Episode 292: You are Invited: Two Invitations Horses Offer Riders

Episode 292: You Are Invited: Two Invitations Horses Offer Riders: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 292: You Are Invited: Two Invitations Horses Offer Riders: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Stacy Westfall:
Now here's where many people get a little confused. You may learn to have a different response in the moment when the horse gets anxious or jumpy, but the invitation will still be there.

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 I'm here to help you understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. In this episode, I want to introduce you to an idea I have. It's actually the way that I experience horses, and it's a way that I explain to riders what they may be experiencing. So I'm going to give you an example to kind of set up the concept before I take the concept and apply it to horses. I want you to imagine that you go to your mailbox and open it, and you receive an invitation in the mail to attend a local educational event, and it's going to be held at a local college. And it's a talk about horses. So naturally you want to attend, and then you check your calendar, and it happens to be on a day that you have open. So you decide to go because of the location you expect that you're going to walk in, find a seat and sit quietly through a lecture. Now imagine that the day comes and when you arrive, you are walking down the hallway towards the classroom and you realize you can hear loud music playing. It's really loud. You can feel the vibration of the music as you are approaching. As you get closer, you realize that this loud music is coming from the room that you're about to enter. And this is not what you expected. But here you are. So as you stand just out of view of the others that are entering, you realize you have a choice.

Stacy Westfall:
Step forward and step into the room or turn around and leave. It's totally your choice. If you use your imagination. As I was explaining that and you imagined being in that situation, you might realize that you actually had two invitations during that little story. One definition of an invitation is a situation or action that tempts someone to do something, or makes a particular outcome likely. In the story. You received an invitation in the mail to attend the event, and you made a decision, and then you had a less obvious invitation as you arrived. That second invitation was that moment where the door was open, the music was playing, and again, you had a moment where you got to make a choice. A situation that tempts someone to do something. Now that you have that in your head, I want you to imagine applying this concept to time spent with your horse. I'm going to give you three situations that I see. Riders receive an invitation from their horse, and then what they choose is up to them. So let's start with the example of a jumpy or scared or anxious horse. If you want to really put yourself in that situation, then go back to episode 68 (sixty eight) of this podcast where you can, "Learn How to Teach a Horse to Spook". Really. That's the name of it.

Stacy Westfall:
How to Teach a Horse to Spook. Now, in that episode, what I was doing was I was actually just reversing the process. And instead of telling you how to prevent your horse from spooking, I was having a little bit of fun and explaining how riders accidentally teach a horse to spook. That would be a really interesting one for you to go back and listen to after we have this talk about invitations, because when you are riding a horse and the horse becomes anxious for some reason, or jumpy for some reason, I would like you to consider that the horse becoming anxious is an invitation like the one you received in the mail, for you to be invited to join them. It is very common that when a horse gets anxious or jumpy, that a rider will also get anxious or jumpy, and in that moment it might just seem natural. You're on top of a horse. It begins getting jumpy. You begin appearing jumpy also. But what I want to assure you is that this is an invitation you are receiving, and that you do not necessarily have to accept that invitation. A different way to say that would be that you're going to have a default response when something happens. And for many riders who haven't trained a different response, if they're in a situation where their horse becomes anxious or jumpy, it is very natural for them to join in the party and become anxious or jumpy.

Stacy Westfall:
Now, as you can imagine, this doesn't typically help the situation. In that very same situation, you actually could learn to choose a different response. Now here's where many people get a little confused. You may learn to have a different response in the moment when the horse gets anxious or jumpy, but the invitation will still be there. When your horse jumps, there will likely be a little gap if you pay attention to where you can really feel that invitation from the horse to join in the party. I still feel that invitation. It's a split second. If I pay attention, I can really feel it. If I don't pay attention, my chosen response has become my default response, so strong that it almost doesn't exist. But I can tell you it's still there. I can feel the physical response in my body that wants to jump on board and join in. So the way that I look at it is there are a couple different categories of invitation that riders tend to get from their horse. In the example I just gave, that is a horse handing out an invitation to a rider to join them in a certain emotional state. Now, that's not actually what your horse is thinking. I'm just proposing that you could look at it like an invitation to join them in being jumpy or anxious, or whatever emotional state the horse may be in.

