It's all about give
and take

Ever stopped to think how much time you spend with your horse doing nothing but giving without expecting anything in return? Just finding those spots that your horse loves to have rubbed or scratched – on the withers, under the tail, maybe on the chest?

Most of us recognize the time-driven ritual of 'riding' that generally involves catching our horse, perhaps giving a quick brush, tossing on the saddle and heading out, expecting to have a nice, enjoyable experience. Then, if there's time, a quick hose down before a feed and turnout.

It's pretty one-sided relationship – and not in favour of the horse.

So, during the first 10 minutes of the clinic, we found those special spots and rubbed and relaxed our horses to set the tone for the day: remaining calm and establishing feel, trust and communication with our horse. These fundamentals would help ensure we'd work well together, both within the comfortable confines of the arena and out in the challenging uncertainty of the bush.

We moved on to exercises to help us develop the 'feel' necessary to know exactly where our horseÕs feet are at. But more than that, riding blind toward a cone in the middle of the arena gave us powerful insight into just how much we interfere with our horses because we rely on our reins and ignore what we can feel and communicate through our seat, resulting in continuous and often confusing signals. Some bareback work only enforced the amount of information we lose through the saddle.

The afternoon saw us saddled up and going bush to complete an obstacle course that involved all sorts of out-of-place things like blue tarps to walk over and under, log 'jumps' and trees sporting long streamers – great for testing the trust between horse and rider. Many of us experienced the nervous tension that comes from a fear of moving out of our comfort zone in the arena and into the unknown of the bush. In some cases, this translated quickly into tensing the horse and having to re-establish calmness and trust.