episode 306.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Speaker1:
That could be pointing towards the idea that training is only coming from correction or reprimand. This can be really natural because people will often picture that a force needs training. Then the horse has problems.
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 I'm here to help you understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. In this episode, I'm answering another listener question. This time it's about what to do if your horse is really good. Let's listen to the question. Hi Stacy, this is Laura. My husband and I are kind of new to writing and we are ages 54 and 56. We have three great horses and I've been listening to your podcast for a while now, and they are just awesome and they give me inspiration every day. So being a new writer. My horse Parker is 17 now, but when he was five until he was about 11, he was a Fort Worth Stockyards cattle drive horse. So he's got just a whole bunch of training. He's super broke, as they would say. Just a wonderful, gentle, all around awesome horse. The people we got him from, the teenage girl, Ryder, would carry a flag in rodeos and just use him all over the place, and he was sort of the go to horse for her and her friends to trail ride on. Anyway, my question is that he's just so good and me being new, I kind of wonder what I can offer him. How do you suggest that I shift my paradigm and maybe what I can offer him? What kinds of things should I consider? Thanks very much, I appreciate you.
Speaker3:
Thanks for the question, Laura. This is such a great question because it brings up several valuable angles that you can consider. I'm going to share four different angles that I see, and I think number three might be my favorite, because it's going to help so many people understand the accidental angle they tend to approach training from. But before I share these four angles, I want to reflect on one thing that you said, which was he's just so good. And me being new, I kind of wonder what I can offer him. The first thing I would love you to recognize is that there is truth in the idea that a well-trained horse has a lot to offer you, the writer. I've talked about this in other podcasts, and I've used the idea that when you do focused writing time or training time, it can be viewed as putting money in the bank. And it sounds like you bought a horse that's had a lot of deposits made, and that's a real thing. So first of all, congratulations on finding Parker. And now let me share four different angles that you can consider that could shift your paradigm and give you ideas of things that you have to offer him. Angle number one what can Parker teach you that you can then apply to your other two horses? In this sense, you're going to use Parker and his excellent behavior to contrast with either your other two horses or other horses that you interact with.
Speaker3:
The reason? This is a valuable angle to look at is because it's going to make you focus more on the details of what makes Parker just so good. As you learn to observe in detail what makes him feel different than either other horses, your other two horses, or other horses you've been around, you'll begin to fully appreciate the level of, let's say, responsiveness or the way that he thinks you will literally see him in greater detail. Another way that you could look at this is that you're going to be studying what is working here, and this will help you not only with your other two horses, but it will help you look at him past the admiration part of the relationship. Which brings me to angle number two. Angle number two. I actually challenged myself with the question, how do I see situations like this go wrong? Meaning how does somebody begin with a horse that seems like a dream, like they're just so good. But three, four, five years later, it seems like something's gone wrong. And when I have seen that happen in the past, it's because the angle that the person chose to stay in is almost like that infatuation phase in dating. And when we think about the infatuation phase in dating, the term that we often use is blindly in love or going along with something blindly.
Speaker3:
So there's this idea that when you are infatuated, I googled this. It can lead you to see someone as flawless or ideal. Now back to the idea that it could be infatuation. Like two humans who are falling in love. Love is identified as acknowledging the differences as individuality. And so this is again why I'm suggesting in angle number one, what can Parker teach you that you can apply to the other horses? That's going to take you a little bit away from the flawless idea, and it's going to have you looking for a little bit more detail in how he's behaving, how he's responding, and you're going to start to see his individuality. And that will help make sure that you're not approaching him in that infatuation stage. Another way that you could look at this, if that infatuation idea doesn't really sit well with you, you can also look at it like if you have another human that you greatly admire, someone who knows a lot in a field that you really value. If you were to approach them, how would you describe that experience? And a lot of times people will say that they feel awestruck. And if you're in that awestruck state, it might not seem exactly like infatuation, but you can see where awestruck will also lead you towards the idea that that person might seem flawless or ideal.
Speaker3:
And so I think it's valuable to recognize that in our human relationships, these things can happen. And I know for sure it can happen in horses. I love letting myself have that awestruck moment or feeling, but I also like to balance it out with the other things I'm about to talk about with you. So basically what I'm saying here is dial up your awareness of your emotions inside of the experience, because you can appreciate someone and admire someone, and that actually feels different than infatuation. So lean into those feelings and notice that you can have a great appreciation, and you could even be awestruck at times. But you can also make sure that you balance that out with actual factual things that are happening so that it doesn't become this idea of it being blind. This idea also relates really well to the first angle that I presented to you, because if you start looking at what Parker can teach you, that you can then apply to the other courses. A slight twist on this would be for you to look for one thing in each of your other horses, that they do better than Parker. This, again, is just another way to increase your attention to specific details of all of the horses.
