Episode 2: Leadership vs Getting Along

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SWS002.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill. This is Stacy Westfall podcast. Stacy's goal is simple to teach you to understand why horses do what they do, as well as the action steps for creating clear, confident communication with your horses.

Hello, I'm Stacey Westfall, and I teach people how to understand, enjoy and successfully train their own horses in this first season of the podcast.

I'm going to be discussing issues that frequently affect the riders thinking. One of the tools that I use to help people understand the issues they're having is something that I created and I call the Foursquare model. It's a really simple tool for breaking down complex problems into four separate quadrants. The model is actually pretty simple. You can draw on a napkin and you would simply draw a plus sign and then you would put the rider's mind in one quadrant. The rider's body in another quadrant, the horse's mind in another and the horse's body in another. I'll have an illustration of this in the show, notes for this podcast, which you can find over at Stacee Westfall dot com. In this season of the podcast, I'm focusing on the writer's mind. In today's episode, I'm specifically discussing the idea of leadership and how it's different from simply getting along and how this idea impacts the way that we show up with our horses. I think the interesting thing about this topic is how it walks the line between the mental idea of leadership versus the physical execution. And again, in this season of the podcast, I'm sticking to the mental side of the discussion, even though in a subject like this, I'm really tempted to bring in the physical execution. Don't worry. That'll come up in another episode, another season. As you can see, this is gonna be why I'm breaking this down, using the Foursquare model so that we can get clarity in each quadrant before we put it altogether and use it.

So let's start out with two different things that we're just going to accept for this conversation. And one is that horses are hardwired to look for a leader and that if they don't find a leader, they're compelled to step into that role. And have a little side note here in my notes that says even if that's not their natural place, that could be a whole podcast of its own. But what I mean there is that if horses were running in large herds, there would be natural leaders and natural followers. And it is possible to end up with a group of horses that are more naturally followers. But since there's no leader, you can actually end up with a horse in the role of a leadership that's not as comfortable being there. Again, whole nother subject will hold off on that. So again, horses are hardwired to look for a leader. If they don't find one, they feel compelled to step into the role. And then this is the big one for this episode. Some horses are more mild mannered and some are more strong-willed. I would ask you to simply accept those two things for the sake of this conversation and then reflect back and make your own decisions.

When the podcast is over. So Jane wrote to me and she says, Hi, Stacy. I love the troubleshooting chart. And my problem is, number three, my Horsfall follow and even sometimes lead down the trail. But when it comes to going around a ring, he just stands. It's like he knows what I want, but he just doesn't want to go. Your solution is to make him go longer. If I can't go one lap, how can I get 10? And Jane is actually referring to a free download that I have on the Web site. And it was just a real quick chart with ideas and things to get questions and conversations and and thoughts flowing, which obviously it did, which is why Jane wrote to me. And what I think is really interesting about this is I specifically I'm looking at the line that says it's like he knows what I want, but he just doesn't want to go. There was a lot more in there and we can unpack more. But let's keep going for just a minute. Let's think about this. Natural horsemanship added the idea that horses had emotions and that if we recognize these emotions, we can then use them to change the horse. So it was a big shift from decades ago when people were using physical force and sometimes even abusive training techniques. So in a great way, natural horsemanship has added this idea that the horses have emotions.

We can recognize these emotions and we can use them to change the horse and interact with the horse. But if I were going to say that, there might have been a negative effect. It's that some people have used this idea as a reason to. Just what I'm gonna say, I'm doing air quotes here. You can't see me to just get along. And I actually am not blaming natural horsemanship because I truly believe there have always been people who believed that just getting along was gonna be a good idea. But I think nowadays, sometimes it's more wrapped up in the term natural horsemanship. They almost use that to justify it. And the thing that air quotes again, getting along really lacks is leadership. And we already said horses are hardwired for leadership and they exist in herds where they have that structure and the structure includes leaders. So then when we break this into smaller herds, meaning you and your horse, then it brings up some different issues. And leadership is is one of those things. And I want to discuss for just a minute the term getting along. There's nothing wrong with wanting a relationship with your horse. I love that. I have something that feels like you could. Some people might label it a friendship, a relationship. This interaction to me, what I always want to make sure comes across clearly is that there is always an element of leadership for me in the relationship with my horse, even though I absolutely fully want to know them as who they are.

I don't think those things contradict as much as people think they might. I think sometimes people think of leadership more in the role of bullying. But for me, leadership is more about actually taking the responsibility inside that relationship. So I am responsible for the horse's safety. I'm responsible for being able to predict and see things coming ahead of time. I don't expect my horse to understand the natural workings of a highway or other things. So I am the leader because I'm ultimately the one that's in charge. And if something were to happen, I'm betting 100 percent of you guys listening would feel like you were responsible if the horse got hurt. And that's because in that way you're taking leadership. But I think what happens is in other ways, people are less sure of themselves because a lot of times people are in this constant learning process. I'm more confident because I've learned more. And so it makes it easier for me to be a clear leader across the board. Let's pull this back in. I'm starting to talk a lot of theory and I want to make sure you guys are are following me. So Amy wrote in to me and she said, I have a new horse that I made sure I rode before I purchased.

