How to work with a horse with ease rather than frustration

If you work with horses you need to deal with being frustrated...is that true?

I would say that I don't think that's true. And I'm going to give you five reasons why.

Generally, it means that we need to work on ourselves a little bit more.

If you're finding that time with your horse is so frustrating, there's a reason for that. There is a source that you can overcome there. Let's go into the five pointers to help you to work with your horse...

#1.  Come from the spirit of understanding

When you're with your horse, it's not about reaching goals. I know we have goals, but that is not the place that we're coming from to be successful with our horse.

We're coming from a place of understanding; a place of patience, unselfishness, and consideration of the horse...having a good intention with what we're doing, thoughtfulness and most importantly, kindness.

I'm not saying you won't have challenges. I'm not saying that there won't be frustration, but if you're dealing with frustration a lot, it means that you can maybe search on what's the intent of you working with your horse.

It's not about reaching goals because if you get what I'm talking about here, this spirit of understanding and the kindness behind it, you will reach your goal with your horse. You will, you absolutely will.

#2.  Create a win- win situations for you and your horse

Win, win situation for yourself...you need to feel like you're succeeding and winning as much as possible.  Your horse is in this as well. So it's a "win, win" for you and "win, win" for your horse.

Everyone needs to feel success. You need to feel success as a rider and your horse needs to feel success as your partner.

Accomplishment - we all like to feel like we're accomplishing something, don't we? Horses like to feel that as well. They like to get that little gold star that feeds us and it also feeds the horses.

They like to feel that they are pleasing us. Some horses more than others... But in creating win-win situations for both, that keeps up the try in our horses.

Our horses have a tremendous amount of try and if we don't keep feeding that by showing them winning situations and that they are involved and present in the process.

You provide the release that shows them what they did was good so they keep trying.

#3.  Ask questions that move you forward

If you have a challenging situation, it doesn't need to stay there.

Asking questions that help you move forward will help you to see your next step.

Examples of those questions are; "What is working? What is working right now? It may be something like, "I can lunge my horse today. She may be totally distracted looking out the door, but I can lunge her today. I can get her attention back."

"What is not working?" She's spooking all the time. She goes in front of the door. "What might I do differently?"

These are the three questions to ask:

1) What's working?

2) What's not working?

3) What might I do differently?

Those are questions that are going to help you to move forward. Those are questions that are going to help you to get out of frustration so that you don't say to yourself, "I'm working with a horse so I have to accept that I'm going to be frustrated."

#4.  Focus on the solution, not the problem

It's easy for us to get caught up in the problem.

We get emotionally involved in the problem. Like, "She's spooking at the door, it's going to happen again. Here it comes again."

Anticipating it doesn't help. Flip it around and focus on the solution.

Go back to number three, where you might ask those three questions I gave you. That will help you to focus on the solution because then you can stop...

You can just stop everything you're doing with your horse at the moment, ask those three very key questions, and that will help you to find the solution to the problem.

#5.  Seek advice

There's no sense hanging out with your horse in the completely frustrated state. That makes no sense at all.

Not knowing something can lead to frustration. The frustration is not going to help your relationship. It's not going to help you to figure out the solution.

It's not going to help you to create "win-win" situations for you and your horse and it's not going to help you to come from the spirit of understanding because you don't understand.

There's the lack of knowledge there. If you're feeling that you lack knowledge, seek advice from somebody that has the knowledge you're looking for.

Take these five pointers and work more on yourself, creating a situation that is not going to be frustrating.

Challenges will be there, but you will know how to deal with it.

Feel free to share with anybody you think can benefit from this.

I've dealt with many horses and been in frustrating situations with horses as well. But as you work with more and more horses, you get to understand that the frustration doesn't need to be there.

If it's there, if you're getting emotionally bound and caught up in frustration, REMEMBER...there's a way out.