have his/her own style. The slight nuances in communication and his/her own past experiences and knowledge that is brought to the table creates diversity, art, and the magic I see in the horse world.

 I taught high school biology for 8 years and I had a student ask me once if nature lost its magic for me once I began to understand the science behind it.  Such a brilliant question! For me, it was just the opposite. The more I understand evolution, DNA, and all the amazing forces that nature has at work, the more I realize how truly awe-inspiring life is. It’s the same with horse training. The deeper my knowledge gets, the broader my experience is, the more students that push me to question things, the more I hunger to learn and improve because I realize how much more there is to learn and how little I truly know in the scheme of things. It might sound crazy, but horses have the ability to push us to become better people. They are so in tune with energy and they live so much in the present that they can have a deep wisdom if we open our hearts and mind to what they can show us. So my advice to you all is to study theory and seek to understand things before you go into the arena with your horse. Work with and study trainers that you truly respect, that empower you to be a better person for yourself and your horse. Learn from people that share their experience and wisdom with you, and finally let the magic happen by building a solid relationship with your horse through experience and dialogue. Always reflect on what went well and what didn’t. See the power in physically transforming a horse through good gymnastic work, but also the mental and emotional transformation that can happen when you give your horse a voice and engage in the dialogue of training. Then the magic starts to happen. In the words of Roaold Dahl “And above all, watch with glittering eyes, the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”