Work Accurate, not Slow

It's easy to work slow, and may or may not be beneficial.

Sometimes people talk about working slowly as if that's all that's needed to help a horse. In a rush, rush world, this can be a good start: to take a pause and think on horse time instead of our agendas and societal pressures.

But there is so much more to helping a horse! There is timing, and feel, and skill. Working accurate is a much more appropriate goal to helping a horse than working slow, because in our quest to slow down, we so often stop reading and seeing the situation. The horse may actually need quite a bit more than what we're doing - a change of pace entirely, or much more stimulation or work.

Sometimes people in their quest to go slowly provide no information or too little, and the horse is left to his own devices for comfort, stimulation, and parameters. This so often creates mouthy, wiggly, distractable horses, who need more from a person: not a person who moves faster, but a person who moves more accurately. Someone who can get there on time without rushing. Someone who can read the situation and not work on a prescribed set of parameters, but work on actual feel for the horse.

Sometimes we do need to slow down. Sometimes we need to be doing much more. That's why this whole thing can't be taught by steps of a plan: we can learn philosophy and theory, but we have to learn to stay open to the horse and read the needs of each moment uniquely.