Why Your Horse Doesn’t Listen - Paul T. Haefner, Ph.D & Justin Haefner

So thank you for joining me for the pod. Well, yeah, we’re glad you’re glad you saw this out. We’re always happy to talk about this stuff. We love it. So I typically kick the episodes off by having the guest tell us who they are and what it is they do.

OK, I’m a psychologist by training and a horse nut by passion. I’ve been around riding and around horses for 52 years and early in my career I said I have these skills and my passionate horses, how do I put the two together? And so since the late 90s, I’ve been doing both equine assisted leadership work, equine assisted psychotherapy work, and then I also have been doing sports psychology work with Ryder and that business that was part of my business. Moving forward, you want to tell your side of the story. I’m Paul son and I’ve always been obsessed with horses.

So I went anything horses are out, pretty much anything I could ride. And in 2018, we decided to join forces and, and so we started working together out of practicality. And there was a turning point when I said, hey, my clients could really use your help and you’re working with riders and they could use help with their horses. And we said there might be something here. So then we said, let’s try to put this together somehow.

We did our first little seminar demonstration kind of thing, and then it’s exploded from there. So now we thought think about ourselves as offering what we can for the horse and offering what we can for the rider. And our thought is that horses and riders deserve assistance, mentorship, education, growth from people who actually are experts in their particular field. A lot of times I think what ends up happening in the equestrian world is people operate in silos and it’s not. There isn’t the occasional sports psychologist who has some horsemanship or riding knowledge and can help.

I’m not saying that doesn’t exist. Or the horse trainer or instructor who is talented at helping riders with anxieties and stuff. But in general, I think people are left just getting the help from one sort. That’s something that we feel really strongly about, is giving people access to expertise and help from someone who is educated and experienced in working with the horses and also experienced in working with the rider. Yeah, yeah.

So. That’s So what does your day-to-day sort of thing look like? Are you both in the barn together or is it? How does that side of things work? Yeah, the business is pretty much three parts.

We have the psychology practice. So we have an office in Winchester, VA, where Paul does therapy and sports psychology and consultation services, and then also virtually. So that’s the whole psych practice. And then we have the training program in Charlestown, West Virginia. And that’s all mostly young horses or horses needing some help with a restart kind of a thing.

And then we run lessons and stuff out of that. And then the other third of the business is educational services. So we teach clinics, give seminars, we’re working on some virtual courses now. And then also we do an intensive can come basically move in with us for a day 2345 and that’s, that then is a totally customized program between the two of us, our day. So our day-to-day is we each have our day jobs.

I get up and I go ride horses. He comes out, he rides his horses and then works the rest of the day. I’m riding horses with my assistant all day long. And then we do all of our education, educational stuff fills in. Typically all is our busy season.

Yeah, absolutely. Interesting. Yeah, it probably keeps you very busy. So that kind of brings us right into the the how I came across you guys by Facebook through a post that was talking about regulation and it just was worded in such a way. I wrote down a little quote and it’s regulation is the first task of horsemanship.

A horse that reacts violently to fear is not regulated, and a rider that strikes a horse out of frustration is not regulated. What does regulation mean and how? If you’re not even realizing that you’re out of whack until you’re hitting your horse, or until your horse is running away sideways because the bag moved, How do you approach the horse side of regulation and then the human side of regulation? I’m going to flip that around and have him talk about the human side first because he’s the doctor and can explain that. And our nervous system?

They’re remarkably similar. Right. We share with all mammals, actually we share some neurological similarity. So when we talk about regulation, I think probably a really good place to start is to talk about integration. And when we talk about integration, this is not our stuff.

This stuff, the integration stuff, comes from Dan Siegel, who’s a psychiatrist in California. And what he talks about is integration, meaning an open flow of energy and information from all the different parts of us as a complex system. So do we have an open flow of information us to our bodies, for example, or our bodies to us, to our thinking and our thinking to us, to our emotions and emotional experience to us between US and what the outside world, either other sentient beings or our regular, some people say that there there is, everything is sentient. So that’s a whole different discussion we have on a different day. So when we’re well integrated, then we’re also well regulated because we have that flow of information comes if our heart rate goes up with there’s this awareness that comes with it.

And then you talk about how do you do this? How do you be regulated when you don’t even know you’re dysregulated until after something bad happens. The way we would talk about that is there’s a process to get there. Typically if people, people know when they’re dysregulated generally, and it’s usually after the fact. And there is a general process where we help people get regulated or we can work on ourselves to get regulated, which is first to build awareness, because attention and awareness opens those channels of the flow of energy and information with the different parts of our experience.

