​March was a whirlwind of a month including 3 clinics! March 10, I took a couple of students to audit a clinic with Daniel Stewart at Swan Brook Equestrian Center in ME. March 17-19 Amanda and I rode with Eric Smiley in SC. March 31-April 1 I rode with Sharon White at Pirouette Farm in VT. ​

Eric Smiley
Coming from the Daniel Stewart clinic and going straight into a few days with Eric couldn't have created a more perfect mind set. My goal for my time in Aiken was to get us comfortable in front of jumps. I tend to hyper focus and ether tighten or throw my shoulders over the fence before my horse. This has and probably always will be my weakness, but weaknesses can get stronger and when you have a petite red mare you've gotta not throw her off. 

My first ride with Eric was on our first full day in SC. (we got delayed by snow...) So I was riding her out in a huge field for the first time all year and was expecting the old wild mare to come out. The first thing Eric said was, "why are you controlling so much? With her head down there she can't think ahead!" Well, you're right. I didn't have an answer that was anything more than "well, she used to be naughty"! SHE USED TO BE NAUGHTY.... she's not any more, Emily, so stop riding her like she is being naughty... duh!!!! After almost 5 years of riding a fire breathing baby dragon I guess I didn't realize how much I was still riding her like she hadn't grown up. 

Day 2 with Eric was a stadium jump day in the field. With the epiphany from the day before, I let her have a little more thinking room and warmed her up. She was great! My focus was to JUST RIDE! We had spent all winter on fixing my position in my jump saddle so it was time to breathe and just ride. We worked on straightness, which she felt very solid with! After a few "let's just throw my shoulders at the jump" moments, I pulled my act together and let her take me over the fences. The quality of her canter felt 100% better than last year and she made great choices- when I let her. 

Day 3 with Eric was cross country at The Vista. This was Belle's first official cross country school. She warmed up beautifully trotting through the water to get from point A to B, and really just felt at home. Eric had us take short, unorganized approaches to some small logs with the idea that it's their job to look ahead and make quick decisions and reactions. Upon landing, we would stop, turn sharp right or turn sharp left- even if there was a fence there. This was to get them to learn to land and immediately check in with us before continuing. Belle got the concept early and started not only landing better, but jumping the jumps with a better bascule and softer. After he had us jump the jumps individually, we began creating small courses where it was out job to point and their job to jump. By the end of it Belle was jumping all of the Novice sized jumps, up and down banks, down into water, and over ditches. Thrilled was an understatement. Not once did she feel overwhelmed, she just got more and more relaxed and confident. 

I can't wait to see Eric this summer and have his help in continuing to build this amazing red mare's confidence! 

​I think the biggest take home that I got out of all of these lessons was that I know what I'm doing. Everything that I was told were already things that I was thinking or telling my riders to do. This is such a wonderful feeling! The idea that I AM on the right path and my training lines up so well with such amazing trainers and horsemen humbles me. It was wonderful to have them be my eyes on the ground and support what my natural instincts are. 

Although it was a VERY long month, I feel like the stars are aligning and my red mare and I are going to ROCK it this year! ​

​As we all start coming out of this bitter cold winter, starting to put shows on our calendar and planning our year it can make us feel like we aren't quite where we wanted to be. Some of us start looking at clinics, some head south, and some are just itching to get out of the walls of the indoor, but no matter what a lot of us are feeling a little pressed for time to "get ready". But if we take a second to look back at where we came from we can usually find that we are actually ahead of where we wanted to be. 

A big part of this "where we wanted to be" tends to need to be taken down a few notches. Sort of like the saying, "before you head out the door, take off one piece of jewelry" (which, let's be honest is more like "take some more hay out of your hair"... but your get the picture) We have our big stary eyed dreams, then our more realistic and attainable goals. It's important to make your goals realistic or you truly will be bummed each and every time that you didn't progress enough. If your horse is still working on trotting a circle, don't have high hopes of going 1* mid summer. But, do set goals that make you slightly uncomfortable and then break those goals into bite sized, attainable pieces and get to work. 

