Yesterday, Friday, Betty and Morgunn had a good day while Sugar and I struggled, especially with her walking through my stop cues. Today, Sugar was a dream, stopping softly at every request while Betty and Morgunn struggled. It's a reminder that, as we've said before, horses have good and bad days just as we do.
The challenge for us is to learn from every riding experience. What can we learn from today, good and not so good, that will help us become better riders? One thing I'm learning is how important it is to try and keep my emotional state on an even keel regardless of the kind of day Sugar has. It was easy for me to get frustrated yesterday and feel really good today. My goal is to feel the same way every day regardless of how she does. Not easy, but it's something for me to work toward as I want to be a source of stability for her.
The other thing I worked on today was my arms and shoulders. I'm pretty sure yesterday as I closed my hands on the reins for the stop cue I was bringing my elbows in which tightened my arms and shoulders and that can affect my whole body, especially my hips and legs. That stiffness on my part may have been the reason she walked through the stop yesterday.
Today, I concentrated on trying to keep my arms and shoulders loose and relaxed even as I closed my hands on the reins. I also worked on keeping my legs down and my hips open so my lower body would be relaxed and would move with her movement.
Sometimes horses can make us feel good and other times very frustrated. The truth is Sugar is not making me feel one way or the other. It's my choice how I feel and I need to stay aware of that for her sake and for mine.
3 comments:
Sounds like you're working on some very good and important things. Letting go of tension in the body - and being aware of where it is, in the first place - is hard but so useful - and it feels better, too!
It's hard to leave our emotions out of our horsemanship.
So true, but sometimes the emotions we have help convey what we expect of our horses. If we are happy with what our horse is doing and we give him praise, the horse feels good knowing they did a good job. My mare thrives on praise. The more I reveal to Apache how pleased I am with her, the more she tries even harder to give me what I'm asking her to do.
~Lisa
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