Episode 223: Q&A: “The fear preventing me from showing my horse is…”

Episode 223_ Q&A_ _The fear preventing me from showing my horse is…_.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 223_ Q&A_ _The fear preventing me from showing my horse is…_.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
So I look at it like there are two different things that are happening when we add distractions, which is what hauling to lessons or horseshoes is. There is testing that automatic response that where they don't have to think about it because they know it so well. And the other one is testing how they process or how they work through the puzzle. That is the layers of training.

Speaker2:
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.

Speaker1:
Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall and in this season of the podcast I'm discussing lessons that can be learned showing horses. Today I'm answering a listener question. Here is the question.

Speaker3:
Hi, Stacy. My name is Sheila Bedwell, and the fear that is preventing me from showing my horse is the fear of getting hurt or getting someone else hurt. A few years ago, I bought a young gelding who had not been hauled anywhere or shown before. Since then, we've done a lot of riding at home. He's very broke, has a lot of buttons and has a good head on his shoulders. We've done some trail riding and some lessons. However, when I do haul him away from home, he acts differently. This is not unusual, I understand. When I was younger this would not have been a problem. But now that I'm older and I've moved away from my hometown and no longer have friends that show, I don't feel like I am equipped with the proper tools to get this horse seasoned so that he can be shown safely, and that I can have fun at the show. So my question is, without the expense and time of a big trainer, how do I get him hauling experience while also feeling confident and safe? Thank you for all you do. I love the podcast.

Speaker1:
Thanks for your question, Sheila. Before I go into answering this specific question, I want to remind everyone listening that the very first podcast I recorded was fear versus danger. And as a quick clarification, a lot of times when people talk about fear, they lump together fear of, say, public speaking, which might lead to embarrassment. So the fear there is pointing towards an emotion, embarrassment that you don't want to feel. Where another way to look at it is you can also have fear that is pointing towards danger, like you have a fear that you won't be able to stop your horse in a certain situation. So when people lump the two together, oftentimes they will accidentally be tempted to push through the fear, which in a situation like public speaking and being afraid of being embarrassed doesn't necessarily lead to something really dangerous. Where if you have a fear that is pointing towards danger, if you push past that fear, you may end up in a situation which is the equivalent of losing the brakes in your car. And if I told you that your brakes in your car weren't working well and you were like, that's okay, I'm just going to push through that fear, that wouldn't make as much sense to you, because if you lose the brakes in the car, there is a possibility of physical danger. So as I answer this question, keep in mind that when you're in a situation and you want to use the word fear, do separate out whether this is a fear that is pointing more towards feeling an emotion that you're not going to enjoy awkward, embarrassed, uncomfortable, or is this actually pointing towards danger? A physical risk of injury? Now, Sheila, back to your specific question.

Speaker1:
One of the first things I want you to explore is why was this different in the past? I know you mentioned your age has changed and the situation, as in, you don't have the same friend group that you did when you were younger. It's a different area, but I'm curious if you dig in even deeper to this. Was it because when you were younger you were more of a risk taker? Sometimes that happens when we're teenagers. Maybe you're more of a risk taker. Back then, or Was it that you didn't even see the risks? When I look back at my life, I can see both are true. I was more of a risk taker, but part of the reason I was more of a risk taker was because I didn't even see the risks. So go back and assess what parts of that were different because of just your knowledge level, or even the way you've developed your, let's say in this example, like risk tolerance. Like maybe you're just not willing to take as many risks. Again, this isn't to judge it. It's to try to figure out some of the more detailed pieces of why it's different. Another thing that came to my mind when you outlined, like the age and the situation change, was if I put myself into a situation like that, if I'm in a known environment, which means back when you had the friends that you were riding with, a couple of things that occur to me are that if we're surrounded by friends, then a lot of times if we make a mistake or do something that maybe would make us feel awkward in a group of people that we don't know, we might be more willing to do that in a group of friends because we feel less judged.