Since most of us are somewhere on the Type A spectrum, it's important to remember to celebrate the success of those bite sized pieces. All too often we forget what the little goal inside the big goal was and just use it as a measure of how far we still have to go, not how far we have come. As I tell my riders to help keep things in perspective- it takes 8-10 weeks to build a muscle (your brain is a muscle too). So what is your goal for the next 8 weeks? Is it to get a better canter transition to the left? Make your horse more equally supple in both directions? Be able to hold the canter over all of the poles? When you make small attainable goals like that and give yourself a realistic timeline you are far more likely to achieve them... and sometimes it only takes 2 weeks WOO HOO!!! When you're starting to approach the success of one goal, start to create another BUT take a second (or a few rides) to enjoy what used to be hard. ​

​We have had the new barn up for 9 months, so I'm starting to have "on this day" memories come up with pictures from Bryan and I building it on Facebook. It is amazing how far we have come in such a short amount of time! I'm stressing about not having the fancy finishing touches on things and a year ago we just started building our first wall! That is an incredibly humbling feeling. Only a little over a year ago there was no barn. I'm allowing myself to feel small in front of such a huge accomplishment. That is amazing. I am so proud of us. I am so proud of me. If I had only looked forward to what HASN'T been done yet, I would never feel so proud. 

I was going through my pictures on my phone tonight and came across a video of a dressage test of Belle this summer. Now, that day was an emotional roller coaster for her but it was still a respectable score. I can't even believe it was the same horse I have the privilege of sitting on these days. Although I know I wasn't putting any pressure on her to be at a certain point then, our partnership and her confidence have dramatically changed in 8 months. Her posture and expression have transformed her into a ballerina. That video helped me appreciate where we are now so much more than I could have ever expected. 

Do yourself a favor before the hustle and bustle of show season comes... take a minute and remember where you came from. Your red mare will get you where you want to go, if you enjoy the ride.

I used to pride myself in being a bare bones, most basic, purist when it came to training. I thought that using anything other than a snaffle meant that you hadn't put in enough time training or that there was a hole in your training foundation. I used to think that if you couldn't get it done without any gadgets that you should just keep grinding the gears until you could figure it out. Well, I was wrong. 

The talk that I have with all of my students when they are learning about contact and a horse being "round", or "through", or "on the bit" or whatever you want to call it goes something like this:
Me- "What do we sit on?"
Rider- "Their back"
Me- "Is that a strong place or a weak place on the horse?"
Rider- thinks, looks around at the horse then with some slight sound of dread... "weak"
Me- "yes, we sit on the weakest part of their body. When they don't have a rider on them, they are perfectly safe to move however they want, but when we get on it's our job to get them to use their other muscles and body parts to turn their back into a strong place so that they don't get injured from carrying our weight."

So, if it's our job to keep them sound... because we all know they weren't the ones with the bright idea of putting 150lb on their back... isn't it also our job to fill our tool box full of tools to help them? Isn't it our job to fill our tool box with tools that support our horses while our students learn to do it all on their own? 

Now I'm not talking about cutting corners or forcing false frames, but I am talking about being well educated about equine anatomy, physiology and bio mechanics and using appropriate tools to encourage or support a horse to use their body properly. If we all know that a horse needs steady contact to push their forward energy into, but we have a rider who is still only able to focus on the "forward energy" part why not offer the horse (and rider) a steady contact via neck stretcher? That way, the horse has a contact that won't drop away a million times and the rider can feel what it's like to send the horse toward a steady contact and what happens to their frame and gaits when they have a steady contact on the other end of the forward energy. Wouldn't that help connect the dots for what our riders are looking to feel better than trying to explain it to death? Teaching someone to FEEL something is HARD... why not find ways for them to learn the feel by feeling it? And in the mean time, let's not allow our horses to go around inverted and risk injury. The Spanish Riding School doesn't allow their horses to go around like giraffes while their students spend what I'm sure seems like a century on the line with no reins... so why should we? 