And then as we become more aware of our bodies, our emotions, our thoughts, our sense of our self in space, our relationship to other beings, as we become more aware, then we just become better integrated and better regulated. And then the other piece, which is a relational piece, and then I’m going to toss it over to Justin and talk a bit about the horses. One of the really cool things that’s happened in the course of my career has been the exploration of this theory of the nervous system called polyvagal theory. What the polyvagal theory does is it says, look, we’ve been taught, we get charged up. We all know about adrenaline and about a the sympathetic nervous system, and we all know about rest and digest the parasympathetic nervous system.

First of all, I think it’s much more complex than that, and it’s really helpful for people to to challenge themselves to take a much deeper dive into that. But what the Poly vagal theory says is there’s this third part and they call it the ventral vagus, and they it’s ventral because it sits in front of the brain stem. They’re not very creative with their naming. They just do it by position. But what they discovered is the nerves involved in that system are relational in their nature.

They innervate and receive information from the parts of our body that are involved in creating social connections. So when I make a social connection with someone, a positive social connection, I sense that positive social connection which activates the Ventro, brings that Ventro vagal system online and that acts as a brake in braking system for both the sympathetic and parasympathetic because the parasympathetic out of control is not rest and digest, it’s shut down. Yeah. In the sympathetic out of control is just freak out. Yeah.

So I like to talk about, and I’m always open to people having other thoughts and ideas about this, but I like to think about you. Have you driven a big tractor? Yeah. Yeah, if you notice, I think the brake actually has two pedals that are clipped together. If you unclip that, you can break one wheel or the other wheel.

So I like to think about the Ventra Vagal system as being like a tractor break and it can break both at the same time, it can release both at the same time, it can break 1 and not the other and so on and so forth. And then you start seeing all these different combinations of activation, sympathetic pair sympathetic. So for example, if you’re engaged in a high energy equine activity, let’s say jumping or working cows, right, you want that to happen with adrenaline and relaxation. Yeah. So now you want both breaks to come off a certain amount, right?

Yeah, Yeah. It’s that idea of that breaking what? And that gets us to the place where it comes to our horses. So if we think about those similarities, if we can create positive social connection, then we have our best shot at promoting or engaging whatever regulation an individual has is capable of at that time. Interesting.

So just set the integration aside. They may be more or less integrated, but to give us our best shot. So I’ll toss it over to you and talk about the horses in that context. Yeah. So I think about, to me, what makes a safe horse is a horse that their activation level, their energy level can come up and then it comes back down at some point.

But a lot of times what happens with some of our horses is like whatever the their buddy rides out of the arena or they see something down the road and it’s like a helicopter, they go up and they keep going. But I like to think about it like throwing a ball in the air. If we throw a ball in the air, we’ll come back down. We have gravity. So it doesn’t matter how high I can throw that ball, it will come back down at some point.

And so to me, that’s what makes us safe for us. Not one that’s always even and relaxed, but one that when energy goes up, it also can come back down. And it happens on their own is swear we’re not having to step in and control everything. So that to me is I think where I’m coming from most of the time when I’m thinking about this type of emotional regulation, nervous system regulation in our horses and then from there. It.

Is the work we do when we’re quote UN quote training? We’re teaching our horse things very well might be using exercises and and the work we’re doing to help them become better regulated and in that is is going to be helping them bring their energy up and then come back down. But of course that’s completely dysregulated on a daily basis as a baseline. We really can’t. They’re already all the way up here.

They’ve already got the activation level high. So do it in that case, when we’re trying to introduce ideas, teach them things, that is, they’re already up there. So our job is to bring them down to a place where then we can go up again on purpose basically. So when if a horse comes in for training, if they’re a horse that already has that ability to be at a resting state of relaxation, their energy can come up and then it can come back down. Then we’re stepping off from a point where that horse is, though that horse is typically very teachable and we can go to traditional training, but that horse that’s just frantic about every little thing and really just struggles to be relaxed typically is going to look a lot different in the beginning.

And that’s what I say. We get a lot of young horses to start under saddle. We might do their first ride on the second day they’re here, or we might do their first ride two months after they get here, and it’ll completely depend on that horse’s maturity and ability to be regulated. Does that make sense? Yeah, for sure.