Speaker1:
So imagine putting yourself back into that group of friends and that age with this horse. What would you do any different? Were the friends offering you verbal support? Were they encouraging you? Is that what would have made a difference? Were they giving you specific advice like, hey, when your horse does this, this is how you should handle it? So was it more like specific advice they were giving you? What exactly was that group of friends offering you that would change the situation if you're back in there? Because if we can reverse engineer that by you thinking back to why it worked and what they offered you, then that will help you decide how you might look for something similar now in this new area. Now, as I listen to your question, because whenever you guys call in questions, I listen to them over and over again and, and let my brain kind of go down different rabbit trails.

Speaker1:
One of the things that occurred to me is you said you had a fear of getting hurt or getting someone else hurt, and that's very clearly a pointing towards danger type of a fear. When I have a thought similar to that. So like, say I'm starting colds and I've got this fear of getting hurt, what I do is I slow down and I go real detailed. And for me answering that question of why I'm feeling it right now, like a fear of getting hurt when I'm starting a cult. It helps me understand what I'm going through right in that moment. So in your situation, I would actually encourage you to go into detail about what your fear is of getting hurt. Is that a fear of getting bucked off because he's had a tendency to offer to buck, or does he offer to spook? And that's how you imagine you might get hurt. And when you imagine someone else getting hurt, it matters how you are imagining that. Do you imagine him getting away from you after he's bucked you off? And then there's a loose horse, and that's what you're thinking is going to get somebody else hurt. Or do you imagine that you're riding and somebody passes near you and he kicks, because the solutions for these different, specific problems actually become different solutions for each of those problems You can find multiple fears when you're doing this exercise and you might find, you know, spooking or bolting or a refusal to move or kicking or biting.

Speaker1:
And it might sound like a terrible thing to actually spend time thinking about this, but I think the opposite is true. I think if I have a sense of a concern or a fear, I want to look directly at it because then I can make a better plan. And the better I can build my plan, then the more safe I feel before I even run into that situation. Because I'm going to be faster to solve that problem. If I've practiced it in my mind ahead of time. If I've thought, okay, in this situation, what I'm afraid of is this. And here are three ways I can handle this. And when that starts to happen, most of the time you begin to find that there's going to be a thing before A thing. So before the big thing happens, you're probably going to notice a smaller thing happening. And if you know this, you can begin to respond before the really big event, let's say kicking at another horse. You can actually respond when you start noticing acting distracted, you can decide to change the situation to get more distance, to get off and get out of the arena, to move to a different area. You can have all of this planned ahead, and you'll actually notice the warning signs, because you've actually thought about what the actual problem would be and how you would handle it.

Speaker1:
Part of doing this work, of actually taking the time to imagine some of your worst case scenarios, what that will also bring up is you assessing the path that you and this horse have been on. You said for a few years, and when you do this assessment, make sure you use facts. So look back through the history of owning him because you said that you bought him and he's really pretty solid at home, but that you notice he loses some of that when he hauls. What I'm going to challenge you to do is actually start labeling it and picking a percentage. So when you first got him, was he just as fully trained as he is now, or have you been adding to his training over, let's say, the last year, during that last year of training, how much of a change does he go through in his behavior and response to your cues in, let's say you come off the winter and he hasn't been ridden for a little while. I'm just making this up, but it'll work. Just change the situation to fit you. If he maybe hasn't been worked in the winter and you start working them in the spring. Is he a lot different than he was when you were working him steadily the summer before? Or is he pretty solid day to day, week to week, month to month at home? How would you measure the percentage of change when you ride him at home? Let's say he gets pretty steady by the time you are in June and you've been riding regularly.

Speaker1:
If you take him on a trail ride, does he get distracted and you lose 10% of the way he behaves at home, or do you lose 30%? Start playing around with the idea of measuring this, because it will start focusing you on very specific behaviors that change when your situation changes. And that situation might be day to day at home, because you maybe go on vacation and you come back and you notice a change, the better you get at this, the better you're going to understand. His regular habits and yours. You mentioned hauling to lessons. How much of a change did you experience again? Was it 5%? Was it 50%? How much of a change did you experience when you hauled to lessons? If you start to review this and let's just use the lesson for an example. If you think back and you remember that the way he was riding at home when you got to the lesson, he was 30% less accurate at the lesson than he was at home. What was going wrong then? What wasn't working even just a little bit? If you say he was distracted, give me more information than that. He was distracted. So instead of stopping immediately where I wanted him, I noticed it took me 50ft to get him stopped.

