horse-free-wallpapers_w520Forgive me if you are tired of horse posts. I’m knee deep in a training program to become a therapeutic riding instructor, and besides my kids and my calling, horses are pretty much all I think about these days. As soon as I pass my test next month (or fail–could go either way) I might be able to live and breathe something else. For now, here is yet another lesson I’ve learned from the horses.

At the barn where I student teach, there are 3 places where a rider could have a lesson: The indoor arena, the outdoor arena, or on a trail ride.

The indoor arena is just what you think it is, a completely enclosed space where distractions are minimum, and, if every door and window is closed, completely cut off from the outside. This kind of space is helpful for a lot of reasons. First, it allows the barn to have lessons even in inclement weather—rain or shine, we can move forward (I would say snow, too, but Virginia is notoriously wussy when it comes to snow, so we don’t ask riders to come to the barn if it’s snowing. The horses still hang out in the dry indoor arena, though.).

Second, this space is one of the safest spaces to have a lesson. There are few distractions for the horses and the riders, which means less chance of a horse spooking and a rider taking a spill. One of the instructors there has a saying—people tend to overestimate a horse’s intelligence and underestimate a horse’s fear. People tend to think of horses like dogs–indeed, just recently I saw a person try to discipline a horse like a dog. He got right in the horse’s face, made eye contact, and said, “NO! NO!”, like you would say to a bad dog.horse-free-wallpapers_w520

The only problem is, horses are prey animals. They are not predators. They are less like dogs, and more like giant deer. So instead of meekly bowing her head when her (maybe not so experienced handler) got in her face, like a humble dog would, this particular mare did what any prey animal would do when they feel threatened–she bucked and tried to take off.

The indoor arena=less distractions=less opportunities for spooking=safer all the way around. Less bucking and trying to take off, generally speaking.

The outdoor arena is trickier than the indoor. The horses can see everything around them, and occasionally a car comes onto the property, or a farmer is mowing, or there is an ACTUAL herd of deer running through the glen (yeah, that happened once. The horse I was working with stopped bolt upright and I could see the thought process in his head—THERE IS SOMETHING COMING TO EAT ME AND I MUST RUN WITH MY FRIENDS TO SAFETY! Luckily he did NOT join his friends in their flight to safety, but only because he is very, very, VERY well trained.)

But who wants to be inside on a glorious spring day? The outdoor arena is usually a very pleasant place to ride, and so we make it work.

The last place we teach lessons is on a trail ride. This is, surprisingly, the most dangerous place for the horses and riders to be. There are no fences, there are no barriers, and the distraction level is very high. If the horse chose, he could take off with the rider and go as far as he wanted to. Our horses are, like I said, very well trained, and they are herd animals and so breaking off from a herd is against their safety instincts, but there is still no guarantee that a horse might not lose its ever lovin’ mind because a leaf blew in its face (yup, seen it happen) and act like a banshee on speed.

So trail rides=danger.

The first time I taught a trail ride, it was a disaster. I didn’t prepare my riders or my horse handlers very well, didn’t map out a route, and missed some signals the horses were giving me that they might not be in the correct mental space to take a trail ride. I opened the gate and let them all out, and the lead horse, who has a background in fox hunting, decided that he was now in charge and it was now his trail ride, thank you very much, and started motoring along in a direction I didn’t want him to. I scrambled up to him to try to manage the mounting danger I saw, and in doing so, missed that the pony bringing up the rear had actually no intention of following that lead horse and had ideas of his own, thank YOU very much, at which point my supervisor, thank goodness, stepped in, took over, and brought everybody back into the safety of the ring.

I told her I was never, EVER going to teach a trail ride ever again.

She laughed, and explained what I had done wrong. We processed it through, and she gave me some better tools to use, tools I could give my riders and horse handlers to make the ride successful, and told me that like it or not, I had to teach a trail ride. So, the next week, I applied the tools she gave me, took the horses out of the safety of the outdoor arena, and we had a lovely and successful trail ride.

Teaching (and therapy) is really all about progression, about moving a person forward with her skills and confidence. It would be nice if every lesson I ever taught was in the safety of the indoor arena, but then there would be no progression for my riders. A trail ride is where they can employ the skills they’ve learned in the ring—it is a more powerful and demanding experience, and yet all the more rewarding because of that.

I think about that in terms of our lives and experiences here in this mortal world. I would LOVE IT if I could keep my children and my family in the safety of a closed arena–no distractions, no dangers, no influences from the outside world. How easy it would be!

But then, there would be no progression. Which is not at all what the Lord has planned for us.

And so we look for the tools to help us, take them and apply them so we can have a successful progression, so we can enjoy the reward of powerful and demanding experiences, and grow into the people the Lord wants us to be. I pray all the time that I am giving my children the tools they need to navigate the outside world, to be successful in their trials and experiences. I don’t know that they always are successful, and I know I make plenty of mistakes as their mother, but I also know that nobody progresses when they stay in the same, safe spot.

I spend a lot of time searching for lesson ideas online these days, and came across the “Hit the Dirt” trophy. Basically, when one of her riders falls off a horse, this one instructor scoops up some dirt from the arena, puts it in a plastic cup, and writes “HIT THE DIRT” across the top of the cup and gives it to her rider. It’s a way of celebrating the fact that falling off a horse means that you were trying something hard to begin with, and that you were willing to step out of your comfort zone and try something new, even if it ended in a different way than you expected. Failure isn’t always bad, and progression and growth don’t happen without getting dirty. And they don’t happen in a safe zone.

Then again, I’ve never fallen off a horse, so I don’t know how traumatic it is. That’s not because I’m such an excellent rider, it’s mostly because I’ve never tried anything particularly difficult, and my riding career, such as it is, is still very much in its infancy. But you can bet that I will go on as many trail rides as I can, and when the day comes that I do fall, I will display my “HIT THE DIRT” trophy with pride.

How do you get out of your comfort zone to make progress in your life?


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