Episode 327: The Recipe for Success: Balancing Structure and Intuition in Horse Training

Episode 327.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 327.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
If you do something like this, you have the ability to make time. Yes, you have the power to create time.

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 going to mix up a batch of analogies and see how it turns out. Today I want to cover a lot of topics, all revolving around setting and pursuing goals. Short term, long term, new goals, repeat goals, juggling multiple horses, and ultimately how intuition Shin plays into all of it. And because I can't help myself, we're going to connect this to something familiar cooking. You might be wondering, what does cooking have to do with training my horse? More than you would think. Because just like in the kitchen, some things come together quickly while others take planning, layering and time. Have you ever noticed that if someone shows up unexpectedly, sometimes you can throw together a pretty good meal with very little notice? Somehow you can look around a half empty kitchen and come up with something great. Other times you plan ahead. Let's say it's for a big holiday meal at the end of the year, like Thanksgiving or Christmas. A similar thing can often happen with your horse. Let's go to this example. Let's say a friend of mine texts me on a Friday and asks about going trail riding the next day on Saturday. If I've got the ingredients, the time, the horse that's prepared, I'll pretty easily and consistently say yes. Now imagine a similar situation. Same friend could text me about going to a show next week, or maybe in two weeks.

Speaker1:
And again, I'm going to look around and see what the ingredients are. I'm going to say, do I have the time? Do I have a horse that will benefit from this? And maybe I say yes with the idea of actually showing. Or maybe I say yes because I want to haul to the show and get the horse's familiar to the environment without ever showing. But notice those are actually two different recipes, two different sets of ingredients. Let's look a little closer at Ember long term. One of my horse related goals is that I want to show Ember in reining. I bought her as a yearling. She just turned three. And when I buy a horse as a yearling or raise one like I am with Gabby, who's pregnant, it's more like planting the seed, growing the plant, harvesting the grain, making the flour and then baking the scones. So when I look at the steps needed, the recipe for amber starts way earlier than that seemingly spontaneous trail ride. After my friend sends me a text and it's really helpful for me to recognize this because on a day like today, when it's five degrees outside and I recognize there are a lot of steps that I need to fit in between now and next summer. And part of that is also evaluating the experience that I want us both to have. It helps me recognize the importance of the Of the little things I do day in and day out.

Speaker1:
There are other times when I contrast this with thinking about an older horse, and it makes a lot more sense that over the winter, with an older, seasoned horse, my schedule is going to look completely different than with Ember. Ember needs skills. Skills. Skills. I need to be touching her skill building base day after day after day. And sometimes I find that I'll be in a situation with a horse like Ember where the horse needs skills. Skills? Skills. But sometimes when I'm working with riders, it's the rider who needs skills. Skills, skills practice. Which brings me to the next point. Let's go back to the cooking analogy. And the scones. Scones were my fall obsession. How to make the perfect scone. And here's the thing. I had never made scones before. So imagine when I read this in the instructions. The dough will be sticky. If it's too sticky, add more flour. If it seems too dry, add one more tablespoon of heavy cream. Guess how I figured out what two sticky was or what two dry was? By making the recipe over and over again. At first I followed the recipe exactly and I hoped it was the right level of stickiness. And then we ate them and they weren't as flaky as what I wanted. They didn't crumble, and I googled what that meant. And it turns out that's a sign that the dough was too wet.

Speaker1:
So the next batch I cooked, I went for more dry. If you like scones, November would have been your month to hang around me. I made caramel apple scones. Orange chocolate chip scones. Lemon poppy seed scones and espresso chocolate chip scones. Multiple batches of all of these different types. So let's look at a recipe for your horse goals. Some of you will have option one a new horse and new goals. A great idea in that situation is to strictly follow the recipe. Some of you will be taking option two, a known horse and a new goal. That's like tweaking an old favorite recipe. It's a little bit different, but you kind of know a lot of the stuff. Option three known goals. New horse. It's like making the same dish again, but adjusting the different ingredients. Which situation are you in? Or maybe you're like me. And on top of these different options, you also have multiple horses. So multiple horses is like cooking multiple dishes at once. I personally cannot imagine trying to learn how to make the perfect scone a day or two before a holiday meal. I would literally not have had enough time to do what I did to mix, bake, adjust, and try again. Mix, bake, adjust, and try again. But now that I've mastered making scones and I know exactly how I would do it, it would take almost no time at all.