And I think young horses are such a good example of learning regulation because they’re as close to feral as we really deal with on a normal basis. So you’re really seeing a horse act as a horse in new environments, and depending on their personality, they can already just be spooky or whatever. Yeah, I think I have a unique perspective on that because I’ve worked with a lot of feral horses and there’s so feral, the term pharaoh is essentially you could think of it as a wild horse that was once not wild and that can be generation or not wild, but basically has had human interaction and that can be generational. So if you have a horse that’s never seen humans, but the parents were around people, then that baby horse is still feral. So the only real wild horses we have are like the Prowlski’s horses at this point.

Otherwise they’re completely, they’ve been around people and I have. So I’ve worked with quite a few that have had bad lots of bad experiences with humans and are technically feral. And then I’ve worked with a handful through my life that are closer to wild, have not interacted. My personal horse was have never been touched by a person by the time he was four. My experience with the horses that have not been around people is that they are typically the best regulated horse I’ve met in my.

Life. I wish, as you say, that I have this friend, she’s going to laugh. I have this friend Meredith, and she starts horses for a living. And we were just having this conversation of there are trainers who will just leave their horses out in a field, bring them in when they’re whatever, get them trained, they’re whatever. And then there are these people who own these horses and they touch them every day and the horses are very like handled.

But when it comes to the time that they’re ready to get started, they’re really tough to deal with emotionally and. We essentially take away their sense of self preservation when we teach them to be that OK with humans from a such an early age. We take away a certain degree of self preservation and we teach them that people don’t mean anything. So essentially we’re desensitizing them to human beings. And a lot of people think when they’re putting the saddle pad on their six month old weanling, whatever, they’re like thinking I’m preparing him.

No, you’re teaching him to not care about human beings. And they’ll never change. You can make progress, but they’ll never see humans any in any different way. But it’s a horse that it’s like the more feral horses that are starting with, not that you want that. You don’t want them to be afraid.

But when they’re starting from a place of fear or just unknowing healthy skepticism, yeah, you can help them be feel OK with people, but in a way where they actually look to you like you have some meaning. And it’s the horses that have been cuddled and coddled from day one that they will run you over and leave you in the dirt and everything twice about. It it did. This is one of the things that people don’t want to talk about in the conversation of I don’t want to say animal welfare is in these poor animals, but in the sense of animal welfare, as there are people that are looking at horse sport and just the horse industry with anything you do that touches a horse in a negative way is abuse. But when you’re getting run over in a round pen first hand that you’re like, it’s sometimes I need my own self preservation.

And that’s why I think the human side of regulation is really interesting because at a very quick point you go from I have a handle on this to holy shit, I’m afraid. And that’s where things can get out of hand. But. So I think one of the things that would be an interesting addition to the whole conversation, and I’ve seen some people raise this is the idea of what our relationships anyway. So one of the interesting things, one of our favorite quotes is from a friend of ours, Tim Jo, is just relationships are built on repair, not perfection.

And I don’t want to go down too far down the road about equating, for example, human relationships with human horse relationships, but there’s an awful lot of similarity. And when you talk about the development of cooperative, mutually satisfying relationships between people, one of the necessary components of it for growth is what in the business like is called empathic failure. It’s when we have conflict because we don’t understand each other or someone makes an assumption about something and then we have to get that squared away, right? And imagine a relationship. And I may go out and get myself in trouble on this, but imagine a relationship with another human being where they just did quietly and sat there passively for everything that you did to for them for two or three years.

That’s not a back and forth engaged relationship. That’s a, that’s as justice says, a desensitization. It’s a habituation and it’s a. It’s not about. Imbuing the interaction or the Let’s go back to the exchange of energy between US and our horses.

There’s no meaning, There’s no information that’s getting communicated. Yeah. And that’s one, yeah, you’re either like, get the fuck out of my kitchen or you forget they exist. Yeah, my I had a trainer that called it old married couples syndrome and but it I have a so I event professionally. I do venting and I think a venting is the best of the horse sports because it forces you to go into the mud with your horse and sometimes literally.

And you really get to know them and you really get to, you have to rely on the relationship in order to be successful. And in sometimes I get into these conversations and I’m like, frankly, I don’t really care about the other horse sports because I don’t know that it requires the same sense of relationship that you’ve not necessarily work horses, horses that do cows. And I’m talking more in the English disciplines. But yeah, it there as you’re talking about this vagal system where you have a positive. I’m just thinking of.

Yeah, why would my horse not want to save my butt if every time they deal with me it’s bull crap? Well, it’s either bull crap or it doesn’t mean anything. It means I’m just supposed to let it happen. It’s not an exchange. So this is and help me with the name.

