How To Overcome Fear With Your Horse?

Have you ever felt like you want to finally get great rides with your horse, but it's gonna be too risky, because your horse is just too spooky?

Have you ever maybe gone to the gate to get your horse, to bring your horse out to ride, and you have that awkward pause.  Those butterflies are building within your stomach, and they're screaming to you, what if something happens?

What if this???

What if that???

What about???

Have you ever felt that burn that deep down the burn of frustration? Because you absolutely know that you can do this, and it seems genuinely within your reach, but somehow you're not able to communicate clearly with your horse and in a way that helps your horse to be relaxed to be calm and have an enjoyable time with you?

Have you ever been tempted to just give up? Because you find your mind sliding into the place.  Well, maybe I'll just get another horse? Or maybe this horse isn't meant for me? Or maybe this just won't work for me?

Have you ever maybe gotten off of what you thought was a pretty good ride? You felt like it was pretty perfect for you too, but it didn't feel amazing?

So if this is you, if you can answer yes to any of those questions, then you're in the right place. Because we're going to talk about fear and overcoming fear with your horse.

In our Harmony For the Horse Program we dig deep into your fears and give you tools to finally resolve the fears that are holding you back from truly enjoying your horse.

CLICK HERE to discover more about how we can help you to reach freedom, achievement, oneness and joy that you most seek with your horse.

So, what is it that you most fear with your horse?

What is it that makes you feel like you're you just say to yourself, "I don't think I know what to do if this happens if my horse decides that there's something really spooky in the corner will I know what to do?", "Maybe I won't know what to do."?

Let me give you an example of I one of our students.  She was always explaining to me that her horse was hot. Her horse was spooky and she was just generally scared to ride, especially on windy days and rainy days.

She didn't know when it was coming but she would actually avoid riding on those kind of days.

 So it was like there's this little pea inside her horse's mind or somewhere inside her horse's body that was rolling around. And when this rainy, windy day happened, that pea would really start to roll around and get ready to explode.

And it was really actually like pouring rocket fuel into a car and not having a steering wheel, it's going to get you nowhere really fast, you can burn a lot of money and time trying out stuff that doesn't work to try to build your confidence, your own confidence, because there's a lot of stuff that doesn't work out there.

And so what I noticed ... what was happening with this student between this rider and this horse ... was that she was becoming so fearful that she was turning into saying things like "my horse is just having a temper tantrum" or "my horse is being really bad and acting up"...

#1...she was actually turning it over to the horse.

This student had very good intentions, and was very aware of what she was doing. But she didn't realize the depth of where she was going with this and where those thoughts, those words, those sentences were coming from.

So even though she had great intentions, there were some critical things that were going on deep inside her and they needed to be addressed before she could do anything with her horse - before she could even move forward with her horse those things had to be addressed.

If you don't know this, you're going to end up with horses, and therefore rides, that are not satisfying.

So there are those critical things that you need to know about yourself before you can progress with your horse.

And the second thing I noticed with her was that...

#2...she didn't have the knowledge to be able to go deep, at the beginning, with her horse ... to tap into the stressors, or I call them buttons, relating to her specific horse.

The third thing I noticed is that

#3...she didn't know how to help her horse coordinate the horse's whole body.

Do you know how to help your horse think through a problem? Do you know what to do when a problem arises?

This is literally the one filter that we use with all of our work with spooky horses and fearful riders.

Because if you don't know how to help your horse to think through a problem for themselves, it just then becomes down to the aids, or it's puppetry and that leads to confusion, overwhelm, frustration. And the fear remains, the fear stays there, it stays there within your horse and it stays there within you.

So then both of you are not empowered. It's that simple.

And it's full of integrity, when you approach it this way.

If I'm not teaching you or my students how to do this, then I'm not honoring myself, and I'm not honoring my horse or your horse.

I want my horses to want to work with me.  I want my horses to want to be with me, and to have a voice and to know that they have a voice. I don't want to manipulate them to do things.

And I don't want to manipulate them inadvertently to do something that is going to hurt themselves or hurt them their bodies.

I don't want to disregard their voice.

So that all sounds like should because that's where you get things like 'sacking out' or 'desensitizing', the 'one rein stop' ... have any of you heard of those things or done those things. And what that leads to is a robot for a horse, a turned off horse, and a horse who is succumbing.

Because there's no other choice, the horse realizes they don't have a voice, they have no way to express what their opinion is. So they just succumb and become obedient. What we need to do instead is we...

Need to change our horse's perspective in a fearful situation

Help them to reconnect with their true, soft, honest movement in order to overcome that, and we want our horses to have a voice.

We want our horses to be able to express themselves, and we want to be able to help them to think through a problem.

How do we do that?  (and this is what we do within our program)

We have to take our horses from the Troubled Position to the True Soft Movement.

So I have another question for you...