​When I have a rider who is jumping a horse who gets strong to the fences, should I let her flounder in a snaffle... teaching her to start riding backwards toward the jump and increasingly killing the nerves in the horse's mouth, or should I give her some tools to help her ride softly and help her horse learn to follow the leader? The right bit for the job can make a world of difference. Does this mean that we skip the basics and ignore whatever the root of the "strong to fences" issue is? No. But it does mean that I'd rather keep my rider having good habits, a horse who can be ridden softer, and a team that approaches jumps safely. 

​I have seen so many of my riders put on a well adjusted neck stretcher for the first 10 minutes of their ride, get their horses forward and get the feel of the steady connection and then take it off to then be able to seamlessly go replicate the feeling.... that right there is magical. Why would we deny our riders such a wonderful way to discover connection with their horse?

So, this post may not be about my red mare... but if my red mare has taught me one thing it is to work smarter not harder and find the best tools for the job. 

When Belle came off the track, she had been consuming about 18 quarts of grain per day. To put that in perspective a horse's stomach is roughly the size of a foot ball. They can only safely fit about 5 quarts in it at a time. Many boarding barns are only willing to feed up to about 8 quarts per day. Race horses routinely get fed a crap load of grain because they are sprinters and use a lot of energy in a short amount of time and grain has a lot of calories. So transitioning horses from what they are fed on the track to what they will be fed as a "normal" horse can sometimes be tricky since their metabolism is used to processing such high quantities. 

Belle grew like Jack's bean stalk in the first 2 years. It was so hard to keep weight on her that I would loose sleep over it. She was ribby and had long spider legs, and vibrated ALL THE TIME so she was using all of the 10 quarts of grain I was feeding her, plus some. I tried fat supplements, amino acids, extra other protein and many of the latest and greatest grains out there. She was on a calming supplement at all times because without it she couldn't bare to be in her own skin. I was still struggling to figure out why she wasn't getting stronger, and many trainers would tell me "put more weight on her so she has more to turn into muscle"... well, I would if I could. 

​All good horsemen know that the base of a horse's diets should be forage. We do not have access to pasture, so hay it is. Hay is great, if your horse will eat it. The most that I could ever get into Belle was 12 pounds in 24 hours. They say that horses need 15-20% of their weight in forage. So if Belle weighs approximately 1000 pounds, 12 pounds of hay would barely sustain an easy keeper, never mind a hard one. I've tried second cut, I've tried it in a hay bag, I've tried it loose on the ground, it didn't matter. So I resorted to adding hay stretcher, beet pulp, alfalfa cubes, you name it. 

We finally got her to a weight that I was ok with. She was still a hot head, and reactive to way more than I'd like. I kept telling her that if she would stop having dramatic outbursts that he could use that energy for good instead of evil. JUST STAND STILL AND GAIN SOME WEIGHT! But we kept plugging along. 

I am a researcher. If I want to know about something (like how to make my skinny mare fat) I will stay up far after my bed time reading university studies, scrolling though forums, comparing nutrition facts, etc. I had always thought "wouldn't it be nice to have a horse that could be on zero grain" and "concentrated grains can't be the only option" but I had put all of this effort into getting her to an ok weight... taking her off of grain may totally throw a wrench in things. This past August, we decided to try her on an altrenogest hormone therapy. Her heat cycles didn't seem that bad before, but this year her hormones seemed to be taking her on a bit more of a roller coaster ride and it was tough on both of us. For those of you who don't know- altrenogest suppresses estrus in mares, making her hormones get back in their jail cell and behave themselves. It is an oily liquid consistency and highly hazardous to women. So, while this magic juice did help Belle A LOT, it also is pretty toxic to have to handle each day. So I was back on the web to find a better long term solution. 

I found a few mare owners who stated that taking their horse off of all soy made a night and day difference in how reactive they were. I did more research and found that owners with super hot horses had a different, calmer, horse when they took them off of soy and grains. "OK, I've come this far", I said to myself, "might as well dive in"!

