Anyone who has worked with or owned horses understands that horses don’t give a flying F about your plans, even if those plans are supposed to be beneficial to them. My barn owner, Kate, her husband, Lee, and I had plans to get Kiss trailered to a clinic at my trainer, Deanna’s on Friday afternoon. Of all of the things I was worry marinating on about the clinic, trailering actually wasn’t one of them. Kiss had always been pretty good about trailering, with the caveat that I’d only loaded her up a total of three times. However, this was never an issue mentioned from her previous trainer. In fact, I’d seen videos of her loading up with ease. So, yeah, when she decided she wasn’t keen on leaving the premises in a small, hot, metal box of doom, I couldn’t blame her, but I was totally surprised.

I had expected her to be hesitant a few times, as she had been in the past. However, we kept circling back and back and back and she wasn’t having it. In fact, she kept trying to run out to one side or another, instead of going in, even with people on either side acting as walls. I wasn’t having any luck and the pressure was high to get her on board. Kate and Lee had more important things to take care of than to wait all night for her to decide she was ready to get on.

Kate took over trying and her style was different from mine, very “No excuses, lady, get on here!” That didn’t work, either, and only served to get Kiss more upset. We let her take a minute and I tried again. she almost got on a couple of times, but no dice. She was SO close, yet SO far.

Ultimately, I had to admit defeat and face the reality that I wasn’t going to get to go to the clinic, at least as a participant. I had so been looking forward to working with Carolin Moldenhauer of Pferde in Balance. I’d been anticipating this event for months. I had diamond braided Kiss’s mane and everything so she’d look pretty for the audience. I couldn’t wait to get a breakthrough, as I’d been feeling a little stuck for the past week with her training. So, I called Deanna and broke the news.

However, that is not the end of the story. I’m thankful that I have such a kind a quick-thinking trainer, who rallied a couple of the participants who knew me and they graciously allowed me to use their horses for a clinic lesson. I was to start working with Dorothy’s horse, Brego, who is a big, gentle bay with an easygoing personality. Next, I worked with the famous, Gustavo, Deanna’s own horse who started her journey with straightness training, through which she found Carolin, who was a straightness training instructor for many years before adding and developing her own methods and techniques. Finally, I was to get to work with Wanda, a dainty Thoroughbred mare owned by my friend, Sam, another student of Deanna’s.

If you’re a nerdy horse person like myself, at a clinic you tend to get engrossed in other people’s sessions. Carolin was patient, forgiving, and kind, as well as fluent and clear in explaining theory as she guided students. Unlike many other trainers, she let the horse and human relationship play out as it would on a regular day and offered guidance and exercises to help improve the human’s handling or guidance skills or to help them help their horses find more balance, energy, and relaxation. It was wonderful to watch them all settle in and experience massive improvement by the end of every session.

My first session, I got really nervous in the beginning. You know what’s funny? Horses tune into our nervousness, especially when they don’t know us well. Brego picked up on my queues and got a bit pushy and anxious himself. This guy was supposed to be the easy going one! I felt mortified that I’d amped him up like that – in front of a crowd! But as we worked together, I relaxed and things settled down. I did trip over my own feet at one point too, which was totally on brand, and added to my self consciousness, but I kept going. We focused on getting more energy out of him, as he was a more laid-back guy, and I had to calibrate my own strides, trying not to get too far ahead of him as he slowed down and also taking MUCH bigger steps than I was used to when I got him to speed up. By the end of the groundwork session, I was pouring sweat (it was like 90 degrees, to be fair, but much of it was anxiety and concentration). However, once I was done there I was getting the hang of working these techniques with a horse that wasn’t mine.

My next session involved Gustavo, who was Deanna’s horse. Gustavo was her “baby monster” for a long while, posing some of the most challenging training issues for her. It took her a long time to let anyone else work with him, and very few of her students have actually had the opportunity. I felt privileged that she would trust me to work with him, and also intimidated, having been repeatedly told of his pushy, bullying ways. I decided from the jump that I wasn’t going to let him think he could bulldoze me. I set boundaries and I used my energy and body bubble to make sure he didn’t think he could cream me. He did try a lot of nippy bitey stuff, which I was also warned of, but I kept myself and my fingers clear of that. Ultimately, I started to figure him out in that session and I was really enjoying how he kept me on my toes. I felt proud of myself that I hadn’t been a pushover and that I got some nice moments out of him. We did haunches in and some half pass as well. He is very good with his haunches and he loves to show off in front of an audience!

By Day Two, I was feeling a lot more confident in myself and also worried less about what everyone was thinking. We were all there to learn! Who cares if I looked like a total newb dork tripping over my own feet? I was enjoying myself and absorbing the knowledge!

Wanda was way more my “speed,” although not as pushy as Kiss. She was super smart and sensitive and picked up on what I was asking her for pretty quickly, even if I was trying things for the first time. Her owner, Sam, had put lots of time into her groundwork training and, as a relative newbie to all of this herself (although more seasoned than me), claimed that Wanda had been very tolerant of her as she learned. So, it was no surprise that she was tolerant with me and went along as we tried to figure each other out. We ended up doing a number of exercises: haunches-in, half pass, renvers, yielding the front and hind end on a circle, and we finished with some lunging (I’m rusty here as I haven’t been lunging Kiss recently at all). All in all, I felt like I did pretty well in that session and learned a whole host of new tips.

The more I see and learn from folks who are taking these slower, more incremental and methodical, consent-based roads to develop well balanced, happy athletes, the more I realize what a blessing I’ve been given to have been able to stumble upon this community of equestrians at this stage of my life. I’m really starting to fine tune my body language and my understanding of horses. Working with three different horses in one weekend was actually a huge gift in disguise. And Kiss thinks she got out of doing the work this weekend, but she’s in for a surprise: I’ve got a whole new bag of lessons and tools to work through with her!