Are you crystal clear on that process? Because when a rider is fearful we need to get to the very basis of why you have that fear. And we sort that out for you. As riders, we all have fears, don't we ... this is something that we have to approach and we have to overcome. And we have to address this.

Are you crystal clear on how to take your horse from Troubled Position to Soft Movement?

So what I mean by Troubled Position is where did they go when they are stressed out? Like let's say they're thinking that there's something spooky coming behind them.

What is it that they do specifically with their body? Do they lift their head maybe look sharp, left and lean on the right shoulder?

And are you crystal clear on the process to get them from that place to the true soft movement?

Far too often, I talk to riders and they just don't know. They just don't know how to do that.

We need to have clarity on the specifics of what our horse needs, specifically. And only those specifics, not a whole bunch of stuff. So it needs to be chunked down to the very specifics so that you're not bombarding your horse with too much information, especially during the time that there's a stressor.

So this is when your horse will say to you, "I trust you, I can do this, I'm ready to turn loose to you."

Even though there's that stressor happening. If you know this process, this is what your horse will say to you. And if you can't dial that in, and if you are fearful yourself because you don't know how to dial that process in then it'll just continue. And they'll haunt you. It'll haunt you with your fears. And it'll haunt your horse with their fears.

What is your horse's Troubled Position?

Are you crystal clear on what your horses trouble position is? And do you know what your horses choose soft movement is?

If you don't know those two extremes, then how can you possibly go from one to the other if you aren't able to articulate this super clearly.

And this is one of the things we do in our program. We help you to find out what this is specifically for your horse. If you're asking them to do something that you don't have the knowledge, then that doesn't make any sense. How is that going to work?

So this is a very big realization ... the realization of what your horse's Troubled Position is ... what you have now and where you want to go.

What is it that you're looking for?

If you don't know those, then you won't be able to tap into it. And then if you add multiple stressors on top of that, maybe your horses spooking, maybe it's windy, maybe it's raining, maybe you have a bit in the horse's mouth, maybe there's another distraction.

If you had multiple stresses of that situation, you're still going to be stuck, you're still going to get no results or minimal results. And you're still going to be faced with crippling fear, wondering when that next spook is going to come around the corner.

And that's no fun, right? It's no fun to ride like that. 

In our program, as we clarify this for you (and this is from studying many horses, myself, rescuing many horses and working with all of their issues, helping them to overcome their pasts, helping them to find a way for them to think through a problem that they have, and working with my own personal horses, as well as helping my students through this, how to teach their horses how to do this), I have given you just a little taste here.

This is just to get you thinking about this.

When we do this with our students in our program, we have exercises that we do in great detail. Basically figuring out who you are, how you relate to your horse, how you communicate with your horse, where you come from.

And we use that blueprint of who you are to help you to overcome your fears, overcome your fears personally and overcome your fears with your horse ...

... and then it's perfect, it's perfect for you. Because if we can use your blueprint to help you to overcome your fears, and overcome your fears with your horse, then you can think yourself, think your way through a problem, you can think your way through your fears, your fears are not controlling you, you're able to think your way through that and then be able to give that to the horse.

And that's how you overcome rider fear.

Have the partnership which is involving conversation.

Horses want peace...

Horses want to get along...

I strongly believe that horses are not bad. They're not being misbehaving. They're not having temper tantrums, they're just communicating.

In order to communicate, you have to listen, and you have to have a conversation back and forth. In order to jump from the listening part to having the conversation part, you need to know everything that I just talked about here, everything that I just explained to you.

That's how you have the conversation part, horses are generally hopeful beings, unless we as humans, drill that out of them. And I see this all the time where horses have lost their hope they come with hope in this world in with humans are domesticated animals, they're not wild horses are domesticated. So they're used to being around humans, they're born, they come with the hope they will get along with us unless we you drill that out of them.

So if you'd like help with anything that I've mentioned here, if you'd like support with the fears that you're experiencing with your horse...

CLICK HERE to discover more about how we can help you to reach that place with your horse where he/she starts to move in their most beautiful pure soft movement with pole flexion, with longitudinal flexion with the lifting of the sternum and the lifting of the spine with the pelvis in dorsal ventral flexion ... they start to move as a unit and you can show your horse how to do that. 

There is a process, there is a way from Troubled Position to the Pure True Movement.

It's there, it exists and the horse hopes to get there. The horse wants to get there with you.

 If this is something you want to get support with, you can apply to work with us in our program where you can get help to reach your equine goals. I will be happy to chat with you about what's happening with your struggles with your fears with your horse, and how you can finally resolve them so that you can have rides that are totally fulfilling and predictable. You're not at the mercy of "what if "so...

CLICK HERE to schedule a call with us!

MORE RESOURCES TO HELP YOU BUILD YOUR DREAM HORSE

*How To Clearly Communicate With Your Horse

*How to Motivate Your Horse