And he did fine. I took someone that was very experienced with me when I looked at him. I even took him on a trail ride. He was fine on the 20 minute trail ride. I was told he came from Texas and was on a ranch there. The problem is he's dead. Any type of pressure, including the whip, he will lead and load nicely beside me, but doesn't want to move. When asked to go forward, either undersell or on the ground to lunge literally just stands there as if the whip is not even touching him. I can't bring myself to use the whip on him anymore. What's going on? I don't want to sell him, and I don't want to have him keep going from home to home. Is there any way to fix this? So let's slow down and look at this just a little bit. Again, I said right off the bat this subject of leadership was going to be one of the trickier ones to untangle the mental side from the physical side, because as you can see, they're all wrapped up in here. So let's pull just a few lines out of here. I can't bring myself to use the whip on him anymore. What's going on? So this is this is her stating this is the mental, emotional thing that she's going through right now.

And this would be so much easier if I were with them and could see the horse because this is where it becomes a gray zone. First of all, when you've got horses exhibiting this type of stuff, you always want to make sure that you've had a thorough vet check and made sure there's nothing physical going on. Once they've been cleared of physical, which very many of them are, then you want to look. And you want to see what else could be going on here. So one thing this shows up in the beginning of this is he did fine in the beginning. Someone who was experienced looked at him. They said he did fine. She wrote him personally on the 20 minute trail ride. And I'm gonna guess that during that trail ride, he was moving forward. So something has shifted between this original ride and what she's experiencing now in for me, one of the most common things I find is this is what I will call grandmama's rules and I call it grandmoms rules, because that way we can all kind of say the inside human relationships. Very little kids can quickly understand that there's a difference between what certain adults will allow and if very young children can identify that Grandmama's rules are different than mom and dad's rules. And we're just making this up that when you walk into grandma's house.

Her rules apply. And if grandma says you can jump on the bed, even the mom and dad don't. Typically, Grandma Trump's mom and dad in this example not saying this happens everywhere. Then the first things that kids do is they get this big smile on their face and they run and go do what they can't do. And they're not being mean. They're just using what's right there in front of them. And I think often this happens with our horses and it kind of lightens it up if you realize that little kids do the same thing, too. So let's just stick into the mental side of this before we work. Remember, we're trying to avoid this physical side of it. So I have actually seen people at clinics with me where I was asking them to tap on the cannon bone using a stick and string to ask the horse to back up. And one horse and handler stands out in my mind because it was very early on when I was first teaching. And this woman was participating. And I was walking around the group and she was tapping on the horse's leg. And she said to me, I feel terribly guilty. This feels like I'm hurting my horse. And everything in her body language confirmed that that's what she was experiencing. And I looked at the situation and I said, DCO, his head is down and his eyes are mostly shut and he's mostly asleep before you reach pain.

He's going to open his eyes and be awake. And so what was happening in that situation was that the guilt and fear that this handler was feeling about tapping on the cannon bone was actually covering up the fact that the body language of the horse was not reporting that this was a painful thing. And I showed her that she could tap on her own shins and that it wasn't a painful thing and it was very easy to ignore. And that's where one level of this and there could be many levels. Again, we're trying to break this down. One level of this can be that guilt can affect riders and what they're willing to ask for. And again, back in the beginning, we talked about natural horsemanship, giving us the language and the tools to admit that the horses have different emotional states and that we can use those. But I think what we need to acknowledge is that if the horse is state of mind is going to impact the training a lot. We're going to need to also admit that some of them are more strong willed. And sometimes with strong willed, you will get horses that are more willing to question what would fall inside the normal range of horses like normal horse would move if you were tapping like this.

And this one is saying, nope. What are you going to do about this? And so I just want to plant the seed that this is something you need to consider, which is why when you have the experienced person there, then that experience, person's presence can sometimes be enough for the horse to be like, yeah, this other set of rules is is in play. But what I want you to be thinking of is when you're approaching the idea of leadership, what is your first gut reaction when I say you need to be a better leader? And how do you show up with your horse? Do you show up feeling guilty when you ask your horse to do something? Where? Is the line I have got a line of. How much a workhorse, how hard I work a horse and that is in my head, that is in my body, that is in what I'm willing to do. But my line is probably higher then than quite a few people that own maybe just one horse and haven't really pushed that hard. And this is no different than athletes. You know, athletes push their bodies harder than most people do. And that's just because they've got more experience there. So first, do you feel guilty when you ask your horse to do something? Another question.

Do you take all of the responsibility without leaving any for the horse? So is the rider trying too hard to be perfect? So, you know, is that rider trying so hard that they're actually questioning their own part in this and and not giving that horse any responsibility? So in this example, I don't know if a bear came after this horse, is it going to move and get out of the way or is it going to stand there and be eaten? Like, is there some kind of a line where the horse has some responsibility, just some food for thought? And then maybe you're listening to this podcast and you actually have really good leadership skills with the horses, but maybe you're going to start something new. Maybe you've been thinking about becoming a horse trainer or something like that and you now realize that you don't feel like a leader when you're talking to these prospective horse owners that are going to send you horses and training because there's some kind of lack of clarity in leadership there. And so these are just kind of interesting thoughts to wrap around some of the interactions that you're having with the horses. I'm a big believer in writing things down. So your challenge for this week is to write down one place where you have really great leadership skills and one place where you need to improve.

And this is an exercise you can do in two minutes if you want to share it so that you have some accountability.

Then go to the show notes for this episode at Stacy Westfall dot com and leave them there. And I promise we will come back around and talk about the physical aspect of this in more detail when we get to that season. Thanks for listening.

If you enjoy listening to Stacie's podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall dot com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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