“My horse won’t do it!”
“My horse just won’t learn!”
“He is just plain stupid.”
When our horses don’t learn things as
fast as we would like, don’t we start to get
angry and want to blame it all on the horse?
It is frustrating to repeat the same lesson
for the umpteenth time. “Hang it all, horse,
I just want you to do this simple thing.”
Well, what may be simple and easy for us to
understand, might be complete gibberish to
your horse. The trick is to be consistent
and patient.
So, what should you do? Get mad? Give up?
Well, you can, and, trust me, I have been
frustrated and mad at my horse for not
learning something that I have been spending
time and energy to teach him. I have even
been close to tears at the fact that I have
been trying for weeks to get my horse to do
something and he just WON’T. What is the
solution?
Maybe, go back and make sure that you are
going about it the right way; if you are,
keep at it. Your horse just might surprise
you tomorrow. Mine did. I can think of a
couple of times with different horses, where
they didn’t appear to be learning something
in the weeks that I had been trying to teach
it. The first time this happened, I needed
to go to my dad and get some encouragement.
He told me to just stick with it and be
patient. You know what? The NEXT day, my
horse had learned what I had been trying for
weeks to get him to do. Amazing, huh? I just
stuck with it for another day, and it was
like magic. It won’t always happen that way,
but it was an eye opening experience for me.
Just recently, I have been trying to teach
my horse to take the correct lead at the
lope. I had been working on this off and on
for the last couple of months. He just never
seemed to get it. I have been working him
consistently for about a week, with little
result, when… one morning he got it. I got
six correct leads in a row! First I would
ask for the left lead (his easier lead),
then the right lead, and so on. He did it
correctly 6 times! Let me tell you, it felt
so rewarding for him to have finally gotten
it. He has steadily improved as I have
worked him over the last couple of days. He
is far from perfect, but he has made the
Breakthrough!
So, no matter how frustrating it is trying
to teach your horse something, keep at it.
Keep your cool and your patience and it is
very likely, that your horse will make a
Breakthrough and make you very happy.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and
self-control.”
Galatians 5:22-23
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