Speaker1:
Because I also conquered freezing and cooking them from frozen. So the high time investment that I had in November, figuring out how to make the perfect scone pays off now and in the future, with much less time needed. Now back to the horses. I knew last year when I chose to have three younger horses, all in earlier stages of training. I knew I was signing up for a lot. Because unlike cooking, my horses also need to put in the reps. So I'm responsible for showing up and training them, guiding each one of them. And they're all at high input stages. Except Gabby, who's pregnant and do May 1st, 2025. Which really means somewhere at the end of April or the beginning of May. And as a cooking analogy goes, Gabby is in a very low maintenance state. She was high maintenance, high investment in the spring and she will be again high maintenance, high investment near her due date and right after. But right now she's minimally low. She's on the back burner simmering. The other horses that I have, Enzo, Amber, Luna, they really need around five days of riding each week to stay on schedule for what I hope to hope to do at shows and trail rides this coming summer. Keep in mind, I know this because I have known goals. I've done this before. New horses. So it's like making the same dish but adjusting for a few new ingredients. Okay, now even though I've done this before, has this ever happened to you? Have you ever assumed that you'd remember the thing that you put in the oven so you didn't set the timer, or you thought that you'd smell the cookies when they were done? But really, the first thing you noticed was that burning smell or the smoke.

Speaker1:
Whether you're learning to cook scones or planning a full blown holiday meal, timers and schedules help. For example, in the scones it says bake for 22 to 25 minutes or until golden brown around the edges and lightly browned on the top. By the way, oven lighting is terrible for judging this But minute matter. Horse goals are the same thing. Putting things on the calendar matters. And I'm speaking from personal experience. You might think that with all my years of experience, that I just have it all straightened out in my head. But the calendar for me often reveals problems ahead of time. It helps me improve, at least in the future. So imagine if you didn't set the timer when you were cooking the scones and you noticed them burning, and you decide you're going to try again, but you don't even know how long they cooked when they started to burn, you just guessed the first time without a timer. And then you just turn around and you try to just hope you smell them differently the next time. This sounds a little crazy. At some point you'd probably start setting timers, but many people approach their horse goals with a lot of guessing and very little time tracking.

Speaker1:
I do this for myself every year and just recently I was putting the show dates for 2025 on the calendar. Now keep in mind the first ones I start with are my local show series, which has nearly identical dates every year. But it wasn't until I added the May show to the calendar that I realized how close that show is to Gabby's due date. And because horses do, dates can vary. I now see, because of my calendar that these two things. Gabby's due date and the first reigning show in my local club essentially overlap. I would have thought that I would have made this connection in my head, but I did not. So every year I go through and I make one calendar with every possible thing I might do with my horses that year. Some years, like the year that I showed in traditional dressage and Dressage and western dressage. That meant that I had a calendar with a show on nearly every weekend listed. That's just me knowing that they were there. It didn't mean I was entering them all. It meant I knew my options. This year, I don't have a goal of showing in Western dressage, so I don't have that calendar. Going back to the cooking, it's like considering the must have items for your holiday meal and then listing all the other things you might consider making.

