Hi. I've been subscribed to your newsletter for a few weeks now and I really enjoy it. I've also read your book RIDING FOR THE REST OF US and have found it very helpful.
I am a beginning adult rider who started lessons a few months ago and just bought a nice gelding on whom I will continue my lessons at the stable where he's boarding. My problem concerns my instructor and her general attitude towards and way of dealing with my horse. She seems to be of the "jerk and shout" school of horse-handling. I know it's important not to let my horse take advantage of me or develop bad habits, so I want to avoid that, but I'm not comfortable with nor convinced of the necessity of so much harshness. My horse is basically a mellow guy who however does not stand quietly in the crossties and who was chewing at his bit a lot the other night. Are there ways of teaching him to stand quietly in the crossties (or in other situations) without a lot of lead/reins jerking and shouting? Any suggestions appreciated.
Janet
The "jerk and shout" school isn't one you need to attend: all you will learn is behaviours, techniques, and an attitude that you will have to lose later on, if you decide that you're interested in good riding and horsemanship. If you've ever tried to re-learn ANY skill, you know how hard it is to change the way you've learned to do something. It's much, much better to find someone who can teach you to do it right the first time around. When horses are involved, it's even more important to learn things right the first time! If the subject is tennis or typing, you'll only hurt and inconvenience YOURSELF by learning badly and having to re-learn later. When the subjects are riding and horsemanship, you'll hurt the horse -- something I am quite sure you do NOT want to do.
Horses develop bad habits through being treated badly. They don't actually sit up at night planning how to annoy and inconvenience their owners and riders. ;-) Horses don't come with bad habits or an interest in "getting away with things"; they can be TAUGHT bad habits if they are handled by unkind humans, and the lessons will be learned just as well whether the unkindness is deliberate or based on pure ignorance.
Your instincts are good. Trust them. You KNOW that the way to teach a horse to be relaxed and quiet in a given situation has to involve something other than hitting the horse and yelling at it in that situation. Horses aren't all that different from humans, cats, dogs, or any other animal -- they quickly learn to know where their "safe" places are, and where the "unsafe" places are. How would YOU feel about being confined in a place where you are regularly abused? Would you be peaceful and confident and quiet and calm, or would you be nervous, anxious, and feeling a strong wish to be just about anywhere else? Would you jump or startle or try to turn around to see what was coming at you, whenever you heard a noise or saw something move? I think you would.
Your horse doesn't sound as if he has a problem, and neither do you -- apart from the one BIG problem of having an inappropriate instructor.
I wish I could tell you that you would be able to learn good riding and good horsemanship from someone who has this sort of attitude, but I can't. It just doesn't work that way. You wouldn't put your child in a daycare center run by someone who disliked children, and if you were interested in becoming a child-care worker, you probably wouldn't want to be trained by someone like this. Similarly, you wouldn't put your grandmother in a home run by someone who disliked the elderly and infirm, and if you wanted to learn to care for the elderly and infirm, you certainly wouldn't want to get your training from that person.
Think about what you want from your riding lessons -- I'm guessing that you want horses to be part of your life forever, and that you are genuinely fond of your horse. You owe it to BOTH of you to get the best possible instruction, and that means finding a teacher who actually likes and understands horses. The student-teacher relationship is a complex one, and you can't learn well from someone you don't trust. You need to be able to trust and believe in your instructor -- something you're obviously not going to be able to do in this situation.
What will happen if you stay with this instructor? In all probability, one of two things. Either you abdicate your interest in real horsemanship and will become like her, because you will absorb her attitude and beliefs along with her instruction, or you will become less and less comfortable until you finally leave her after a dramatic incident provokes you to the point where you make a loud, drastic break with her. Neither option is a good one. In the first instance, you say goodbye to any hope of becoming a horseman, and you embrace the concept that the relationship between horse and rider is fundamentally adversarial ("Make him do this!" "Don't let him get away with that!"). It will change you as a person, in a way that you really shouldn't want to be changed. In the second instance, you will become steadily more unhappy and more frustrated as your instincts and private readings take you in a different direction -- toward horsemanship -- until you finally explode and break the connection. And at that point, you'll have to find another instructor anyway -- so why not find one NOW, while you are only moderately uncomfortable and the situation is only moderately unpleasant?
I know that this probably isn't the answer you wanted. But I think that all of your instincts are pushing you to make a necessary change, and I think you should listen to them. When you learn to ride, you need a solid foundation, not just of skills, but of thought patterns and attitudes and understanding. Without a good foundation, no real progress is possible.
I know what you're feeling: that you don't know enough to evaluate your instructor, and that you don't know enough about horses to know what's right, and that she's a "professional", after all, and who are you, a mere novice, to question her? The answer is simple: you DO know enough, and you are an ADULT.
The advantage of learning to ride as an adult is that you bring a lot of assets to the project: emotional maturity, good sense, and the ability to "do homework" and evaluate your instructor. The disadvantage is that you have less leeway and less time to recover from major mistakes -- so use that maturity, sense, etc. to keep you from making the kind of mistakes that will take you down the wrong path. Do the hard work now -- find a good, competent, safety-oriented, horse-loving instructor NOW, even if it makes your life complicated for a little while. Set yourself up for success instead of failure. You DO have the ability to judge and evaluate. Would you entrust your child to someone who hit her in the face? No? Then why would you entrust your horse and your riding education to someone who is violent and loud and uses the reins and bit to punish the horse? Everything about that is entirely, utterly unacceptable, and you know it -- your adult wisdom and your good instincts are telling you so.
I'll tell you the same thing that I tell my clinic students, and the same thing that I tell people who attend my lectures and demonstrations:
Don't take even ONE step down a path that's leading somewhere you don't want to go.
Jessica
P.S. As you've probably noticed, I changed your name and took out some details about your horse, so that you won't risk "discovery" if your instructor reads this before you are ready to make the break. ;-)
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