Is it a Training Problem or Partnership Problem?
Historically, most conflicts with horses are assumed to be training issues. The horse doesn’t move off the leg? Increase the spur size. The horse does not load in the trailer? Make the space outside of the trailer more unpleasant.
The problem? The source behind the conflict is not addressed.
To start, let's define our terms:
Partnership: the relationship between a pair of people engaged together in the same activity.
Training: the action of teaching a person or animal a particular skill or type of behavior.
A strong partnership sets the training interactions up for success in pursuit of a performance goal. While a weak or non-existent partnership leads to training interactions that control, manipulate or shut down conflicts in the pursuit of performance goals.
All behavior problems are a horse trying to express and share his/her discomfort in a situation.
The more we ignore or shut down the behavior, the louder the behavior comes or, even worse, the horse stops trying altogether and exhibits learned helplessness.
In my experience, this is where figuring out the WHY behind the behavior/conflict is vital.
What are the conflicts you are running into with your horse?
Take a moment to consider the WHY behind them?
What does your intuition feel is the underlying cause for the behavior?
Approaching conflict with curiosity requires a lot of humility.
We must lay our ego and frustration aside to approach the conflict with compassion and curiosity.
Curiosity begets questions.
Questions beget problem solving.
Problem solving begets experimentation.
Experimentation begets solutions.
Do you need help resolving conflicts between you and your horse?
I'm here to help. There's free consultations for northern Colorado and online calls for everyone else to help you get curious and improve the partnership with you and your horse.
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