Speaker1:
All the shows on the list were not must haves, but they were within a reasonable driving distance and they were in an area that I wanted to focus on that year. They were in that maybe I would consider, and I was doing that at the beginning of the year by doing it ahead of time. You set yourself up for success because you don't have to be in the middle of June trying to look around and see what's possible. I can do all of that back in February And then when I get to June, I just flip the calendar and I can see what's available. And I'll also start seeing overlaps that are conflicts, like Gabby's foaling date and the first show of the series. And here's where it gets really interesting. If you do something like this, you have the ability to make time. Yes, you have the power to create time. When I invested the time in November to learning how to make scones, I now save time. So learning to make the scones took time upfront, but now I can do it quickly and efficiently. And this is possible in many ways with your horse goals. So when I say the embers focus right now when it's freezing cold out is skills, skills, skills. It's because she needs to get in a certain number of reps. It's like baking a certain number of batches of scones to figure out how she's going to balance her body when she spins or slides.

Speaker1:
She doesn't have to do fast spins or big slides. She just needs to put in the reps. So time spent now, even 15 or 20 minutes on a really cold day in January or February when it's possible to do, but uncomfortable to do. This is me creating more possibility in the future. In June and July, I'm front loading her knowledge base so that later in the year her knowledge base won't be the limiting factor. Keep in mind, I view the limiting factors as the rider's mind, the rider's body, the horse's mind, the horse's body. And it's true that you can do this for your own brain too. Collecting knowledge is one part of the process. It's like gathering the recipe, learning what ingredients you're going to need, thinking about how this recipe is similar or different to another recipe. All of that takes time and you can front load that. I see riders who wait until they can do everything until they can execute it. They wait until June when they can ride, and that's like waiting until the day before the holiday meal to learn to make the scones. Okay, we just discussed schedules, dates you can put on the calendar. Another way that you can look at this is external constraints. The show isn't going to move because my mare might foal, but some of the most important decisions that you're going to make aren't written on the calendar or in the training plan.

Speaker1:
They're going to come from a from a deeper level of awareness. Let's call that deeper awareness. Intuition. This is my favorite layer, but it's also the most advanced one. If you listen to last week's episode, I used the example of my goal to trail ride Ember last year, and on the surface it looked like a simple goal take Ember on a trail ride. But as I discussed last week, was that really all that I wanted? No. If my goal was just to get from point A to point B, I could have swung my leg over and survived the ride and checked it off the list. But I want more than that. The ride itself was one part of the goal and the other part, the bigger part was about the relationship. And this is where intuition comes in. Measuring the relational part isn't something you can track easily on a checklist. It's something you experience. A lot of people think that intuition is a mysterious Serious thing, but most of the time it's actually built on experience. It's built on recognizing patterns, even when we don't fully realize that that's what we're doing. So let's start with the most obvious kind, that kind of jump out at you and then move on. So let's start with some of the more obvious adjustments. A simple cooking example would be that you taste the food and you think, whoa, that's way too salty, or okay, that's way too spicy, or I burned it.

Speaker1:
Something's way out of whack. When I experience this with my horse goals, it's often something obvious. The horse gets injured in the pasture, they get sick, they're running a fever. They have a bad cough. It's easy to change. Plans at this moment. Kind of doesn't really feel like intuition. It feels like an obvious observation. But not every adjustment is that clear. Sometimes Times you start noticing something and you wonder, hmm? Should I make an adjustment here? Should I leave it alone again? If this was cooking, it might be looking for that perfect scone texture that I mentioned. So it's a subtle adjustments, a little bit more flour or a little bit more liquid with the horses. It's often reading the subtle cues that they're giving you. If you've been listening to the podcast, you might remember Luna. Here's a quick recap. I bought her in August as a four year old who had a few months of training as a two year old, and then she was just standing in the pasture when I went to look at her standing in the pasture. She was footsore, and she was sore enough that I had a local vet come and look at her to decide whether it was worth trying to see if we could improve her. The first vet said, yeah, she's very sore.