This is what happens when you get old. You can’t remember names. There’s a famous inventor passed away a couple of years ago or a year ago. Cancer. Oh, Jimmy Wofford.

Jimmy I taught his grandchildren, by the way, I should, I cannot, I always forget a thing. But so several years ago, he, he wrote a number of pieces, and maybe it was for the Chronicle or another venue about the differences between today’s event or in terms of the horses, the training, the courses and the old event thing, if the real event thing back when I was a kid. But what his point was, it is that the courses are so technical now that the riders are controlling every little thing around their horses and navigating everything. And his thought was that we don’t give them responsibility. They’re not partners in it.

They’re passive, obedient, yeah, creatures. And to the to your point, why would you expect anybody to save your butt if all they’ve ever done is just do what you told them to do? Exactly and. Right. I don’t know about everyone listening, but I’m the type of person where if you tell me what to do, I tend to do the opposite.

And that’s probably why I’ve been given like 20 chestnut mares in this life. But yeah, I just. And it’s what defines creating a good relationship, right? Because that’s, it’s not just feeding cookies, right? That’s that’s not.

Yeah, for I think about, I let Paul talk on this more, but this idea of can we accomplish a goal where we’re meeting both our and our horses needs? And that’s where it’s like for me, because I like to do something I don’t like. I’m not just going to sit around all day. So I’m a little bit of a busy kind of guy and I like to get shit done and I like to go ride, but I won’t. But I really would like my horses to feel as good about that as I do.

So it’s a cool thought question of can we do a real job? And that’s what I appreciate about the inventors as well. Can we go do a real job with consequence, but do it in a way that both of our needs are met? Exactly. And then you think about what are those needs?

And if you just look at the horse’s side of things, they have a need for social connection and a sense of, I guess one way to say it is a mutual responsibility for safety. Whenever there’s a, you look at the herd, there’s something out there that’s a danger. The herd moves together. And then the horse that can’t do that, whether it’s in the wild, they get eaten by the bear or in it. And in some ways it’s the same with us.

And the challenge is it’s an air species relationship and we’re the ones who are at this point are initiating the activity. That’s our goals. Yeah. So we have these goals and that and then we’re driving that and that’s that. Does that does require of us a sense of honoring that sacred trust?

For sure. Because we are the ones who are initiating that. Then relationship is first of all, relationship. We’re in relationship with everybody and everything. And then the question is, OK, what kind of relationship do we have?

So you walk in the bar and the horse doesn’t even know you exist. You have a relationship with that horse. It just may not be the one that you want. You walk into the, the horse jumps over out into the stall aisle and tries to bite you. You have a relationship with horse, maybe just not the one that you want.

So in that sense is can for me, it’s like there is an exchange and that’s called communication, or we could call it exchange of energy and information. And we have to find ways to establish that exchange of energy and information so that when we offer energy, it means something to them. When they offer energy, it means something to us. And this is all the work about trying to understand equine ethology and understand equine cognition and understand equine behavior and all this stuff is so that we can make meaning of the energy that we’re receiving from them. Yeah.

And if we want to shape that energy, if we want to change our horses behavior, it’s it has mostly to do with how we show up, not how we look at it. I don’t want him to do that. I don’t want him to do that. There’s all this negativity around this, but it’s us interacting consistently with clear communication, with compassion and that that that is a lot overtime shapes our horses behavior. And go way back to the beginning of our conversation that start that well regulated interaction starts has to start somewhere.

I wrote a post a week ago called about bridges and the thing we don’t talk about bridges is that the beginning in the end have to have a solid foundation. So this idea that in order for us to start building that positive relationship, in other words establishing a currency of energy and information, we have to be regulated first. And then we have, we can’t just be in a position that doesn’t end with being in the presence of. OK, that may be the very beginning, right? It’s just to establish capacity to be in the presence of.

But if that’s all that happens, then that’s all that’s going to happen. So then we move from there to, OK, so how can I go from there to exchanging energy and information and start establishing that first? And you hear about a lot of the relational trainers now will say their horses need to be seen, heard, got gotten that. And that’s what it is. It’s about in the development of that relationship about honoring the information and information that’s coming to you because they’re communicating something.

And then you get to say, I see you. And then for you to put out your energy in a meaningful and consistent way so that they can understand, oh, that’s it. That means. And then on a nervous system level, you’re ultimately wanting these things to create a sense of, let’s call IT security, safety and security because that’s where our system and our horses systems are going to be best regulated and then the process continues. Yeah, yeah.

