To Trust or Not, cont’d Most often, I see folks who do not trust their own ability to provide appropriate leadership to their horses and are frustrated by constantly being put in a position to provide directions that they do not clearly understand how to provide. The way I see it, if we can learn to trust our own abilities to keep ourselves safe, rather than relying on our horses to somehow become responsible for our safety, then we will be able to provide the kind of guidance to our horses needed to be able to earn their trust. Recently, my own horse suffered a slip inside the trailer that rendered him “off duty” for a few weeks. I was put in a position to borrow my husband’s horse for an out-of-town clinic. The facility at which I was teaching the clinic had a relatively small turn-around space in the yard, so I was also put in a position to catch a ride in an unfamiliar trailer. My poor demo horse
HCBC 2010 Business of the Year
had to follow a new person into a new trailer over to a new facility surrounded by new people and new horses, far from home. As he stepped off the trailer, he was shaking and one of the participants asked me about how I would deal with this situation. It was an interesting question because I hadn’t thought of his nerves as being a problem at all. He had followed every direction I’d given him since we arrived with ease. He was standing still and waiting to be saddled quietly, despite his nerves and he followed me politely to the arena when we were ready to start. It was not more than five minutes before he was licking his lips and letting down. I didn’t do anything other than continue to ask him to remember his boundaries and follow my directions. I trusted that I could keep us both safe and within minutes, so did he.
Trust is something that must be earned and when it is, it is given freely to those who deserve it. When we are working on “getting our horses to trust us,” in my opinion, we are working on the wrong thing. We should not be trying to get our horses to trust us. Rather, we should be working on becoming trustworthy. As soon as we achieve that, our horses will be waiting to hand over their trust to us without hesitation. Christa Miremadi has been working with horses since 1984, and is a partner and facility manager in her family business in Langley, Silver Star Stables, where she also provides riding instruction and conducts horsemanship clinics. Christa is dedicated to creating harmony and building relationships between horses and humans through compassionate communication, and to strengthening partnerships by sharing the horse’s point of view. (See her listing in the Business Services Section under TRAINERS)
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