​Why no soy? Soy has phytoestrogens called isoflavones. Phytoestrogens are compounds found in plants that are chemically similar to the hormone estrogen. So, when you're trying to control the naughty estrogen already in your mare's body... adding more may tip her over the edge. Just about every grain company out there uses soy as one of the top ingredients. It is a good, cheap source of protein and easy to mix with other ingredients. 

Why no grain? Many of the grains that are fed to horses are high in sugar and non structural carbohydrates (NSC). The type and amount of sugar can create insulin resistance or sugar highs and lows. Horses are created to digest structural carbohydrates, like grass, with their hind gut. When you feed them NSCs, they rely on their foregut to digest it all and if it passes to the hind gut without being completely broken down it can cause all kinds of issues. 

We feed grain to horses who are working in order to support the extra protein, fat, calories and minerals their bodies need. So I needed to find a way to replace the minerals and vitamins, and provide extra calories, fat, and protein. Many grain companies make a ration balancer to help add vitamins and minerals to a diet that doesn't need a lot of grain (ponies!!) BUT most ration balancers have soy as the binding ingredient. So, I did more research and finally found a company that creates a soy free balancer! (I ultimately went with their High Point instead of Fuel) Replacing the calories fed in grain is much easier, I decided to feed a mixture of beet pulp and alfalfa pellets. Replacing the fat is easy too, I decided to use ground flax seed, which also offers a good amount of extra protein and a few other vitamins including extra E. 

​I slowly transitioned Belle to her new diet over the course of 3 weeks. After 2, I already noticed a difference. After completely switching her, I had a new horse. She wasn't vibrating out of her own skin, she wasn't over reacting to sounds or being spooky, she was leading to and from the paddock like a gem and overall she just started to be a peach to be around! Not only was she calm, cool and collected.... she was EATING!!! She couldn't wait for her next meal and was finishing all of her hay. She has kept her weight and I'm hoping to have her gaining more now that she will happily eat whatever is put in front of her. 

I have a pony mare that came here in the Fall. She's a cutie and mostly red ;) but had been out of work for a while and just seemed amped up more than she'd like to be. I had hoped that after she got into the routine that she would settle, but it never really happened. I had tried a full horse size dose of two different calming supplements and they barely made a dent. After two weeks off of grains and soy my kids were asking "what did you do with Maybel?!" She seems to be so much happier in her own skin which makes her much easier to use, and that means I can use her more and she is loving it. 

I have two more mares at the farm that struggle with their heat cycles, a horse who cribs and is chronically ulcery, another horse very prone to ulcers, and one who could use a little less energy to use for evil. So, I'm becoming one of "those" barns that is crunchy like granola and doesn't feed her horses fast food. I'm still in the process of transitioning most of them to their new diet and will be keeping a very close, skeptical, eye on everyone's weight and condition but for now I'm sold. When you have a red mare it pays to go back to the basics of nutrition. 

It may be because it's the middle of winter and everyone is getting stir crazy but I have found myself repeating one version or another of this idea over and over to my students:
​BE PROACTIVE NOT REACTIVE.

Being proactive with a red mare may mean noticing the weather change that will make her back tight, making sure you wont shock her when taking her blanket off, or noticing a potential spooky thing and redirecting her attention before she sees it. Whatever it may be, it will work much better than reacting to her reaction. Belle is the queen of anticipation. She reacts to things that she as come across before, when I didn't notice it was a "thing" then she over reacts next time around. So I have learned to pay attention and know what's coming before it comes. Diffusing the bomb is much easier (and less stressful for her) than cleaning up the mess after the explosion. 

Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be The Horse Whisperer. But shouldn't we actually be aspiring to be better horse listeners instead? If we are not interested in listening to what they have to tell us, why should we care whether we whisper or shout? 

