Episode 221: How hard is it to interchange disciplines and is that frustrating for a horse?

Episode 221_ How hard is it to interchange disciplines and is that frustrating for a horse_.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 221_ How hard is it to interchange disciplines and is that frustrating for a horse_.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Stacy Westfall:
And the reason I'm asking that isn't because I want to disregard the horse's experience. It's because we can't disregard your experience. Let's look at it a different way. If it's really challenging for you, your horse won't be able to be successful. So if we pick the way that's going to be more successful for you, we're actually going to increase the horse's success level. Because if you're the pilot and your mind is not clear doing one of these methods, you're going to cause a negative outcome for both of you.

Announcer:
Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill. This is the 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.

Stacy Westfall:
Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall, and in this season of the podcast, I'm discussing lessons that can be learned through showing horses. Here is a question from a listener.

Caller:
Hi, Stacy. My name's Heidi and I sure love the work you put out into the world. In fact, I love it so much that I tracked you down at The Horseman's Mission and told you just how much I appreciate it. So thank you so much for all that you put out. I do have a question for you. I have a four-year-old quarter horse that's new to me for about three months now. He comes out of the reining world and has been shown that way and trained that way. And I've had so much fun learning with a trainer and right alongside my horse how to just do the maneuvers and ride him effectively. I do want to introduce him to what my background is, which is combined training and particularly dressage. I think it'd be really fun to work together in that arena. I wanted to ask you, since you've taken your horses in different directions, in different disciplines, how hard is it to interchange disciplines and is that frustrating for a horse? Is that something that can be done or should I just spend one season on one discipline and move on to another discipline at another time? Is it something I can interchange weekly or just should I hold off and do that with different seasons? Also, I would like to ask about the bits. I've never put a snaffle in this bit–in this horse's mouth, but was curious about interchanging bits. So going from a shank bit to a snaffle back to a shank. Would love to know your thoughts on all that. Again, thank you so much for all that you do.

Stacy Westfall:
Thanks for the question, Heidi. And first, I'm just really glad to hear that you have been having so much fun learning about this horse and from this horse. What I love about this question is that it highlights the ability to develop horses in different areas. That's what different disciplines are. So when we think about the two disciplines that were mentioned here, dressage and reining, what that represents is different ways that a horse can be developed through training to use their body in different ways. So the way that I like to look at it is that there are going to be similarities between the disciplines and there are going to be differences. Now I've got a couple of different lenses you can look at this through while you're listening to the podcast. So pick your favorite one. One way that I like to envision what I'm about to talk about is that it's like is like a tree trunk. And so that tree trunk is made up of those foundational or fundamental things that horses learn that they share in common. And then those branches become some of the more nuanced things. And depending on how far you go in a specific discipline, you can get more and more and more detail. But for the vast majority of disciplines, there is that fundamental tree trunk philosophy, which is actually, I think, why it's so fun to watch some of those challenges. You can see on YouTube or different videos where you'll see riders trading horses and you'll see a dressage rider getting on a reining horse and a reining trainer getting on a dressage horse. And they both just start riding around and you can see the–you can see the challenges that the rider has in operating that different system. And it's, it's kind of fun to see it. But you can also see that a lot of it works even just in that kind of cold turkey situation like that. So just in your mind, picture that there is this foundation that is the same and then the details can start to be a little bit more nuanced.

Stacy Westfall:
If that one doesn't really resonate with you for a way to look at this, a lens to look at this through. Another way that I'll describe it a lot of times is it's a little bit like speaking different languages because language will have similarities. Sometimes you can look at it like an accent. I'm originally from Maine, so I used to have a very strong Maine accent that sometimes made me a little difficult for people to understand. Or maybe you'll go to a different part of the country. And even though we're talking the same language, just the accent alone can make it feel different. Or sometimes it's truly a different language. No matter which way I look at it, I still end up finding that there's a lot of similarities, even in the language. It's so fun because I just got back from Mexico and even then there can be a language challenge there, but then you still have all the body language that goes with it. And there's all kinds of different ways that you can look at the training of a dressage horse versus a reining horse having very similar overlapping things and then things that are different. And I'm going to dive into this as I answer Heidi's question. Before I go specifically into the question, just one more thing on the language. Keep in mind that as I say this. You could actually make an argument that you could find one trainer in a discipline, dressage, or reining and another trainer in the same discipline. We could even go that they're may be competitive at the same level in that discipline, and they could still have significantly different styles of language. What's interesting to me is that that's where the tree trunk kind of analogy works a little bit better for me at times, because although the language might be described differently, if the communication to the horse ends up with, hey, they can move the body in this way or that way, it's an interesting thing to think that maybe the language isn't a barrier. Maybe at the end of the day, the certain movements can be trained in multiple different ways. So one more layer for you to think about while you're pondering this.