No, it’s very, I almost think we’re talking exchanges of energy and I almost think in today’s world, people and forces are so disconnected and so dysregulated, they’re not even aware of energy being put out and being received. So if you’re going through life just, I don’t even know if numb is the right word, but disconnected or what is meditation? The first step is talk therapy. The first step is what is the first step to getting people just on the path to regulation? It’s the same as is for horses.

So I used to early in my career, I did a ton of work with kids and I used to tell parents you’re going to spend a lot of money to have me play cards and games with your kid and that. But then I’d explain why I said before I can say anything to them, give them advice, make suggestions. They have to care what I think. Yeah. And so that idea of being curious of is in engaging that curiosity is the foundation of what you’re talking about.

So the riders that walk through and they’re numb and they’re blocked off and shut off from both the impact of their behavior on their horse or the horses, what the horses are saying to them. The seed that is essential is a curiosity and that comes in a number of different ways. That can come from in some kind of spiritual awakening and interest in knowing myself better, Not particularly common, but does happen. Or it can come in in something bad. More commonly something bad happens and it’s like, why did that happen?

I don’t understand. The biggest evolutions in my horsemanship have been when I’m almost been killed and I said, crap, I’ve been riding for 30 years, pretty good rider, but I didn’t see this coming. What’s this about? So you again, it’s that be that curiosity is the beginning and then being able to send take that curiosity, start asking the questions. If you’re just trying to make something happen, exercise, you know, some kind of sense and trying to confirm that you know what you’re doing, that’s where people really get in trouble and they’re just trying to do that to preserve their.

This is a passion and an activity which challenges the best of us. So it’s our to sustain our sense of self-confidence and self esteem and stuff. Sometimes we turn to trying to make something happen to prove we have the right idea. Yeah, I think the way to really help you don’t go and change somebody, right. So it’s the way I think about it because I’m I can be very impatient, but it’s if somebody’s here to ride with us or have the horse in training and has this way of interacting with horses that can it’s, I perceive it as negative.

Always the way that true change has happened is just by me staying level and even and doing my thing and staying true to my horsemanship over time. It’s that’s where you just model it. We were at a boarding barn before we bought our place here. And I remember there was somebody was trying to load their horse and it was just shouting and screaming and clanging. And all of a sudden and two of my clients who were there with us came into the barn and it’s they were like, why don’t you do something about it?

I was like, it’s not my business. Yeah, it’s like, but you could go and offer to help. I was like they didn’t ask me to help. Exactly. What are they?

OK, so it’s going to shit. Everybody’s already upset. So now if I go out there and offer to help, what are they going to do? They’re going to flip me off and send me back inside anyway. So it’s so it’s a little bit this.

Dead. It’s other loading story. We’re at a clinic once and someone wanted to help load in their horse and apparently the source is really difficult to load. We’re on a break and so say I’ll go, I’ll help you with that. And then he’s got the horse and he’s moving and says it’s not really about the horse, it’s the OR the trailer just moving their feet and.

Getting a leading issue. It’s a leading issue and the three minutes of horses on the trailer and they talk. About upsetting someone. She was pissed. But that is not the only time that’s happened.

Now trailering is one of the most interesting things because I currently I am as patient as the sun, not by nature nature, but I’m stalked by nature. So if a force is stubborn, I’m patient and. I like it. I like it. And.

She is in training. The most willing partner I’ve ever had. Cannot get the source on a trailer. Cannot. I got her put a lot of pressure on the lead.

She would walk up on the trailer, cool, no problem. She went to a show. Her first show got her mind blown. 2 1/2 hours in the parking lot. I was like, let’s run the paddock for the night.

We’re not getting this thing on. And then finally someone did come and offer to help. But it’s one of those things where you go, well, what the hell, 2 1/2 hours, you can be your best sell for two hours and 15 minutes and then not you’re like, I needed to teach 6 lessons by the end. But but horses don’t care. And you have to realize that you can’t either.

And but it’s it is one of those things that it can bring out the worst. Part of it is expectation, right? Yeah. Not to bring in your personal life, but you’re married. Yeah.

Have you ever had a disagreement or conflict that lasted more than two hours and 15 minutes? You don’t have to answer that. All of the people I’m listening are saying and we don’t. I’m sure we would love our conflicts all to be resolved like that and that and of course that they would see the wisdom of our position and just get it right and agree with us, which is the other part of that. And then we go and we take 1000 LB animal.