Before I had Belle, Spot was my main man. He was incredibly stoic when it came to his feelings. So I learned to pay very close attention to if he was acting even slightly out of the ordinary. If he did ever tell me something was wrong it was usually after it had festered for a while and he ended up telling me in some round about way; typical man. So when I began working with Belle, I was ready to pay attention if she was trying to tell me when something was wrong. Like all smart, strong willed women she was incredibly vocal about her feelings. She was also a spicy baby dragon, so sometimes it took me a little while to understand what she was saying.

When we began working a bit harder than just playing with the very basics under saddle, she started bucking and twisting and leaping though the air like she was the main act in Cirque de Soleil. This usually happened any time we cantered to the right. I tried pushing her forward, stopping her, lunging before riding, chiropractic, xrays, injections, etc. Multiple trainers told me to use draw reins or a running martingale or other methods of making her stay on the ground but I had a feeling that there was a reason. Is she spicy, yes. Is she naughty, no. I refused to think that she deserved to be reprimanded so we just kept on keeping on. Her canter got better, but not believable enough for me. I tried using K Tape, a rope behind her butt when lunging, and researched any other ideas on how to help engage her core more but couldn't quite figure out a way that I was happy with. 

​When I tried starting to jump her, she acted as if I had shot her out of a cannon. She became frazzled and reactive. Many people told me to just keep working on it and she would get used to it. But she really didn't act much different no matter what I did or how long I had worked on it. So I decided to keep working on the dressage, hoping to get her stronger. She was doing very well in competitions and everyone was very complimentary of her, but she wasn't feeling as strong as I thought she should. She was SO athletic, I knew there was more to her. 

I kept consulting with medical professionals and well respected trainers and while I trusted their advice, I trusted Belle more. I finally talked chiropractor and physiologist, Heather Beaudry, to squeeze me into her schedule. A few of my clients were having her work on their horses and from what they had said and what I saw in my client's horses she had a slightly different view than anyone I had previously consulted with. It very much matched mine, actually her perspective was more like the big brother of what I was thinking... you know, the one that the little brother always wanted to be like when they grew up. When she came to look at her, she was the first person to point blank tell me that I was right. She wasn't carrying herself correctly and that if I had jumped her she probably would have gotten severely hurt. ((YES!!!)) She swiftly helped design a plan to turn muscles on that had seemingly not even been firing for quite some time. She showed me how to use therapeutic bands while she worked to engage her core and pelvic floor. It was the biggest relief to have someone tell me that my instincts were right and that my horse WAS telling me something was wrong!

​

Remember: she's a sensitive lady who isn't a fan of being touched and I expected these bands to be deemed unacceptable by her but Belle actually seemed relieved. She stopped being so spooky, she focused on the work more and most definitely got stronger- fast. That right there spoke volumes to me. After almost 5 years of trying to figure out what she was trying to tell me, she stopped telling me something was wrong and started coming to class ready to listen. I was able to take my spurs off, ride with barely any whip and whisper my aids to her. I tried jumping, and once she realized that it didn't hurt or scare her any more, I had a beautiful little jumping bean! 

​Over the last few months our relationship and her confidence have strengthened ten fold. Yes, we may have mixed in a little hormone happy juice along the way, but she seemed so relieved that I finally figured it out. Now that we have solved the questions as to whether Belle was just reactive to be reactive or if there was a true underlying issue (clue: there's always a reason), I'm able to sort out if she is trying to tell me about a problem more quickly now.

During the wicked cold spell that we just had, I tried to be thoughtful and add an extra sheet underneath her blanket. Soon after she became incredibly head shy and wouldn't let us put her halter on. At first I thought it had something to do with the altrenogest (hormones) that she was on but it wasn't. I then talked her into letting me touch her head and poll and her poll was hard as a rock. Once I started rubbing it, she leaned into me for a moment and then turned her nose and seemingly pointed at her back. I didn't quite pick up on it at first, but the next time I rubber her poll, she gave me this look as if to say, "would you PLEASE listen" and turned and pointed her nose as close to her withers as it could get. I couldn't believe it... she was telling me what was wrong! I called Heather Beaudry, who has encouraged me to listen to Belle more than anyone else, and she agreed that her second blanket was probably putting pressure on her withers and then it was making her poll tight. So, I took her sheet off and the very next day she was like a different horse! I'm sure she's happier that I'm learning to figure things out quicker... it's probably like having to be partners with the stumpy kid in the 3 legged race for her but I am learning! 