Stacy Westfall:
But back to Heidi's specific question. So, Heidi, when I listen to this, the challenges that I see for you is that you mentioned you've had the horse for a short amount of time. And that means to me, there's a–an element of you two getting to know each other. So that's a little bit different than if, you know, you've had the horse and been training it from the first ride all the way up through. Not good, not bad. Just that's one of the challenges on the table. You two getting to know each other. The reason I bring it up is because it can bring up different questions or doubts in your mind that would be different than, say, me, who has been training Willow from the first ride all the way through. So Willow and I didn't have that getting-to-know-each-other element when I started switching disciplines. And the only reason that matters is because it was easy for me to see what parts were different questions versus which parts were just like her normal type of questions. You're not going to have that same exact experience. That's okay. I'm just putting it on the table as a challenge. Another challenge I see, reining is new to you but the horse does have experience there, so it's just an interesting thing to observe. Dressage would be new to the horse, but dressage is familiar to you. So just laying those out there on the table as some of the challenges that I see, which is interesting because it goes back to the rider's mind, the rider's body, the horse's mind, the horse's body. Let me run it through that filter for a second. Your mind understands dressage at a higher level than it does reining, which will also influence the way that your body affects the horse when you're riding. So you've probably already noticed that during your lessons with the trainer that you're riding with learning reining, you'll have been learning about how to use your body in a different way. Well, if you reverse and take the horse into dressage, a similar thing is going to happen. It's not so much that it's a problem, but the horse's mind is going to be thinking in a particular way. So let's just use the–the stop versus the halt as an example. The horse's mind will be thinking as a reiner would about how to execute a stop. And so when you start working on a halt without the slide, then what will happen is the horse's body will just be kind of naturally going to what it was trained. Again, this is not a problem. It just explains why the horse's body would be doing that. So as we're looking at the challenges, you two getting to know each other, you being new to reining, him being new to dressage, it's basically just another way to say, hey, when you run into one of these challenges, look down through. Because when you ride the halt and the horse offers the slide, which dressage judges will write, abrupt with slight loss of balance, in case you're wondering what they do to your score there. If that happens when the horse has that little thing right there where it kind of offers the slide, how you handle it will depend on how you're thinking about it. If you're thinking about it as a huge problem, then you're probably going to have a different reaction than if you're kind of laughing about, okay, I can see where I rode that a little bit differently. I can see where I could have cued that differently. How am I going to cue this horse to know the difference between a trot to a halt without sliding in the hind end versus a trot to a halt that does involve sliding in the hind end? And that's what it's going to come down to is you becoming nuanced enough to be able to communicate that level of difference to the horse.

Stacy Westfall:
Which takes me into one of the questions that you asked, which was, how hard is it to interchange disciplines? Again, I'm going to go back to, we've got the rider and we've got the horse. So how challenging will it be for you and how challenging it will it be for him? What I know is that it felt more challenging for me than it did for Willow, which I found completely fascinating. The reason I'm able to segment it like that with confidence is because it was more challenging for me to remember the nuanced difference, because that meant that I had to override my muscle memory for, let's just continue on with riding that halt. My muscle memory for riding the halt had a reining foundation to it. So the way that my muscle memory, my habits wanted to ride a stop or a halt involved a particular way that I rotated my hips and a particular way that I release my legs. So if I was not consciously thinking about it, then my body would unconsciously default to the reining mode. So it put a different level of accountability on me to remember the cue system. What was so fascinating about doing this with multiple horses was that it wasn't challenging for the horse in the same way because the horse, once they understood when Stacy rides like this, it means this. And when Stacy rides like this, it means this other thing, once the horse knew that it was 100% up to me to just cue correctly. Now, that brings us back to the other layer. That's going to be a piece of the conversation, which is training that other layer so similar to your horse. Willow had already been trained to do the sliding stop, so she had a little bit more muscle memory, especially in the lope or the canter to slide in the hind end. And so that meant that because that was an area of strength for her, because it had been trained like that. So again, it was part of her habit muscle because it was part of her habit and part of my habit. It made it something that was easy to accidentally trigger, if I want to put it that way. It wasn't really an accident. It was just like an unconscious triggering. And because it didn't take much to trigger it in her, it meant that I needed to be very highly accountable on my end. So let's just say that your horse is a trainer and you want to start teaching it to do a trot to halt. That doesn't involve the sliding in the hind end. As you're adding that other layer of training in there, there will be questions that the horse will ask. There will be moments when you'll be beginning to cue the stop and because you'll feel the horse really commit to a reining style stop that you'll be maybe adding a little bit of a gas pedal, a little bit of squeeze rocking that horse a little bit forward, basically showing them when I do this, it doesn't mean, you know, really stop hard and consider going into backup. It actually means come down and continue with the so the hind end stops in the front and walks a little bit forward. And we don't really get that backwards motion that sometimes the trainers will even go to because that was how they were trained to do the sliding stop. So as you're modifying this system, the way that you handle the questions will become the way that your horse understands you better.

