"It Depends"

A few of years ago, Nancy and I were at Mark Rashid’s Horse Gathering in Estes Park, Colorado. There were demonstrations and seminars all day long for several days. Most of the demos were in the rodeo arena. At the end of one of the sessions, Mark and Harry Whitney rode to a spot in the arena where they could easily see the crowd and be seen. They started taking questions from the crowd.

A woman stepped to the mic to ask a question about why her horse will only pick up a left lead when cantering.

Mark paused a moment and said, “It depends,” and he launched into several reason why she may be having these issues. The horse may be hurting somehow. She may not be sitting correctly. Mark asked her a couple of questions and offered some things to try. The woman looked like she didn’t quite get the answer she wanted, but she sat down.

Person after person stepped up to the mic and asked, “What do I do when my horse…?” or “How do I fix problem X?” or “What technique do I use to…”

I could sense some frustration in the audience because Mark or Harry would start almost every answer with, “Well, it depends…” They would then give an example of how they handled a similar problem. Neither one of them gave a straight answer. Never did they say, “When your horse does X, you do Y.”

Most of the audience was sitting in the middle sections of the stands, but I was sitting off to the side away from everyone else. Maybe it was the fact that I was separated from the crowd and not really a part of it. I could see Mark and Harry in the arena, and the audience members who were looking for specific knowledge, but not quite getting what they wanted. Maybe I was tired and not really interested in their problems. Maybe I was just ready for the biggest lessons in my horsemanship studies today. But whatever it was, a Big Lesson stepped up and slapped me up the side of my head.

The answer is always “It depends…”

How you act or react in any situation (with or without horses), depends on the situation right now, right here. You have to evaluate where you are and what your horse needs at this moment. Is he very sensitive and a slightly harder request would send him scurrying to the next county? Or is he barely awake and needs a good pop on the butt with the rope to wake him up? Does he need the comfort of repetition of a task until he is confident he can do it? Or will he get it the first time and needs to move on to something before he gets bored? Is he resisting you because you are being to tough and unfair? Or are you being to reticent and are not offering enough leadership?

Mark and Harry weren’t deliberately being obtuse in not giving direct answers to the questions. They knew they couldn’t diagnose a problem without actually being there and seeing the situation first hand. Even if they could glean from the questioner everything that was happening and gave her advice, when she got home, the situation would be different.

When we are in the beginning stages of learning something we want to be told, “When this happens, do this.” We want a recipe and a set of rules. Pat Parelli used to tell us, “The only rule is that there are no rules.” Since he has spent thousands of hours with horses, he knows how to react to each situation. He knows “It depends.” So, even though we would hear those words, we gravitated toward the recipes and steps. He couldn’t teach us the compromise until we had learned enough to disregard the rules.

Every time I studied from a new teacher, I would learn something new. I didn’t have to discard anything that I knew from before, but I could add the new stuff to my repertoire. I see everything that I learn as a new tool in my toolbox. One time, someone asked me what techniques I use when working with horses. I answered without thinking, and my answer sounded kind of snotty. I said, “Whatever works,” which I guess is my version of “It depends.” I will change my techniques so fit the situation. If something isn’t working, I assume that the problem is mine and I am not communicating with my horse correctly. I will try something else.

This is what Jay has to say about himself:

I learned to love horses in my late thirties. Unlike someone who has been around horses since childhood, I have learned horsemanship through an adult’s eyes. As a result, those lessons have spilled over into the rest of my life.

I have become a better person since I started playing with horses. I want to share those lessons on leadership, understanding, forgiveness, and love that I learned from my horses.

Come join me on this adventure.

Jay Koch
thebesthorsesense.com

Jay has some very keen observations on horses and people. He shows you different ways of looking at horse problems or people problems with the same logic. He has a very good blog, it is very interesting and enlightening. You should check it out!