And try to put them in a tuna can. Try to put them in a tuna can. Doesn’t speak the same language. We have no idea what’s going on or even how necessarily they process all that information. And it’s a problem if we don’t have an agreement.

And in two hours or 15 minutes, just we have this expectation. And because of the graciousness of horses. We get away with it. A lot. We get away with it a lot, but at the end of the day, just because things don’t go well or within a reasonable period of time doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong.

It means that this is a real a real issue within the context of the relationship or for one or the other individual. Yeah, it once you take away this is a whole nother podcast, but once you take away the my forces doing this to me, you solve a heck of a lot more problems, a heck of a like because that’s the horse. I know that horse at that horse show. The horse trailer was not the issue, right? Her mind was blown in warm up, like she wasn’t getting on the trailer when she walked into that covered arena.

She’s at that point, and that’s all the way back to the regulation. At that point, they’re activated and disregulated. Exactly this. The thing that we do every single day can become difficult if they’re at a point of activation they can’t handle and it. This is never like this at home.

But you don’t find those holes until you test them. And that’s why I love competition because it does test those things and it does find the. I’ve been doing this podcast for well over a year now and I know and have learned so much. And still 2 weeks ago I got eliminated out of horse show because I got greedy. And at the end of the day, that’s what it came down to.

And but, and it forces you to go, OK, what’s the problem? The problem at the end of the day was that the horse wasn’t ready and I thought maybe I could go with it. You can’t. You don’t get away with it. But you have to learn those things in order to learn those things.

No, everyone’s waiting for perfection and what? And then they go to the horse show and they’re like, but they’re perfect in this environment that never tests them and. So there’s two sides to what you’re saying. So I’ll absolutely go out and do different things and see what happens. And obviously you’re not going to do it unless you have a reasonable expectation that something good could happen.

Otherwise it’s just poor judgement. But on the other side of things are perfect at home. Think about what you’re asking of them at home. Are you asking them to bring up their fire breathing dragon energy at home and then come back? So that’s we’ve been playing with the working equitation lately.

And that’s so this year we introduced the speed round. Can I take my mayor and charge across the arena, race across the arena, stop and stand there while I pick up a jug off a pedestal? Yeah, right. So the what we do is we perfect movement in constraint. So often it’s a riding dressage, right.

You’re you are, you’re perfecting movement in. Yeah. And often even within our jumping, we’re doing that same kind of thing. And then you have cross country schooling. Unlike the jumper.

That’s a good point because it’s like the dressage riders rarely, that’s where they go wrong most of the time is they don’t bring the energy up and they don’t do it in different contexts. The jumpers can bring the energy up, but only in one context. So that’s what’s really typically speaking and that’s I start hyper. Bring the energy down and the riders don’t even want the energy to come up like. And it’s all about not where the energy is, it’s about what range can they can they get.

And that circles back to this idea of the relationship. It’s like in when we are together in relationship, we should be able to end this buzzword these days is Co regulation doesn’t mean that we can chill out together. It does mean that, but it also means that we can get charged up together and we can come back down together on the riders. And I and the majority of my practice deals with anxiety and fear that entire population are not looking to say, OK, what can I do to raise the stakes here and raise the energy that right? They want everything to be predictable and calm and try.

They trust my horse that they’re not going to do these bad things. One of my favorite moments in the years. We do these clinics called Fresh Start Clinics, and there’s three clinics in a series and they’re focused on both horses and riders who have issues with activation anxiety, fear, nervousness and stuff. And we have one. We had a young lady, a teenager, riding with us and by and at the end of the third clinic in her lesson in the afternoon, Justin got his horse out and they played tag with pool noodles.

That’s my one of my favorite things to do is play tag. So in in what was so special about that moment was to see this gal and her horse who had struggled to canter or struggled to and was really timid at the beginning. She wasn’t particularly terrified, really timid to see them racing around the arena, laughing, tagging and. Coming back down. Comes right back down waving pool noodles all around and it’s that level of let’s go, let’s come down, let’s play together that relationship and.

Play. Play is the keyword there and like that reframes that type of energy quickly for it. Somewhere deep down, we all remember what it’s like to play. And it’s not about being beaten into something. And that’s when we introduced that level that kind of, there’s something that the horses understand about that type of framing.