Stacy Westfall:
So if you notice that when your horse begins behaving a certain way, you are tempted to join in with that. That would be a very normal thing that I see. There is a completely different type of invitation that riders also receive from horses. And when we look at this invitation, it's more to do with how the rider is invited to use their aides. So this could dovetail with that emotional question that was just on the table. But let's just look at it as separate. So in this situation, I'd like to look at the invitation that a lazy or low energy horse might give to a rider. So when I think about a quiet or low energy, or as I'm comfortable saying, a lazy horse when I look at a horse like that, what comes to mind is Gabby and she's super fun to ride. She actually will step up and do things, but her default tends to be slow and laid back. And when I ride Gabby, she will give me invitations to carry her. So the invitation that's very frequently given by a lazy horse. I freeze as carry me. Or can you show me again? Or. I'm not quite sure. So I think I'll go slower. So if you take a moment and begin to look at these offerings as invitations from your horse, that for me makes it easier for me to switch into my chosen response, as opposed to the default response that a lot of riders have when they're riding a quieter, more low energy horse and a quiet, low energy horse will often tempt a rider into doing a lot of work to keep them going.

Stacy Westfall:
And so in that situation, I want you to think about it like the horse is inviting you into this cycle of energy where it feels like for many riders that they're putting out more effort to continue moving down the trail or moving around the arena, it almost can feel like the rider is working harder than the horse. The next time you find yourself in that situation, I want you to think of it like an invitation. And for me, I call it being invited to carry the horse. Because when you're doing more work than they are to keep the energy moving, it feels a little bit like even though you're on their back, it feels a little bit like you're carrying them. A different situation, but similar concept would be if you have a hotter horse, if you have ever ridden a hotter horse, a more forward horse, a horse with a lot of get up and go, a horse with not a lot of woe, what you'll find there is that it's very tempting, as the rider, to gently ride the brakes. I think about growing up in Maine and doing a lot of trail riding and barrel racing, and the combination, plus my skill level left me with a horse that I was constantly riding the brakes on.

Stacy Westfall:
And as I was riding the brakes, I didn't realize that I was creating a horse that was more and more out of balance. I didn't need to use my legs to go, and I was constantly, even if it was lightly riding the brakes, I was constantly holding the horse back. So in that situation, I received an invitation from my horse to gently ride the brakes. Let's look at the definition again. An invitation is a situation that tempts someone to do something. So in that situation, I was tempted to hold pressure on the reins to keep her going a little bit slower, so she might want to trot. I would ride the brakes to keep her in a walk. What I didn't realize was, although I was tempted to do that, it was not a good long term solution. When I look at all the different situations where I want to put in this idea that you're being invited, being tempted into behaving a certain way, a lot of times what comes to my mind are default responses that riders might have. So a default response when riding a hot horse is very often keep applying the brake because it feels like if you don't apply the brake, you're going to end up going faster, faster, faster. So that's where the temptation to ride the brakes comes in.

Stacy Westfall:
But as soon as I put it into a car analogy, you can start to hear the flaw with it. Because if we constantly ride the brake in the car, it's going to have a long term negative consequence. Same thing with riding that quieter, lazier, low energy horse. It's tempting to continue to carry them along and do more and do more and do more. But it's not a great long term plan. So many times when I look across the board, it's that default response that becomes the problem when you are invited into these situations. And I'll close with yet another invitation. I would like to invite you to look for three situations in the next ten rides with your horse, where you can feel an invitation to do something, where you feel tempted to respond in a particular way, especially if you have that feeling of oh, this again? Or why does this keep coming up? Pause and look for what you're being invited into, because the beginning of switching a habit pattern is actually recognizing the current habit pattern you're in. And one way to recognize your participation in it is to look at your horse's behavior as an invitation. And then you get to choose whether you go with your default response or whether you would like to choose a new response. That's what I have for you this week. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you again in the next episode.

Announcer:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy's podcast, please visit StacyWestfall.com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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