Speaker1:
Or he was distracted looking at a horse running around in a field nearby, and he began to gain speed on his own. The way the horse makes mistakes when that wobble of the 5% or 10% or 50% happens, is information, you can be gathering that information. When those wobbles happen at home, you're gathering more. When you go to a new environment like a trail ride, you're gathering more. Every new environment you go to. Like the lessons. And the way that I like to think about this is that every new environment has different distractions, and the distractions are testing how well he knows the response. So I think of it like this. When I first got married and I changed my name, when someone would ask me what my name was, I would stutter because I would begin to say my maiden name and I would have to think about it. And then I would say my married name. And if I was in a situation where I knew the question was going to come up, then I didn't have that stutter. So the equivalent of this riding the horse would be at home. You probably ride with a lot of habits, and so in a way, the horse answering the question is a little bit like me when I change my name. But I knew someone was getting ready to ask me my name, and I was thinking, oh, that's right, I have a new name.

Speaker1:
And I answered with my new name, so it didn't look like there was a stutter there. But if I was in a situation where that question was asked out of context or quickly, then a lot of times that's where the stutter would happen. Not because I didn't know my name had changed, but because my automatic habit was to answer with my maiden name. So as you are measuring your horses. Change in behavior when you go to a lesson. What I want you to be looking for is those distractions are testing how automatic those things really are. At some point, my married name became more automatic than my maiden name, and a lot of times those distractions when you hall are actually showing you the spots that your horse actually isn't automatic. So I look at it like there are two different things that are happening when we add distractions, which is what hauling to lessons or horse shows is. There is testing that automatic response that where they don't have to think about it because they know it so well, and the other one is testing how they process or how they work through the puzzle. That is the layers of training. And what I mean by that is that the horses will have a tendency to default to certain ways of thinking when they don't know the answer, so Gabby tends to offer less if she doesn't know. So if she starts to get a little bit overwhelmed with a new environment, she actually gets more quiet and it would feel like she was less forward, less willing to move forward.

Speaker1:
But she gets more quiet. Where Willow gets more energetic, offers more things. Even if she offers things that are really hard, she will offer bigger and more things. So we've got the way that they process, and then we've also got their automatic responses. So my guess is that when you're taking your horse to lessons or different places, you're detecting those differences. And I think it's interesting because the more layers of training a horse has, then the more the base layers become more automatic. Another way to think about this is increasing the level of understanding at home. And as you're doing that, you're going to more deeply understand what I was just talking about, about the thinking process that the horse has and how automatic certain things are. So let's think about teaching a horse to stop. So let's imagine you hauled to a lesson, and you notice that the horse wasn't stopping as well as he does at home. One of the questions I have for you is, is this horse you're riding the best you've ever ridden at doing this particular thing. So in this example, that would be stopping if he is the best that you've ever ridden, how can you get more information about teaching this horse how to do this? Even better, if he's not the best you've ever ridden, make that your goal.

Speaker1:
Make this horse the best you've ever ridden at stopping. So let's say that you decide to do that. And in my program I teach that there's going to be three Re separate ways that your horse can stop, and one is going to be with the reins, and that needs to work 100% of the time alone. The other one is going to be with your legs. So a leg cue that means stop and back up. And that should work 100% alone without the reins or the voice. And the other one is the voice. And will that work 100% of the time to stop your horse? And so if you start thinking that this horse isn't going to just stop when you do all three at the same time, so you say, whoa, pull on the reins and do something with your legs, you're going to start doing something like I'm offering as an example, and you're going to teach each one of those three as an individual cue. That works 100% of the time. When you're doing that process, what's going to happen is you're going to start to see the way the horse's mind works while working through this puzzle or these layers. So very often, riders stop the horse using all three of those cues at the same time as you work through teaching your horse how to stop and back up using a leg cue only. There's going to be a bit of a puzzle for the horse to figure out.

