{"id":1030,"date":"2017-11-04T19:21:39","date_gmt":"2017-11-05T02:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/?p=1463"},"modified":"2019-02-21T13:07:50","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T20:07:50","slug":"leadership-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/2017\/11\/04\/leadership-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"Peace in your Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your horse might sometimes be calm and relaxed with you…and at other times he seems distracted or frightened.<\/p>\n

How about this for an example: When he’s at home in his pasture with his buddies he’s content when you’re with him. But you haul him off to a clinic and now he’s a nervous wreck.<\/p>\n

Why is this? The answer is that your horse is sometimes finding peace in your presence<\/i> but not finding peace in your leadership<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Let’s examine this in detail. Three categories of pressure can affect your horse. These are herd pressure, physical pressure and predator pressure. When he is free of those pressures he stands calm with a relaxed head and soft eyes. He might lie down in the grass and go to sleep. He might also enjoy your company. The peace your horse is experiencing might be happening when he’s with you<\/em>, but not necessarily because of you<\/em>. Your horse does not<\/em> have to consider you a herd leader to hang out and enjoy your company.<\/p>\n

\"amazing
Goofing around can be great training!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sometimes your leadership agreement with your horse can be lacking or unclear. \u201cWhat? Not me!\u201d you say. In truth, the vast majority of folks can use a little polishing of that leadership agreement. I even need to revisit that from time to time with some of my horses as they grow up or herd dynamics change. The major factor is – and let’s face it \u2013 they’re generally with a\u00a0different herd (their pasture buddies) for more than 90% of their lives<\/em>. So we have to ensure our leadership agreement is functioning \u2013 and strong – when we take them from their pasture herd.<\/p>\n

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An Important Thought<\/h3>\n

I need to\u00a0clear up a couple of misnomers. First, making or forcing your horse to do something does NOT grant us leadership status. Second, if we punish him for being ‘bad’, a ‘behavior issue’ or ‘not obeying’, this also does nothing in his eyes to establish leadership. We are simply teaching him that we are an unpredictable predator capable of causing him distress. We don’t want that. As a leader, we desire that our followers believe we can guide and support them, particularly when they’re struggling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

What then, is the leader of the herd (aka YOU) supposed to do? Well, it’s the job of the leader in the herd to decide what is safe and what is not, when to run from and when to ignore pressure, when to eat and when to sleep. If your horse does not believe this of you, there are typically some obvious signs. He walks ahead or behind you when being led. He’s fussy. He’ll turn left when you’re thinking turn right. When riding he might ‘do his own thing’ or ‘not want to do something’. He might even take off on you \u2013 whether you’re on his back or not.\u00a0 In more extreme cases a horse might bite or kick at you.<\/p>\n

\"amazingJust to reemphasize:\u00a0if any of the things I noted above are happening \u2013 your horse does NOT have a behavior\u00a0issue<\/b>. Humans use a variety of terms \u2013 ‘behavior issue’ is one of them \u2013 when personifying horses. We personify horses when we don’t understand why they are doing what they are doing and need to explain it somehow. We resort to explaining their actions as if they were humans – simply because it’s something we can relate to.\u00a0 Our\u00a0horse’s behavior is completely correct, however. He is behaving exactly the way any horse would that is frightened, knows they are the leader of the herd or confused about\/challenging leadership.\u00a0If we’re not stepping into the leadership role in a very clear, understandable way for him,\u00a0it’s natural for him to assume\u00a0that position and take care of matters on his own. Again – he<\/em> doesn’t have a behavior problem \u2013 we<\/em> have a leadership issue. If you are\u00a0a proven leader he will follow you<\/strong> and trust in your decisions<\/strong> of what is safe or what to be scared of.<\/p>\n

Luckily this is an easy fix. We start each one of our clinics at Amazing Horse Country <\/a>by ensuring all of our participants are the herd leader in their horse’s eyes. We do this by communicating clearly in their language \u2013 not through pain or punishment. In a few minutes, we see fear, fussy, pushy \u2013 all those unwanted things \u2013 disappear. Your horse will be super calm with a low head. He might even close his eyes and yawn. Why? Because by assuming the leadership role, you take the stresses off his plate.\u00a0 It’s now your job as the herd leader to manage those stresses.<\/p>\n

It’s a great start.\u00a0 But it’s only just the beginning.\u00a0 Now you have to prove you deserve the position.<\/p>\n

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Trust on the Front Line<\/h3>\n

Trust is an easy word to throw around. Sure you can trust someone. But can you trust them always? Or only when things are going good? What is it that builds a trust that goes one step beyond? The answer is:\u00a0 experiences<\/em>. It’s being in a sticky spot, a dangerous place, when someone who has committed to you has pulled you free of that. It’s when your relationship\u00a0is put to the test and that person comes through for you over and over again.<\/p>\n

Granted, these types of front line trust don’t happen every day. They’re special, deep and meaningful.\u00a0 We remember them.\u00a0 We tell stories about them.\u00a0 The most fantastic part of this: in our style of horse training, we create<\/em> them.<\/p>\n

This Front Line Trust<\/strong> is built by repetitive successful experiences \u2013 and it’s critical. It’s why we use the obstacle course extensively at Amazing Horse Country<\/a><\/span>. First, you earn the herd leader position. Now you have to prove to your horse you qualify for that position.\u00a0 Through comprehensive and thorough work on the obstacles or trail course, your horse learns to trust you time and time again. This builds a deep and meaningful trust based on experience.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

When your horse views you as the leader \u2013 you are now shouldered with the responsibility of deciding what is safe, when to run and when to relax. When you have shown time and again that your decisions result in his safety and success, you will earn Front Line Trust.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here is the big difference. Your\u00a0horse will seek you for answers on potentially ‘scary’ situations.<\/strong> And if your answer is \u201cwe don’t have to worry about this\u201d – then he likely won’t. We regularly see fear change to curiosity on the obstacle course when this happens.<\/p>\n

Conversely, if the horse does not have a solid belief that you are a trustworthy leader, then there is no reason to expect he’ll believe you when you are calm but he thinks he’s going to die.\u00a0 This is where your horse takes off on you or ‘refuses’ to do something. And he’s absolutely right<\/em> to do that. He’s a prey animal that, unless he trusts in a higher authority, will do what he has to do to save himself.\u00a0 For a horse, any unknown is potentially fatal.\u00a0 It’s really common sense when we consider prey animal thinking and herd mentality.<\/p>\n

\"\"Peace in your leadership<\/em><\/strong> is demonstrated when the horse learns to trust your decisions in pressure situations.\u00a0Not only is this vitally important, it’s easy to train for.\u00a0In our clinics the first step is establishing leadership, the second is to develop that under pressure \u2013 every obstacle on the course is a pressure of some sort for the horse, so we use these to build his confidence.\u00a0 Not only confidence in himself but in you<\/i>. You can take this new leadership agreement to whatever discipline you ride in or off to the mountains on a pack trip. For many folks this is a make-or-break deal for trail riding \u2013 they want a horse they can trust. When your horse truly defers to your leadership out of an established trust, what happens in a ‘scary’ situation is now your choice<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Just think about how big that is.<\/p>\n

Scott Phillips – November 2017<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If your horse is calm with you \u2013 that might be fine if you are hanging out with him in the pasture. For practical riding though, it’s not enough. In this case your horse needs to find peace – that is safety, comfort and trust – as a function of your leadership, particularly when that is put to the test in a real-life environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}