Spooky or Unfocused?

Is the horse really spooky, unfocused, and so on - or is the human lacking the ability to guide?

This is a hard pill to swallow but an important one. Stay with me before you get all upset, because it’s not personal and it’s not just you - it’s the human condition

We go to quick work labeling the horse: bird brained, spooky, unfocused, ADHD - whatever we call the horse.

But if horses were designed to be so unfocused, nature would have eliminated them.

They are not unfocused, they are not focused in our presence. Big difference.

We can teach focus by creating calming parameters - requiring self discipline, awareness , and - you guessed it- focus ourselves.

Or we can teach the horse to feel more anxious and feel the need to become hypervigilant or seek comfort everywhere but us by not guiding adequately.

Some horses are more sensitive than others and need you to be there EVERY second.

Others can get by on a lot less.

But no horse can be focused without a person being there mentally. They can go through the motions , making us feel like they’re with us - but that just speaks to how tuned out we really are when we’re satisfied with that.

In a lesson, I often work hard to keep the student focused - to keep the chatter from taking over. To keep the “but what about…” monster at bay. To keep the random distracted thoughts jumping far ahead of where we are from leaving this moment.

It takes a LOT of work to teach a person to stay tuned into the lesson step for step without their thoughts scattering around like bowling pins -

And I’m not judging. My teachers worked hard on me too. It’s not an easy task.

But I found horses I was describing as spooky suddenly become very calm when i focused - and so we have to accept the cold hard truth -

We don’t often know this horse at all. We’re seeing a projection and labeling it as who they are. And that’s very unfair to a horse.