Do You Remember The Day When You Stopped Blaming Your Horse?

Do you remember the day when you got in from the ride, angry, frustrated, but most of all hurt and disappointed? As you detacked you huffed to yourself and everyone around you about how your horse had banged you into trees--about how your horse was stubborn--about how your horse would not do anything that you asked him to do.

Do you remember thinking it over, trying to decide if you should just sell your horse, or maybe even quit riding all together? Do you remember thinking that maybe the horse just needed a trainer?

Do you remember when it flashed through your mind that your horse treated you with the same lack of respect that very single person in your life did?

Do you remember when you ruminated on each problem that you had with your horse on the trail that day? Do you remember when you stopped ruminating and began analyzing? You started to think less about what your horse was doing on the ride and more about what you were doing on the ride. You started thinking about how you created stress for the horse the moment you nervously mounted up. You realized that you only gave your horse partial cues because you thought that he was going to ignore them anyway. You realize that your mixture of fear and frustration created so much emotional noise that your horse could not hear anything that your body asked him to do. You realized that you were the only person on the ride carrying on a vocal argument with your horse instead of using a few perfectly consistent verbal cues.

You realized that instead of simply telling your horse "no" when he reached over to nibble tall wild grasses, you actually told your horse how much the feed cost that you were buying for him and that according to the directions on the bag he had had enough to eat and that he should not be trying to eat more. 

And that day became one of the most important days in your life. You decided to learn how to ask your horse to comply in a way that the horse could understand. You decided to insist that your horse do as you instructed. You began to complain less and enjoy more. You began talking more at the office and you even spoke up to clarify a misunderstanding that your boss had about last week's shipment. You began telling your child that go to bed. And you began telling him only once. Gradually you noticed that there was less arguing between you and the kids. You started thinking about it and realized that you argued less with your kids beginning at the same time that you stopped arguing with your horse.

You even noticed that instead of getting your Whopper with onions on it the way that you always had--even though onions nearly always caused indigestion--you ordered your hamburger without onions. You looked in the mirror after you got a hair  cut and  thought that your hair looked better than it ever had. Then you remembered that you told your barber, for the first time in the decade that you had been his regular customer, exactly how you wanted your hair cut.

Of course, there were those few scary days when you realized that the horse was not to blame and you instead blamed yourself. And you blamed yourself hard. You were good at blaming yourself because the reality is that you have been blaming yourself for everything from the the earliest years of your life. That was when your parents steadily salted their language with words to make sure that you understood  that you really were not good enough.

And then you made the most important change in your life that you ever had. You came to realize that one can only be fairly blamed for something that one has control over.

And you realized that you could have more control over your horse, your job, your family, and your life.

It took a while, but you did it and it all began the day that you stopped blaming your horse.

Riding With Focus Helps One Live With Focus

Perhaps it is the hardest thing for riding students to learn. We "steer" the horses with our reins as a last resort, the final step before effectuating a turn. Pulling on the horse's head is not the first step in turning. It is a step to be used only if necessary.

A turn is accomplished in four steps--the same is  steps every single time that the turn is to be made. First one looks hard in to the direction that one wishes to go--not a quick fleeting glance but an intense stare, even if only for a moment. Then one leans in that direction. The third step is to push the horse's hip away using the leg on the same side that one wishes to turn.

If, after completing all of these steps, the horse has not begun to make the turn one may pull the rein back (not up, back) until the horse begins to make the turn.

The very instant that the horse begins to consider thinking about the possibility of perhaps making the turn is the time that  the pressure comes off of the rein. If this technique is used with 100% consistency the result  is a horse that begins to make the turn the moment the rider focuses on the direction in which the horse is to turn. Such a horse can often be guided by sight and leg and the lightest of contact with the rein.

There are many other systems of cues that can be used to turn horses.  Provided that those systems are used with perfect consistency they will get good results. I like our system of cues because it teaches focus and intense, momentary concentration.

The ability to shift into a mode of intense alertness and concentration is a an important life skill for humans. It is of particular benefit in an emergency situation where a clear head and quick thinking can make the difference between life and death.

It also is a great exercise to help kids develop the most important skill to enhance the ability to learn. It helps kids learn to pay attention.  There is no learning without paying attention and focus makes that possible.

The Opposite Of Factory Farming

"Astrophysics at our fingertips
And we're standing at the summit
And some man with a joystick
Lands a rocket on a comet
We're living in an age
Where limitations are forgotten
The outer edges move and dazzle us
But the core is something rotten
And we're standing on the precipice
Of prejudice and fear
We trust science just as long
As it tells us what we want to hear
We want our truths all fair and balanced
As long as our notions lie within it" 

  "What It Means" Patterson Hood


"It's not too late. It's not too late, to build a newer world." 

Robert Francis Kennedy, referencing Tennyson in "Ulysses"


This is a trying time. It is also one of the most exciting times to be an American that we have ever had.  We are beginning to slice open the abscess that has crippled our nation from its beginning. As the infection pours away we have opportunities to finally build a more perfect union.

This is not a time for tinkering. It is a time to build a newer world. It is a time to reach back and find the positive values that have held us together over the past few hundred years and work to strengthen those values.

One of those values has been a connection to the soil. It gave us authenticity. It gave us pride in work. It gave us an appreciation of creation. It made us physically and spiritually stronger.