Stacy Westfall:
So we've got training system when we talk about interchanging disciplines, we've got the training system is a challenge and then the ability of the horse inside of that new discipline. So the training system, let me go a layer deeper there. When I said a minute ago, Willow knew me from the first ride all the way through. The system I was using was one that was teaching her to be very responsive and thinking her way through cue systems. That is a different training style or system then some performance trainers might have, which might be considered more reactive. So if a horse is trained with a more reactive style of training where the cue is given and the horse is sort of just reacting to something versus thinking their way through it. That horse is going to be a little bit different when you are introducing a new discipline because they're going to be jumping to the known answer versus slowing down and thinking their way through it. This again to me isn't necessarily a discipline-specific challenge, because I see this challenge as more of just like a training style. I can look at general trainers or people that are, you know, more just in like a trail riding situation like that. But they're training their horses to respond or react to their cues. Literally, the difference is like, do we have a horse that will slow down and think its way through? Or does the horse get rushy and reactive? If you've listened to the podcast for a long time, you'll know that I talk about horses can naturally be a little bit more reactive or a little bit more dull. But training styles themselves can also work off from basically pinging off reactions in a horse. And so that's what it feels like to me. If a horse is being trained in a reactive way, the horse is just kind of like pinging this idea off and having a reaction and getting rewarded for that and in that you have to think that in that style we've got the horse's body is responding in a certain way and the horse's brain is responding in a certain way. So if we label it reactive, then a lot of times maybe we're getting a big reaction from the horse. So the horse is, you know, going from a halt to a canter, but it can be done in a very reactive way or it can be done in a very responsive way, but the horse is thinking its way through there. So I went into that because depending on the training system or style that the horse was trained in as a reiner will influence a little bit of the way that it receives the new layers of training that you're going to apply. However, having said all of that, basically all I'm doing is saying if you run into spots where it seems like the horse is having a reaction to a cue. And you want to modify that, all you're going to be doing is picking up right now and beginning to teach that horse to become more responsive, thinking their way through the training. So when I look at how hard is it to change or interchange disciplines. The discipline itself to me doesn't actually indicate whether this training system change is going to be a problem. It just is saying if a horse has been trained in a reactive style, that one is a little bit harder to modify because as I've said, the horse isn't thinking their way through. If they've been trained in a way that they've been doing little mind puzzles and they've been participating as active thinking participants in the learning process, those horses can transition over to other disciplines much easier because they have learned how to learn, which is a podcast I did a very long time ago. So when I look at the ability to interchange disciplines, we've got the challenge of the training system or style that the horse was trained in. And then we also have that horse's ability or talent in the new discipline. That actually could go for you, too.