Speaker3:
For example, these can be details like how they behave during feeding time. Do they stand back when you're walking in to put in the hay or dump in the grain? Or do they get a little bit close? Does one of them push through and where is that line? When do you allow them to step up to the feeder? And how does that physical interaction go. Or it could be something like ground tying them and looking at how well he ground ties versus the other horses, or noticing subtle differences when you're leading each one of the horses. And this exercise of looking for things that the other horses might do slightly better than Parker isn't to diminish Parker. It's actually just to ensure that you're looking in detail and that you're not becoming barn blind. Have you ever heard of that term? It's barn blind is an actual term. You can Google it. I did, and Google says that the phrase is known to horse people throughout centuries. Barn blind refers to someone's unreasoned pride in their horse, regardless of actual condition or quality. And having just purchased a couple of other horses, knowing that barn blind is something that happens, and especially knowing that it happens in the early phases, just like in dating and that infatuation phase. It's something that you can kind of turn or dial up your awareness to so that you aren't totally enthralled with it, so you can actually see the reality of the situations.
Speaker3:
So be sure that you are giving all of your horses a close look so that you can appreciate each one of them as individuals, and that will help balance this out. The third angle I want to present might be my favorite, and I hope this angle offers you help to switch that paradigm that you're asking about. So first let me outline the problem or the challenge here. The challenge in this one is that sometimes people think that training a horse is only correction or reprimand. So if you're approaching from I don't have anything to offer this horse because he's already so good. That could be pointing towards the idea that training is only coming from correction or reprimand. This can be really natural because people will often picture that a force needs training. Then the horse has problems. So this will set up a situation where what the heck do you do with a well-behaved horse? So let's put down the horses for a minute and look at this as if it was an employer employee relationship. So this would be much more like if you were an employer and a bunch of people. In this case, horses applied to do some work for you, and you hired Parker to do some work for you.
Speaker3:
So he's going to be the employee, and he comes in and he's amazing. Think about how an excellent employer would view an excellent employee. An employee that does really well. How would that excellent employer give them feedback? The first thing that an excellent employer does is to see what that valuable employee is doing, to pay attention to what sets them apart. So here's a question to ponder. Can a great employer help a great employee become even greater? What I want you to hear in this is that this goes back to the idea that you can greatly appreciate and admire, and when it's appropriate, you can offer support. This also goes against the idea that training is only corrections. What if training is actually a lot more than that? So let's pause for a moment and look at that idea that I just presented of. When it's appropriate, you can offer support. What might that look like with a horse like Parker. It can be something simple, like on a trail ride. Maybe you always let him pick the path, and you notice over time that he always avoids walking through the middle of a mud puddle, and he'd rather walk around the edge. Maybe you just simply say, hey, can I guide you through the middle of this mud puddle? And the question there would be, if you choose to guide him, will he take that support and that guidance and go with it? Because remember what I mentioned back in angle number two, where a lot of times when I think about how does this go wrong three and five years later, what I've noticed is that 3 or 5 years later, when people have just let the horse make decision after decision after decision, it's not necessarily that the horse is doing something wrong.
Speaker3:
They're just not used to getting support or feedback or guidance. And so it's just unfamiliar for them to be guided through something versus just letting them make that choice. And so it might not seem like an issue right now, but being able to have that employer employee meeting where you sit down and you go over all the things that they've done really well, and even if there's just some tiny little thing that seems slightly insignificant, giving them feedback is valuable because it keeps the habit or the doors open for communication. And that's what you would be doing when you pick up on the reins and you ask to guide them through the mud puddle, it doesn't have to be a problem for you to say, and I'm curious, can I guide you through this wet spot in the trail that I know is safe, even though I recognize that the last ten times we've ridden down through here, you've preferred to go around it.
Speaker3:
That would be the idea of guiding as applied to a horse angle. Number four, you could proactively choose to learn something new together. This doesn't have to be something big. A lot of times if I say learn something new together, people go, okay, now we need to buy all this new tech and go do some huge, big change. No, it can be a small shift to something that Parker already does well. So, for example, if you are cleaning the stall when he's in the stall and he's good, is there a way to make it a little bit better? So maybe you choose exactly where you want him to stand and when and how you want him to move. Or again, if we go back to feeding, you can say, well, he's already good when I feed. What if you wanted him to stand in an exact spot, and that you wanted him to stay there until you said a specific word? So these ideas get you thinking a little bit differently. One of my first videos that I actually made and sold was Teaching Your Horse to Bow, And one of the great things about trick training is that often the horse and the human have no preconceived ideas. People are like, I have no idea how to teach a horse to Bo.
Speaker3:
So here we go. We're going to do this step by step, and it's that openness that often makes you more curious and will bring about you looking at him in greater detail. So whether you choose to slightly improve something that's already there, not because it's quote unquote needed, but because that is where the challenge comes. Like, would it be interesting to have your horse stand in one particular spot until you gave them a release word to go to their feed? Would it be fun to teach your horse how to do something like bow or smile, or any kind of a simple trick like that that you could do that would be you to learning something new together. The thread that runs through all of these that I really want you to see, Laura, is the idea that instead of saying, I kind of wonder what I can offer him. What if you started saying, I have something to offer him, and then let your mind fill in the blanks with what that might be? Congratulations on finding Parker. Horses can be the best teachers if you pay attention, and a great teacher is always learning more from the students that they interact with. It's a great thing to be able to access both roles, student and teacher. That's what I have for you this week. Thanks for listening and 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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