Lastly, she had been such a peach (after the great blanket fiasco of 2018) that I was pumped to bring her in for the farrier and see what he said about her reactiveness, or lack there of, because... you know, when you are excited about something you then want to show it off! But she was wound tighter than an 8 day clock. She came out of her stall sideways and seemed to hold her breath the entire time. He made a joke that she "probably knows something's coming" and I laughed it off, wondering where the dragon flew off to with my sweet little mare. That night while scrolling through Facebook I came across a meme about it being a full, super blue, blood moon... well jokes on us. She DID know something was coming! It wasn't actually something to truly worry about, but hey... the crazies were definitely out in full force and Belle was ready for 'em! 

So, just like the saying in our house is "Bryan's always right"... When your red mare tells you something.... LISTEN!

Now, I am notoriously NOT a treat giver. I think that there are many other ways to become friends, earn trust, acknowledge a job well done, etc. I find that treats are almost always more exciting for the human giving them than the horse eating them. Yes, they may nicker at us or seem more excited when they see us but I don't think that means they love US or even equate a job well done in the arena to a handful of treats once they are back on the cross ties. No matter what Pavlov says, 99% of the time we just look like Italian mothers stuffing our pony's cheeks hoping they know how much we love them. 

I AM a big advocate in giving your horse praise when well deserved. I think that a well timed "good girl" can go a very long way and giving them a rest right after they solved the first step of the puzzle can further your progress by leaps and bounds. I think that horses deserve to be told how amazing they are and you will often hear me cheering "throw him a party!!!" after my students and their horses do something great. But, when you have a red mare who does NOT think that petting is a worthwhile reward... you improvise. 

Belle has had intimacy issues since I got her. The grooms on the track found it funny that when they scratched her belly she would squeal and kick, so they did it relatively often. She also vibrates at such a high frequency that without some extra magnesium in her system it almost seems like being touched hurts. Even with round penning, she has a large "bubble" and takes a long time to relax and join up. I have a red dog with similar feelings about being touched, and honestly... I'm not a huge touchy-feely person either so I get it, more than most. 

Belle loves to be cooed at and told that she's pretty, and when her guard is down LOVES to have her face and ears rubbed. But like all great Thoroughbreds, she's incredibly serious about her work. She also has to work a little harder than those Warmbloods and gets frustrated in the process. So how do you get a girl to know that she was amazing? How do you talk a girl into digging a little deeper when the going gets tough? What do you do when a pat on the back means zilch?                 Food.            (yep, me too Belle) 

While the dressage world loves to hand out sugar for what seems like just having their fancy pracing horses let them stay in the saddle, eventers are much more business like. And although I've lived in dressage land quite a few times I'm an eventer at heart. It took a long time for me to give in to the idea, but when the shoe fits.... give your horse some sugar! 

It has been a long road to getting her core muscles and specifically pelvic floor muscles to function properly. This means it has been very tough for her to jump and do a lengthening in the trot or canter. So, when I do get a good lengthening or a nice calm jump... I immediately stop, rub her neck and pay her for a job well done. The next time she offers a good one I do the same thing. Although they aren't perfect still, I can feel her wheels turning and when it gets tough she seems to dig in a bit deeper than before. 

I went to the Area 1 USEA meeting earlier this month. Tik Maynard was the keynote speaker and he said something that I've always believed, but have never put it as simply. It went something like this: Make your horses world neutral. There are things that they are drawn towards and things that they are drawn away from. It is your job to keep the +'s and   -'s equal. And while I've thought this for a while the timing of hearing it again and in this way was perfect. I had recently been having major problems with Belle being super reactive to her halter going on and I had become frustrated at my fire breathing dragon. But when I went home and consciously worked to keep things neutral I realized that I needed a way to refocus her and give her something positive while she was so certain that something negative was going to come. Insert sugar. Now, while she still anticipates something negative at times she is more willing to trust me and stay focused on what IS happening and not on what MIGHT happen.