Stacy Westfall:
So in a very similar way that I said I had challenges going into dressage you could almost look at it like I had a certain talent for reining, and then I was going to have to develop a talent for dressage. And that's just to say that I had already developed myself as a Western rider riding in reining. And so depending on how high up I wanted to go in a different discipline just continue to use dressage. Then there's going to be a certain talent for that discipline, if we want to phrase it like that. And this really shows up in kind of the horse's ability inside of that discipline. So let's look at Willow for a minute. My little pony Willow is 14 hands. So she's super cute, but she's also little and stocky and short legs. So not the typical dressage horse build. So her physical ability, her talent inside of that discipline was limited. And so the judges actually have a box on the test where they can actually mark the score, the horse's gait. And so, Willow, consistently of my three horses of Willow, Gabby, and Presto consistently scored the lowest of the three, despite the fact that I'm riding all of them. So it's just purely her talent or lack of flexibility that–that actually is kind of a limiting factor there, which is completely different than the training system as far as training goes. She's got a very high level of training and she's doing the absolute best she can. The only reason I bring up ability under the category of how hard is it to interchange disciplines that if you find yourself in a situation like I did with a horse like Willow, where I know she was giving me everything she had with her head and her heart, but her talent just wasn't there. When you think about how hard is it to interchange disciplines? Willow was giving me everything she could, and she's still going to hit a limit because of a talent or lack of talent in that area. So she may have a higher level of talent and a different discipline. That, to me, doesn't actually indicate whether it's hard for the horse to interchange disciplines. To me, that's actually more. Is it going to be hard on you to go back into a discipline that you know fairly well? Let's say dressage is something you know pretty well if you were performing at a certain level before. Are you going to hold yourself to that same level with this horse who may not be as talented as a horse that was more specifically built for that? So I hope you can see how answering the question of how hard is it to interchange disciplines is actually going to come down to several moving pieces, and one of them will actually be your flexibility in how you show up in the arena with this horse that's new to a discipline like dressage.

Stacy Westfall:
Another question you asked was, Would it be better to spend one season on one discipline and then move into another discipline at another time? Or is it something that you can interchange weekly? And I'm going to answer this from two different angles. The first one is the weekly angle. I definitely recommend that you are looking at both of the disciplines in every ride, even if you're only riding one discipline. So let me take that a layer deeper. Let's say you're taking lessons on this horse from the reining trainer that you mentioned while you're doing your reining movements and while you're practicing, maybe while you're warming up and doing different things, look for the things that are similar. Because the more things you can see that are similar, that are like that tree trunk, when I talked at the beginning of the podcast about there being base things that are going to be shared in the same, the more of those layers that you can see that are shared and interchangeable, that will help you when you want to be able to ride both disciplines. Now, spending one season on one discipline versus spending a little bit of time in one discipline and a little bit of time in another. Let's just pretend both were going to end up at the same place a year from now. Which one would you prefer? And what I mean by that is. If you were going to play with reining and then also be, you know, spending some time playing around with lower level dressage and then taking another lesson in reining. If you were going back and forth between the two on a regular basis versus going all in on one and then all in on another. Which one of those fits you better? And the reason I'm asking that isn't because I want to disregard the horse's experience. It's because we can't disregard your experience. We need to know which fits your mentality better. Some people enjoy switching back and forth because of the way that it makes their brain think, and other people would be driven crazy by that. So study yourself a little bit to figure out which one is going to work better for you. Let's look at it a different way. If it's really challenging for you, your horse won't be able to be successful. So if we pick the way that's going to be more successful for you, we're actually going to increase the horse's success level. Because if you're the pilot and your mind is not clear doing one of these methods, you're going to cause a negative outcome for both of you. Having said that, a lot of this depends on how high up you want to go. So let's say you were going to show in a Green Reiner class this year and Intro Level dressage. What's interesting about that, when you start to get much more specific, is Intro Level dressage is going to be all walk/trot, which is nothing that happens in reining. So in a way you can see where you could begin to show in both disciplines with virtually no contradiction at all. Meaning as a reiner, he's going to lope into the arena and be doing the reining things and in the dressage, he's going to trot into the arena and be doing the different things. So there's actually more separation than you might think on the surface. So which one would work better for your brain? Do you want to be scheduling yourself to be competing in both this year, or do you want to focus on one discipline?

