Books with Spirit – Joyfulness between horses and people

In both Zen Connection with Horses and Bobby’s Diaries – Straight from the Horse’s Mouth to You, we talk about how to handle it when we ask our horse to do something and they don’t do it. 

We suggest that even if you don’t get what you are asking for, that you stop asking and wait for your horse to lick their lips and chew, no matter how long that takes.

“What the?” I hear some of you asking as you want to read that again and seee if you’ve misread what I wrote.  Yes, that is what I mean, stop asking even if you didn’t get what you wanted and wait for The Chew.

One of the most common causes of a horses fear and resistance – indeed vast amounts of our horse’s fear and /or resistance, comes from having pressure put on them when they are confused.  You might eventually get what you want from applying that pressure, if you have a lot of skill – but the anxiety burdened horse that is the result is not what I want my partnership with my horse to feel like.

So with that in mind, here is a readers’s question: – “you know how you said even if the horse doesn’t give the response you want, you stop and wait for The Chew etc…   If you ask for something and they do something different – like you ask for back up but they go sideways instead - if you stop asking, do they not think that what they did was right because you took the ‘asking’ pressure off?  Just trying to get my head around that part as couldn’t explain it to a friend lol.”

Click here for my reply.