It's easy to read someone's account of horse training and give advice.
Hard is having a horse run away from every thing you do and you don't know in her panic when or how it will end. Hard is getting back on that horse, feeling her go back into preparation for take off, and breathing.
I had another lesson with Katie today, the first riding lesson on Whisper ever. She had improved over last week's session with the training time I put in on her this past week. Started by longeing and working verbal cues, it was time to get on. Whisper wasn't in a great head space, she wasn't relaxed, typical her the longe work jacked her up, but she was responding (not that there was another choice) to me.
Once I got on she gave me worst case Whisper, a good thing with a trainer standing right there. We worked half-halts and dead stops when Whisper began to speed up.
I know that relaxing myself when riding her is mandatory, that being relaxed and in control is an absolute requirement. Sitting on a horse who radiates speed, flight, and power who curls her body up to run. Makes her spine rigid. Her nose to the sky. A halt producing either backwards, forward, or sideways movement.... this is up there with some of the hardest, maybe THE hardest thing I've ever had to do mentally.
We did do it and we ended with a few laps where I could feel Whisper's large stride walk (her most relaxed walk), her back loose and moving with her motion, her head dropping down.
Pushing through where I don't want to go, where everything in me says "This isn't worth it, I don't want to, I want to stop" beyond the edges of what feels right and into the dark parts of things that are broken and unpredictable... dangerous. I can only be better for it.
"A horse is the projection of peoples' dreams about themselves - strong, powerful, beautiful - and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence." Pam Brown
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