Stacy Westfall:
Now back to something I said earlier, which is, if I'm looking at it as layers, I want you always looking at while you're doing your warm-up, while you're walking, while you're trotting, looking for the things that do feel like dressage to you. Looking for the ways that you can see the overlap, at least at an intro dressage level. Where the challenge comes on is if people start trying to compare a very high-level reiner and a very high-level dressage horse. Because two things happen there. It takes you away from looking at the foundation of both and it also starts to highlight some of the bigger differences between the two disciplines. So keep that in mind when you are riding that if you were comparing both of these disciplines at a much lower level, are you then able to see more of the overlapping layers? Another part of your question was, is this going to be frustrating for the horse? And I actually love this question because it makes me want to ask the question, why would it be frustrating for the horse? And if you really stop and think about the answer to that question. On one hand, they really don't care at all. What I mean by that is that if I take a horse that has no talent at all for a specific discipline, let's use my sixteen plus hand horse Presto and reining. If I took him into a reining class, he wouldn't care at all that he's completely out of place at a reining show. They literally don't even make sliding shoes that would fit his hooves. So he wouldn't care at all. He wouldn't be frustrated. How could that be untrue? If I want to push on that a little bit. Maybe we could argue he could be frustrated if I tried to make him score as high as a horse that was talented. So if you look at it like that, Presto wouldn't care if I was switching disciplines, but he would care how I treated him in doing it. If I want to push around a little bit more on the idea, could it be frustrating for a horse? I actually remember after I had been showing Willow for quite a while in dressage, I took her in to show her in reining for the first time because although I had trained her as a reiner before going to dressage, I showed her in dressage before showing her in reining. So the way that I would describe the experience for her in that was not frustrating. But I do think it was a little bit surprising. What I mean by that is the first reining class I signed her up for actually required me to trot to the middle, halt, and then spin. And because I had done so many trot to the middle, halt, and then do a dressage pattern, and on the video it's very funny because I trot to the middle and she stops from the trot like a little dressage horse. Then I cued her to spin. That was shocking to her because that had never happened before whenever we had trotted into the middle. So in that way, there was a little surprise and you could kind of see it on her face because she was like, What? I was totally prepared to trot out of this. That's what we normally do. And there was a little moment of surprise. And then we were right back into just like she rides at home. So I think that there can be different things for the horse that may be surprising because you're doing a different pattern or you're cueing different things, like if the horse has been shown a lot in reining, going into the arena and trotting an entire test is maybe going to be a little bit surprising. But as far as frustrating, I again find it's probably more likely for something to be frustrating for the rider because they have a certain expectation of showing at a certain level. If you've shown it a certain level with certain scores in dressage and you go in there, the possibility of frustrating seems more likely to be coming from the rider who wants to score higher than what maybe this horse is capable of, which then in turn could cause a certain level of frustration in the horse if the rider is asking them to perform something they're not capable of doing. For me, the experience of riding one horse in multiple disciplines has helped me to deepen my understanding of that particular horse and of training in general, because it has helped me really see the nuances between the cue systems and what is possible for one horse to learn. So although Willow may be limited in her ability to do extensions and some different things, it has been super fascinating to study the different level of thinking that it requires from both of us to understand all of the different cue systems that are possible.

Stacy Westfall:
One of your other questions that you had is another great illustration of this. You said that you'd never put a snaffle bit in this horse's mouth and you were curious about interchanging bits, going from a shank bit back to a snaffle. And again, this is going to circle back to something I started the podcast with, which is the idea of how was the horse trained? Was it trained a little bit reactive or was it trained in more of a thinking method? And even if it was trained and there's a little bit of reactivity under there the good news is if you're doing all these layers of training, you're going to be able to add more and more layers of the horse thinking its way through. So typically it's easier for a horse to move from a shank bit back to a snaffle because it's more basic. A snaffle is considered more basic. It's something that horses have been ridden in and it doesn't involve leverage. And so typically it's going to be an easier transition going back. A lot of it will depend on how you look at it and how you respond to the differences. The whole reason we change bits is because they have subtle differences in the side effects that they come with. And so the differences will be there between the different bits. But I actually use this to my advantage when I'm changing between disciplines. So it made it really easy for me to take a horse that had been originally trained in a snaffle bit and then moved into a shanked bit and trained to ride neck reining and all these different things in the shank bit. Then when I went back, I actually just used the fact that I was going back into the snaffle to indicate that I wanted a different level of contact because that was something that was different between the two disciplines. So even though when I'm training a reining horse, I train with a level of contact that is very similar. I tend to polish and show the horse on a loose rein. Let me put that into an example. When I'm showing in reining, I want to be able to put the horse on a loose rein, but have it carry its head at its normal or natural level, where when I'm showing in dressage, I'm not going to put it in a loose rein and yet I'm going to ask it to do a free walk or a free trot. And that's going to be asking that horse to lower its head and neck with contact. And so on the surface, that can look like it's two contradictions. But as you start to work on the nuances, it doesn't have to be. And so when I was teaching her that, I wanted her to reach and follow contact. That was something that I taught in the snaffle. And that became one of her cues, like, Hey, when we're in the snaffle, she doesn't put me in one hand and turn me loose and ride me around like a reiner. In the snaffle Stacy behaves like this. I behave like this. And in the shanked bit I have a different set of rules. So I actually used it in the beginning to help define some of the differences, not because they have to be there, so I can ask her to do a free trot or a free jog in a shanked bit the same way that I would in the snaffle. But I actually let there be a difference between my requests by separating it to the different bits. I hope that added clarity and not confusion, because the fun part about this is it can go so many layers deep. And yet, as I'm sitting here explaining, I'm realizing how clear it is in my mind. But I'm also thinking, did that come out super clear in a way that when you're listening to a podcast, you'll be able to understand it?