 So, the moral of this is that sometimes you have to go against what you believe or do with 90% of the horses you train and try something else. Once Belle felt like she was getting paid fairly for her work, her attitude toward the work changed. 

I have thought about chronicling my adventure with Belle for a while. I have always had horses that other people couldn't seem to figure out, but she has been a type of challenge that I NEVER could have predicted. I got her off of the track at Suffolk Downs, planning to have her as a resale project. She was GORGEOUS and I knew that even if she didn't want to be an eventer she was too pretty to not sell easily. When I started working with her I was immediately infatuated with how quickly she processed things. She was such a hard worker and SO smart. It wasn't soon after putting her back into work that I decided to keep her for myself. I thought she would be a fun challenge and was athletic enough to be competitive. I knew she would teach me things, as all horses do, but she has and still is teaching me more than I could ever imagine. Yes, I have to be an accurate rider but she is making me a smarter, more creative horseman than I ever thought possible. In this blog, I plan to share my experiences and the lessons I learn from them. I will most likely share lessons that I learn from teaching my students, working with other horses, and just running the farm.... but most of it will be about my journey with this impossibly frustrating, incredibly amazing red mare. 

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I'm not talking about natural instincts that the good horsemen talk about. No, I'm talking about learning when to fight with her and prove your point and when to stop what you're doing and find another approach. Let's be honest... in her eyes, you're rarely going to be right. And like all strong willed women, she's not going to admit it even when you are. 

So, how do we know when she is just being a bully, b*tch, alpha mare (whatever you want to call it) and when you are? When I was mainly riding geldings, I firmly believed that they should listen and do what I told them and that if they didn't it was my job to make them. Did I beat my horses? Of course not! But I did expect them to follow me as their intelligent leader, as long as I had given them the education to be able to. Well, Belle changed that. I still take the fact that I am the leader seriously, but with a different respect. GREAT LEADERS raise their followers up. GREAT LEADERS make sure that their followers have the support they need to be successful. GREAT LEADERS listen to their followers. I realized that I have always been a good leader, but she deserves and demands a GREAT leader. I realized that it was (and still is, more often than I'd like to admit) me who was being the b*tch. 

So now that I am on the quest to be the leader that my red mare expects me to be.... how the heck do I balance my fight or flight? Well, I listen to what she has to say. I am a firm believer in the fact that horses who are reactive are actually way more intelligent than we give them credit for. Belle is a hard worker, like most mares are. So when she's spooking, refusing a jump, not letting me catch her, etc. I try to listen before reacting. Is she seeing something that I'm not? Is she uncomfortable in her tack? Does she not understand the question? If she becomes dangerous I do what is necessary to keep myself and her safe, but then I get my brain working s fast as possible to find the root of the problem and create a way for her to be successful in the situation. 

Tonight I taught late and ended up having barely enough time to take her for a hack down the road before dark. As we turned down the road that we had ridden down many times before, a runner appeared from around the bend. Now, Belle 110% is a survivor and something in the distance running at us was not only out of the norm, but according to her we were going to be eaten. She has learned to trust me when I tell her not to run, so she immediately grew roots and wouldn't budge. The runner passed us but Belle wouldn't let it go. Adrenaline had started pumping and what was supposed to be an easy hack was going to turn into a fight to just walk forward. It was a fight that wouldn't set her up for success. So I jumped off and visually became her leader. We walked side by side the 1/2 mile to our destination calm, confident and on a loose rein. Once we got to our turn around spot I hopped on (yep she calmly stood still), and we headed home. It was getting dark but since I didn't let anything eat us on the way out, she was confident on the way back. Now, did I really want to walk the 1/2 mile in my clunky winter boots? NO! But I definitely didn't want to fight and I am confident that the next time we head out on a hack she will remember that it was successful and be happy to go.