So if you’re asking your horse to pick up a hand gallop down the long side of the arena and you’re in my mind, maybe the cows are out in my mind and I’m just and I’m we’re just going to head off the first one. And it’s like that kind of imagination and play. That attitude is very different than get your ass going and do what I say. No, there’s a big difference between I’ll show you the way versus this is how you’re going to do it and that’s. Right.

I think. Or if you’re not invite. Yeah. Right. It’s difference between an invitation and a demand.

Yeah. And none of us like a demand. Yeah, I’m not going to say none of us the vast picture. Yeah. And we can get to the same place or better.

And that’s The thing is that especially as a horse world divides a little bit between more traditional competition realm and then, you know, a little more like the relational side of things. We have a bit of this divide and it’s like we’re all trying to get to one side thinks the other side’s trying to get to a way different place. That’s what why I have my perspective of no, I still want to ride do. Things horses that want to do their jobs. Yes.

And that’s The thing is, so we’re not talking such different stuff. We still want to ride a horse and we want them to do what we say. Let’s be honest. That’s. What we love our horse.

Podcast of what everyone’s disciplines are because I do not I’ve actually never had an inventor on the podcast because they don’t really talk about the message of the I don’t like the word traditional because I actually think traditional riding was very relationship based maybe not in the end, but in the beginning we’re now with modern sport it’s completely taken that away where. Yeah, I think. Modern. That would be a really interesting question to explore. What is traditional?

Because what is traditional and I’m we talk about this divide between transactional and relational as if somehow this is new. Yeah. I grew up. I grew up around the eventing community back in the 70s, yeah. And they were many, if not most of them were not relational.

But I knew guys that did magical things, girls that did magical things. And then you’re reading Boucher. Oh yeah, that makes me think about it’s we’re so we think typically when we’re talking about our evolution of horsemanship, a lot of times we’re talking like the last 60 years, the last 80 years we’ve been riding humans have been sitting on the backs of horses for 5500 years, roughly 3000 BC, I think is roughly when what’s our timeline here, right? We don’t know how they treated their horses back then. We but we had more of this.

We needed them. They needed us kind of, but how did they treat them? So I’m reading a lot of French classical texts back to cavalry and then into kind of Boucher came along and changed the message a little bit of what he was getting accomplished split off from the cavalry. He tried tried to influence it and there was a lot of politics. But you read back and it’s like some of what these guys write.

There’s a man named Etienne Buton and he wrote with he was a Boucher student directly or indirectly. I can’t remember one or two generations and and he’s like super ahead of his time. Horseman, the way he writes, he talks about the relate the relationship in his own words, but it’s he’d take a horse that was completely ruined by people and ride them for 30 miles on the buckle and let them go where they want to go to build their self importance, stuff like that. And then you have Francois Boucher, who is this godfather of French classical horsemanship as far as people talk. And then it’s like you read translations and it’s The goal is to eradicate the horse’s natural will.

Yeah, but look at the Native Americans, right? Like it’s such a different perspective on they really believed that the horse was the spiritual being and they worked with the force. And yes, I’m sure that there were tribes or whatever that did not see the horse that way or that the horse only for them, but. Yeah, And what’s your SO like that I’m going to be annoying, but what’s your insight into that culture? So not, not a whole lot.

I just know that a lot of some of the inventors that I have worked with have referenced Native Americans in term of. Yeah, I appreciate I asked that obnoxious question because it’s like for me personally, I only know what I know and it’s so I would go to say, I would venture to say that in all of our different cultures and traditions and disciplines, there’s good and bad. Yeah, of course. And it’s this is where we get, this was where things get sticky is because we all think what we’re doing is right and therefore everybody else has to be wrong. But there’s got to be good in all these different places and there’s also probably got to be bad.

So it’s like that. There’s this perspective of, I don’t know, I can read all these books. I have not a freaking clue how they treated their horses. Yeah. It’s all words and we’re obsessed in this, in our culture, we’re obsessed with words.

We’re talking here. We’re not riding together. What you’re welcome to do, by the way, I would. Love to listen. I think you can tell a lot by a person’s worksmanship just by the way they put the saddle on.

So it is. A lot more than talking to her. So it’s very much so that’s why I like to have these conversations because it our opinions should get challenged and we should try to learn new things. And we, I have gotten horses into my program from programs I idolized and have been like, Oh my God, I can never ride with that person. And it’s heartbreaking because you’re like, Oh my God.

But they’re so successful. And that’s why these conversations need to happen, right? Because they are just following the person that taught them and it’s always going to happen until people are like. Oh, they might, but. You can just wait until your horse takes a deep breath before you do this.

