Even if you really enjoyed the job in the beginning, how long do you think it would take for you to become bored with it and lose all enthusiasm? For many horses, particularly performance or competitive horses, this is their reality. They are bred for a particular purpose, ‘broken’ to that discipline and then trained repetitively over and over in that one sport.
As horse lovers, one of the things that we prize the most is the natural exuberance and sense of fun and play that horses have. Watching a group of foals run and play and displaying their natural abilities is a wondrous thing. We watch them gallop, slide stop, turn, jump and buck, then slip straight into piaffe, passage, flying lead changes all with beautiful self carriage and grace. All of these things they do naturally right from the day they are born. Their play is a part of their development and survival. They do it because they can, because it’s fun and it feels good.
Then, one day, along comes the trainer to teach the horse how to run, spin, slide, piaffe, do lead changes!!! This becomes the horse’s routine, over and over until he gets it right! Unfortunately, although the manoeuvres may become ‘correct’ it is very often at the expense of any kind of natural expression, movement and enthusiasm that the horse may have otherwise contributed.
One of the great things about the Quantum Savvy programme, is that it enables you do develop yourself and your horse in so many different and diverse areas, that will leave you both multi-purposed and skilled and with a wide variety of interesting tasks to challenge yourselves with.
Beyond the Foundation Programme of Level s 1 – 3, if you have a particular sport in mind, try to perpetuate this idea of ‘cross training’ in order to keep both of you interested and enthused. Exercising different muscles, be they mental, emotional or physical, is always beneficial as it gives you other things to think about, stretches your comfort and therefore competence zones and may just provide you with a broader range of options and solutions when focusing on your chosen sport. Trail riding may well just help your dressage by encouraging your horse to go forward. Dressage manoeuvres may just help your camp-drafter by teaching him to engage his hindquarters! This doesn’t mean do something different everyday. Consistency and some repetition is needed in order to hone skills and form patterns. However, a little variety may just spice things up a little for both of you and put the fun back into your horsemanship.
Be provocative, keep it interesting and enhance the natural exuberance and play drive of your horse. Heart and desire may well be you reward.
Read More Road To Horsemanship articles.
- By Meredith Ransley, Quantum Savvy.