Modern agribusiness with its factory farming system destroys our authenticity. It radically decreased the number of farmers. It gives no appreciation of creation. It has made us physically and spiritually weaker.

As we rebuild our nation we have a chance to rebuild our food production system. We have a chance to reimagine and recreate a system of farming and animal husbandry.

We have a chance to build a world in which city kids and suburban kids can come together to learn to work the soil, and, most importantly, to work that soil together.

Does this sound too vague and amorphous? I understand if you can't understand what I mean. I would not be able to understand either, had I not observed the improvement in the quality of young people's lives that occurs when they put down the cell phone and pick up a shovel or a bridle.

The first step is to make it a national priority to expand agricultural education in our public schools. We must do so without allowing that education to become mere propaganda for agribusiness conglomerates.

The second step is to promote nontraditional educational opportunities though both non-profits and for profit businesses that will draw young people from the cities and suburbs out into the sunshine. It is this second step that I am working on at the moment.

One could suggest that  this is a horrible time to try to bring people together to patch up a broken world.

 I could not agree more.

It is also the best time that we have ever had to work together to build a newer world.

Writhing Around Like A Worm On A Hook

It takes confidence to make decisions on one's own. It takes successes to have confidence. It takes risks to gain successes. And it takes opportunities to take risks.

And it is the failure to give kids the opportunity to take risks that is one of the causes of  the epidemic of anxiety disorders found among young people today. Too many kids are given a veto proof power to make life altering decisions, often when they are as young as grade school. The most horrible irony is that allowing small children to make these decisions makes it impossible for them to develop the judgement needed to consistently make sound decisions as they get older.

I am sixty years old. When I was fifteen years old I can say with the greatest of certainly that everyone in my school my age counted down the days until we could get our driver's license. I did not know of anyone who waited until they were eighteen before getting their license.

Today it is commonplace to do so. Many kids lack the confidence to take on driving. The simple reality is that they are afraid to do so.

Many kids my age were afraid to drive. We did so anyway. It would have never occurred to any of us to put off getting a license simply because we were afraid of getting in a wreck.

But this is not simply about automobiles. It is about raising children in a manner that allows them to try to live as children when they are adults. That is a promise of a very unhappy adult life.

But conflict in the home is reduced when little children are allowed to decide that they will step back from all activities that might cause them fear. Parents are allowed to convince themselves that they are doing a great job because there is less conflict when they allow the child to "decide on their own."

As a child we were taught that being a "quitter" was a horrible thing. The word is not even used today. The result is that each of us knows that there are very few people in our lives that we can absolutely count on to do whatever they say they will do. We have raised a nation of people who are perfectly comfortable in saying that they gave something a try "but it was just not my thing." so they quit.

That ethos makes it very easy to quit marriages and other complex relationships when they stop "just being (your) thing." That ethos make it very easy to complete 60% of a task and consider the job done.

Perhaps it would be worth it if this lack of parental guidance produced happy adults, but who can even suggest that that is the result. We produce too many adults who cannot make decisions, who agonize over every alternative put before them, who live as if "planning" to do something is as good as actually fulfilling commitments.

And they are profoundly unhappy people. Kids need to be tough, because life is tough. Toughening your kids does not make you a bad parent. It does not mean that you lack compassion. Your  love, coupled with wisdom and understanding, will give your kids a better shot at a happy, meaningful life if you give the the chance to take chances.

The lesson of the round pen is the recipe for that happy, meaningful life. That lesson is hard for many modern parents to accept. When a kid is tossed from a horse there are really only three questions that matter--Are you injured or just in pain? Is the horse injured? What is taking you so long to get back on the horse?

A kid that learns this in the horse lot applies it to every time life tosses that kid.

To deprive a child of the confidence that that child earns (and earn is the correct word because getting back on is a true accomplishment) in overcoming fear is to fail as a parent.

Without being given that chance to earn confidence the child ( and future adult) will  face each challenge with as little hope as has a worm on a fish hook.

The Journey From Overwhelmed to Whelmed

The nation tied up in a threefold  crisis of leadership and a profound lack of moral clarity, the complications of keeping our program going in this financial and health crisis and the natural consequences of the battle between the  clock and the body will wear one out.

It is in such a time that accomplishments and successes take on a heightened importance. It is in such a time that the advice that I have given to scores of young people who find themselves nearly paralyzed by depression becomes even more important.

Get up. Get going. Move--and move in the sunshine.

I find myself bound tight, knowing that there is more to do than I am doing. And then I remind myself--just because you can't do everything does not mean that you cannot do anything.

So I am doing something. Scoundrel Days is a high percentage Grand Canyon stallion. He has been ridden in the past but is not even close to being green broke.

But he will be soon.

 Not long ago I rode his daughter from Queen Jane, Bella Note. It has been a decade since I felt such power in such a small package. She carries my 220 pound frame as if I weighed no more than  a bare back pad.

And Scoundrel will too. I am in my third day of training him to saddle and we spent a nice time riding in the round pen without incident this morning. He will become one of my main trail horses.

And it will not change the world. It will not provide a cure to the virus. It will not convert neo-nazis and Klansmen into decent people. It will not provide anyone a single job.

But it will be important. It will remind me of who I am. And the entire experience will be whelming.