Thing. Yeah. And those people they might be totally right for, but not for that horse. That’s where it’s so tough is especially when we have success, because when we have success with something, then that’s we dig into that deeper and and that’s what these, all these horses are so different and that’s why there’s there’s a lot of value into looking in different areas of equestrian. And that yeah, and that’s that would be another podcast would be our investment in we were talking about the other day, performance identity and a performance culture.

So what is success? Someone gets it wins a gold medal or yeah, that kind of stuff. It it says nothing about their overall horsemanship or things like that or and in my industry it’s the same way because someone successful, all that means really most of the time is they have effective marketing. Yeah, or they’re willing to do things that other people aren’t. And that could be very, that could be very negative.

And that doesn’t and there are plenty of people out there who are successful, that can be successful with a client that I’m not successful with. We don’t see I so you have all of these. Again, it’s a not. It’s not a I’m right, they’re wrong. It’s complicated.

There’s a lot to it. At the end of the day, it’s all you young date. You don’t marry everyone. You date for a reason and sometimes date someone you’re like, how did I say in our relationship to send it? I’ve had horses I’ve sent back to owners because I’m like, maybe this other rider would be better, but it’s not fun for any of us.

We’re fighting for our lives of pre. That’s what it’s like. Yeah, it’s all. We talk all the time about how all the horses are individual, but us as trainers and riders are individual. It’s like that there might be horses that aren’t right for me and that and I’m going to be not right for some of them too.

Yeah, that’s where it’s let’s invest in trying to be the best we can with it the most of variety. But it’s OK. I’ve turned, I’ve turned away a handful of horses or it’s this is not a good fit and and it’s everybody’s typically grateful at the end of that kind of an exchange, but. Yeah, it’s, I was not huge into natural horsemanship until I got bucked off a horse and then she ran away from me at a competition and I was like, I missed something somewhere. It forces you to understand, like she, that horse forced me to understand that I’m an extremely ambitious person and not every horse likes that kind of pressure.

And that’s fine. I just want them to be the best horse. But they’re they also, I still have that horse because find someone that’s willing to ride that thing that’s not ambitious and OK, you know, but she’s a good girl. But but yeah, it’s, it all comes back to can you understand yourself enough? Can you understand the force enough to understand the energy that’s being transferred and that how does that make both of you feel?

And to invest in in a relationship which is not just about acceptance of each other’s presence, it’s about asking and receiving and cycles of that communication where we ask and they receive, where they ask and we receive. Yeah. That’s the fair exchange. Yeah, or I always say that’s I give cookies and so many people are like, Oh my God, I can’t believe you get cookies. And I’m like, there are some days that I work really hard and I want a cupcake.

Why would I not? Not all of them are food motivated. So the ones that like a good scratch get a good scratch. The ones that like a German muffin get a German muffin and but it’s all. My My horses never rub on me.

Yeah, that kind of. Well, that’s all about the kind of relationship you want. I, I typically have a no cookie policy because it’s a lot easier for me. But then the girls in the barn city may give my good horse some treats and they’re like, Oh my God, you gave him cookie? I was like, yeah, ‘cause he’s not leaning on me, he’s not going through my pockets.

He’s very appropriate. And I’ve ridden him for how many years without any cookies? And I know that this is a positive relationship still. But. No, I bribed my horses if they done this has been an excellent conversation.

I’m I have a whole page of other topics that we’re going to have to save for another podcast because I think regulation is going to be a lot for people to think about and digest and especially because it talked horse and human. But yeah, how do people follow along with you and find out what you’re doing and all that good stuff? Couple places we do have a website, actually a newly designed. Brand new website. Brand spanking new ridingfar.com and there you can find information about us information about all the different kinds of things that we do.

We have an events calendar and also we have a an insights page, A blog page. So there’s tons and tons of resources about some of our thinking and stuff that we’ve been talking about We. We’re on all the usual places, Facebook, Instagram, talk and. Are we on TikTok and LinkedIn? And LinkedIn I think we are on TikTok.

When will this go up like? Probably next Thursday. Cool, perfect. So we are a little shameless plug is that we’re launching our first virtual course and this has a lot to do with emotions, but that’s so that is for writing instructors and that is the art and science of teaching and learning and that has to do with helping our instructors understand their students emotions. Awesome.

That will actually be that that will be out there and live by the time you posted so. Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for asking us on and great conversation. Just wandered to some places we don’t typically talk about. So I think it’s really.

Cool, Super cool. Thanks for having us.