Pain or Defiance
Monday, August 31st, 2009A nice young man went to ride his nice horse and found that all the horse would do willingly was walk. The young man did not feel competent enogh to school the horse through the problem and so he asked for my help.
Well I had all my hats on that day; my riding helmet, my therapist’s and trainer’s hats. There was a problem to be solved…..was the horse in pain or just being defiant?
How often do we all come across this problem? Pretty often. The question is how do we deal with it, beat the horse with whip and spur, do the horse whispering/Natural Horsemanship thing, give up because we wouldn’t want to upset the horse so we’ll just walk until it wants to do more? I know what I did and the outcome was successful for the horse, the rider and me.