Stacy Westfall:
I'll say it one more way. Last summer, my advance at home one on one students that I coach online, I invited a number of them to come to my house and I allowed them to ride my horses. And it was fascinating to me to see Willow have different riders get on and ride her. And one of the things that I noticed the most was that when I am riding her and I am asking her to reach into contact and lower her head or raise her head or come back to vertical or allow her out more in front of vertical. So much of that cue system for what's happening in her head and neck is relative to my seat and legs also. Because it's relative to my seat and legs. Also, it means it doesn't all live in the bit. So one thing that kept accidentally happening to rider after rider was that they were making her appear softer and softer in her face. And what that means is if you were watching, it made her look like she was originally reaching and making contact. And then because the cue system is more advanced and with that more advanced cue system, where the whole cycle of the cue of what she is to do with her head, neck and body, the whole system is comprised of not just the bit, not just my hands, not just my seat, not just my legs, but a dialog between all of those. One thing that kept consistently happening was the riders kept releasing when she would come back to vertical or behind vertical. So within two or three riders she looked extremely soft. And what I mean by that is it looked like she was coming way like, long-term she was like, I'm very, very soft. Look how soft I am. I'm back here. This is where I keep getting rewarded. And it's it didn't break anything. It didn't cause any long-term problems. It was actually quite fascinating because when they were done riding her, I got on and rode her again and it only took me just three or 4 minutes to readjust that back into the way that she understands the language between us. But I thought it was quite fascinating to see different riders get on and because they didn't know that full nuanced language and she was the most advanced horse they had ridden. And so because they didn't know that full advanced language, I thought it was a fascinating that the side effect they had was that she got too soft, where if you look at a lot of horses out there, that maybe you go to a horse sale and you watch a lot of horses being ridden, if you've got a much greener horse, the opposite problem tends to happen when they're getting confused, when that horse is getting a little bit confused. If you go to a horse sale and you see three or four riders get on a horse, a lot of times that horse will start like pulling the reins out of the rider's hand or trying to do some of those things like that.

Stacy Westfall:
And again, it's just kind of interesting to see the horses understanding when they're confused. And so long story short, when the horse has a higher level understanding, it's going to be more than just the bit that changes. So going back to your idea, your question, I've got this reining horse. I'm going to take it out of a shank bit and put it in a snaffle. The questions are actually going to be different depending on how the horse was trained. Was it trained a little bit reactive? Was it trained to be thinking its way through it? And then it's also going to matter how consistent you stay with the rest of the cue system, because if you stay consistent with the rest of the cue system, I'll bet you can create a lot of a similar feeling. And if you want to cause a different set of rules to be true in the snaffle, feel free to do that. And horses are amazing. That–the short story of this should just be that horses are amazing because the fact that they can learn all these different layers like Willow did and many other horses have, it's just amazing that they're thinking at this level and they're just so open and willing to learning. And one thing I for sure want you to think about, Heidi, is your long-term goals versus your short-term goals. You probably had a long-term goal when you bought this horse. What was the reason you chose him? I figure that each horse is here to teach me something. And sometimes I know what that is. So maybe when you bought him, you were thinking He's going to teach me about reining. Now, sometimes I know what that horse is going to teach me, and there's other times that I discover what they have to teach me as we're going through the process. I want you to keep that in mind as you're asking yourself these questions. If your primary reason for buying him was to learn a lot about reining and then maybe have some fun in the other area, like dressage that you used to, keep that in mind if when you bought him, you wanted to do 50/50, keep that in mind it really does matter what your intention was when you got him because horses are so amazingly flexible, that I think if you stay really clear and you have fun and you're not forcing it, that you're learning about these layers. I think exploring multiple disciplines can be amazing if you stay in the mindset that it can be amazing. Thanks again for asking the question, Heidi. That's what I have for you today. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you again in the next episode.

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