Live & Learn

the owners also. They are the horses support structure and too often there is not enough. I am not accusing anyone of abuse or negligence just a lack of understanding of the fact that things do not have to be this way.
After I have had a horse in training there is a significant change in his behaviour and often it seems his personality has changed the horse has become more relaxed less threatened less spooky etc. His personality has not changed but through an empathetic approach with a clear understanding of expectations for behaviour tolerance for honest errors and encouragement for effort rather than correctness the true relaxed rational personality of the horse is allowed to develop.
I am not trying to brag about how good I am and point fingers about how bad others are. This is not an ego trip. I just see things differently than many horse people do and therefore address things differently. The result of that is a horse that behaves comfortably rationally and predictably
Horses are easily overwhelmed and consumed by fear because we do not allow them to empower themselves. We dominate them and take their responsibilities away leaving them with no decision making skills no self esteem no confidence and no coping mechanisms. It is no wonder there are so many badly behaved horses out there. Ignorance intolerance and ego will continue to develop horses that are poorly behaved and expected to be difficult. If we do not change the attitude that we have towards our horses we are destined to breed own and train horses that are difficult.
I like to think that over the years I have learned to work smart and not hard. There are many many horse owners and trainers who allow their horses to develop into wonderful calm confident horses.
There are still a few horse people however that just like to work hard. It is not technique in training that I am criticizing but the approach to what the horse is and what he is capable of. The horse world is very goal oriented and I think that those goals would be easier to achieve if we would spend more time preparing the horse to be what we want rather than fixing him when he is not the horse we want. It could be that simple.