Speaker1:
And the owner let me bring her home. And before I even got her home, I had the farrier scheduled to put shoes on her the next morning, and then I scheduled to get a second vet's opinion. Now, the second vet saw some positive changes with the shoeing, but he also found other things. He found something he didn't love in her left rear and in her right front. But my gut said I still wanted to do this. My intuition said, there's something here. Let's take this chance. So on one level, the experts gave me valuable information, but my gut also played a part in it too. Now, this does not mean that I ignored the facts. What it means is I listened to the input and I've even adjusted my plans. I even went as far as accepting ahead of time. She may not become a reining horse that this is a is a higher risk situation. But my experience also says she has a great brain and great potential, and she probably needs a long, slow physical change. She feels tight. That's not a veterinarian term. It's my experience. It's my educated guess about her potential with her current limitations. And I know it sounds vague because it kind of is. I actually do the same thing with all my horses. So let's look at Ember for a second. She's young, and although I'm focused primarily on skills, there's always some level of physical exertion happening too.

Speaker1:
So I involve my intuition, my gut into when she needs time off because she just feels a little bit more tired. And sometimes when I can do a little bit more. Did you hear those last six words? They're key. And when I can do a little bit more. A lot of writers trust their gut when it tells them to slow down, take a break, back off. But what about when your intuition tells you the opposite? What about when it says you're ready for more? If anything, I see writers overuse their intuition as a limiter. Like, the only thing your intuition can tell you is do less. And it's absolutely true. Intuition can tell you when to do less. It's also true that intuition can tell you when you're holding yourself or your horse back, out of an abundance of caution. Let's look at Luna for a moment. I've been systematically working her very minimal changes to her physical routine so I can say it like this I got to a baseline level of working her pretty early, and I've been holding there. And then she had an abscess in her right rear, so we dropped below that baseline level. So if you're keeping track at this point, the vet didn't like her left rear or her right front, and now she obsessed in her right rear. I gave her time off and then before I even got started again, she started swelling in her left front and with a slight sense of humor, I thought, well, at least we're all balanced out now.

Speaker1:
Now it's been in all four legs. When the left front swelling happened, I actually hoped for an abscess, but that did not appear. So I completely stopped and waited. Because keep in mind, we are all tempted to think soft tissues, quick changes muscle that horse up my gut. And the vet had said she needs hoof changes. To me, when we look at changing the hoof, it means we're changing the tendons, the angles, the bones and the muscles too. But we're likely changing very deep structures. So even though I've owned her for months, it's really only been three shoeing cycles, and every time she goes through a shoeing cycle, I feel changes. And those changes aren't just low down in her feet. They go through her whole body. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had her on the lunge line, warming her up before I was riding her, and she blasted off around me with the longest stride I've seen yet. And someone watching from the outside who didn't know might think, wow, that looked really excessive. Something must be wrong. She almost looked possessed, and to me it was a sign that something was right. To me, it looked like she was remarkably comfortable. Like, all of these slow changes have finally led to this day where she blasted off around me feeling amazing. And for me, that's my sign.

Speaker1:
I didn't even know exactly what the sign would look like for Luna. It turns out the sign was pretending she pretending she was a rocket ship blasting off, running around, looking really fresh. Sometimes when they feel good, horses get really sassy for Ember. I think I've mentioned it before. She gets this head swirly sassiness, and when I see those signs, I don't think something must be going wrong. I think they're ready for more. Remember, intuition is built over time, just like in cooking. The more experience you have, the more you're going to be able to trust your ability to adjust. Intuition does not replace planning. It works alongside it. And just like in cooking, you'll learn more as you go adjusting along the way. Remember, either you've been down this road before, you've done this goal, and you understand how many steps there are, or you've been down this road before and you want to improve this time. So you're adding or modifying things or you have never been down this road before, so you're probably underestimating the number of steps it's going to take. Great horse and rider teams have something in common. They take a lot of steps together, and at the end of the day, goal setting is not about just checking things off the list. It's about learning how to balance structure and intuition, planning and adapting effort and patience. It's kind of like cooking scones. 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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