Speaker1:
That's going to be another layer of training. So as you are adding those layers, you're learning more about how the horse processes, and you're also learning which pieces of this cue were automatic and which ones were not automatic or maybe didn't exist at all. So maybe the horse doesn't know a back up using your legs cue, so that's going to be less than automatic. It doesn't even exist. And maybe they appear to know the verbal cue. But then you notice that if you actually hold on to the saddle horn with your rein, hand when you say it, they don't actually stop. They just kind of slow down. So you're going to start to notice at home, as you increase the level of challenge, the number of layers, the ways you can do something, you'll be able to then have a different level of understanding. If the horse knows all three of those cues at home, then when you take that work to your riding lesson, you'll be able to do carryover and basically think of it like redoing all the work you did at home to make sure all three of those were working. Now you're going to do that in that new environment at the lesson. So one of the questions that I wrote down when I was prepping for this podcast was, what would it take to feel safe now? And what that means when I'm answering that question is, what are you willing to do to create that feeling of safety? So are you willing to haul to lessons until the way he rides at home and the way he rides at lessons has a zero percentage of change.

Speaker1:
These are the same horse at your riding lesson as he is at home. And then when you achieve that, and let's say that that takes you four months of hauling every week. Are you willing to do that? And let's say that you say yes. At the end of that. Are you willing to find a second location, another lesson place? Maybe that's the same instructor, but you meet at a different barn, same instructor, but you meet at a horse show. How many locations are you willing to go to? Searching for recreating what you can create at home? By using the theory that I just talked to you about when we were talking about the layers of training with Wo, other ideas that came to my mind are hauling to a show with no plans to ride. You're only going to do groundwork all weekend hauling to a show. Maybe you do ride, but you don't show. Maybe you only ride really early in the morning. Or maybe you ride in a round pen. Several of the show grounds I go to have round pens. Maybe you ride really late at night when there's nobody else riding. Or maybe there's another arena on the ground or another arena that's kind of further away, where there's low traffic and you feel safe riding out there or doing groundwork out there.

Speaker1:
Maybe you attend a clinic after you've conquered hauling to the lessons. Maybe you attend a clinic because that's a change of routine from the lessons. Even if it's the same barn that you go to for the lessons, the environment of a clinic will have a different energy level, which is what I talked about in the last podcast on show Environments episode 222. If you think, well, I haven't seen any clinics around here and they don't hold clinics at my barn, maybe you organize a clinic. Maybe you find a barn that has paid open ride time so you can pay whatever that is. I've seen them for like 25, $30. You can go in there and ride for an hour and it's just open riding. Maybe you haul to a show that's a completely different discipline just because that way you can go to that environment and do just groundwork. So maybe you're going to show in horsemanship classes, but maybe you actually do haul to a barrel racing show just so you can do groundwork in that environment. Maybe you volunteer at shows, you don't even take your horse, but that gets you an opportunity to know the people, and you begin to be able to see a new version of what worked for you in the past, when you had a group of friends and people that you knew at the show.

Speaker1:
So what would it take for you to feel safe right now? What steps could you take that would walk you through into feeling comfortable to actually eventually be able to ride at a show? And my number one tip is it won't just be showing up at the show and getting on and riding, because for a lot of horses and people, that's too big a step because you're not building in all the little processes to overcome all of those fears and risks of danger. This leads me to my next point, which is a lot of those things are going to involve uncomfortable feelings, things that you might fear or at least want to avoid a different level of fear. Like it's just kind of like, ah, I think I'll avoid that. I'd rather not feel embarrassed or awkward or out of place. So let's go back through and look at some of my earlier examples. One of my examples was ride at a barn that has open ride times, and maybe you thought when you heard that there are no barns around me that advertise open ride times. So maybe you decide you're going to call a barn that you know has an arena, and ask them if you could pay for an open ride time, not a lesson. You just want to come in and pay to use the arena. And in this example, you may avoid even thinking about approaching a barn with this question because, you know, one of the possibilities is getting turned down.

Speaker1:
It might feel real. It might feel really awkward to call a barn that doesn't advertise paid open ride times, and ask them if they would be open to the idea of you paying just to come in and ride in the arena. Because you might get turned down. You might decide to organize a clinic even though you've never done that before. And in the process of doing that, you might struggle to find enough riders. You might struggle to find a location. You might struggle with other logistics that can feel awkward. It can feel embarrassing. It can feel hard. All of these things are ways that if you are avoiding a fear of an emotion. You may not go down these paths. And I could be completely wrong. You might pick up the phone. Ask somebody about paying for an open ride time, and it might all go well. You might get more yeses than you do no's, but I often see people not even try, not even ask because it's uncomfortable to feel awkward or rejected. Or they don't ask because they're afraid the other person might feel awkward or uncomfortable answering the question. Let me give an example. When I started showing in traditional dressage, I was awkward. I went further than that and I was accidentally breaking actual rules, meaning things that were allowed at Western events that were not just etiquette differences.

Speaker1:
I was actually breaking rules, for example, riding in the warm up arena without a helmet. In my defense, I had my winter hat on, so it distracted me and I knew I had something on my head. But at the end of the day, I'm the one that mounted up without a helmet because that's not my habit at a Western horse show, and it's an actual rule. And somebody had to come walking out of the show office and ask me to dismount and go get my helmet. And that was a little embarrassing for me. Or when I was asked to present my horse for inspection after showing. So if you haven't been to a show where they do this, you come out of the arena and they will check your horse and they will check your equipment, and they will make sure everything is in good order and that your equipment is legal. And we do this in our Western events. I came out of the dressage arena and they asked about checking my bridle, and I took the bridle off, dropped the bit out of my horse's mouth, and was holding her by just the reins around her neck. That's what we do at the Western shows. But that's not what they do at dressage shows. For me, it was awkward at times, and I imagine for them it was maybe even a little concerning because I was breaking actual rules. And that doesn't even talk about the etiquette things.

Speaker1:
And the list of smaller things that I was messing up on was huge. The terminology that I used when I was talking about when we would ride and where we would ride, all kinds of little things. And then I finally just gave up and was showing up at the shows in jeans and cowboy boots while I was getting my horse ready, because that was my norm. So even though I was the only person showing up to a traditional dressage show in jeans and cowboy boots, that's what I did. And what was fun about it was that because I had a sense of humor about the situation and about the mistakes, I was making everyone around me ended up being entertained. I still felt awkward and uncomfortable, but the big difference is I expected to feel it. So instead of wishing that I had a different experience, I kept thinking, of course I feel awkward. I have never done this before. Of course I'm making mistakes. I'm doing what comes naturally to me, but it's a completely different environment. And some of these things aren't even allowed here. But I'm willing to do this so I can learn. So if you decide to haul to four shows in a row and never ride, I'm just here to say that could feel awkward. Other people watching might even think you're doing it wrong. Other people might even offer you advice about how you should be doing it different.

Speaker1:
What becomes very interesting is can you stick with your plan and can you answer them with kindness? You never know. Maybe you'll meet some of your next horse show friends doing this. In my last podcast, I gave some tips that were much more specific to the horse. I talked about assessing the type of energy at the shows you're considering and making plans for how you handle that environment. When you look at what would it take to feel safe right now? Think about the steps that you could take. That would be small enough that your safety and the safety of others is not threatened. And can you accept that those small steps, even if that involves hauling to a three day show and never riding your horse, doing all groundwork the whole time? Can you accept that that might feel awkward and even cause other people to ask questions? Are you willing to feel uncomfortable feelings along the way? If you are, I think using this information, you'll be able to reverse engineer and think about what worked for you in the past. Think about what it would take for you to feel safe and build lots of little steps that seem very doable along the way. And Sheila, that is how I believe you will find your path towards going to shows and enjoying it. Thanks again for the question and thanks to all of you for listening. I'll talk to you again in the next episode.

Speaker2:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy's podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall. Com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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