The 2 Most Important Ingredients in Macaroni & Cheese

Macaroni and Cheese, right? Let's apply my late-night hunger to horses for the next (chocolate) chunk of time and assume I'm talking about the 2 most important things in horse training as an extended metaphor... Bear with me, I'm going to try very hard not to ramble. :)

Hokay, so I'm no expert. Obviously. BUT, between all the horses I'm currently riding, training, and falling off of, I've learned two VERY crucial things in training and working with horses. While there are clearly millions of things to remember when working with equines, I'm talking about everything past basic handling, generally speaking. Generally.

The first, is to always have a plan. The second is to have the ability to quit that plan and change it for a different, preferably better one, at any point in time. Instantaneous or rigorously, tediously expected, it doesn't matter.

This is a decision-making concept related to the training of horses and riders, separately or together. Obviously a beginner rider is on a different path than a professional. While their decisions are to experiment with how to best move a horse forward or the techniques for safely brushing a horse, these concepts also apply when backing a colt or developing collection, for instance.

In terms of your equine partner, their track might be a very slow or very fast one. Every horse is going tohave a different game plan than their pasture-mate. From a Grand Prix mount to a yearling, or maybe to the horse off the killer truck who only know affection by the sound of a whip cracking.

 Either or any situation, I've found that one of the worst thing you can do when attempting to make progress is to try and go at it without an idea of how.

This goes back to goal-setting. That sometimes ominous, always re-developing chore of figuring out what the hell is next. What comes before that is figuring out where you are right now. The ability to identify that is first and foremost and is hands down the cheese to the macaroni.

Take for example, the babies on the farm. I say babies because they might be 5 months old or 5 years old. Sometimes, the plan might be simply to walk all the way from turnout to the wash rack without the horse halting to gawk at that HUGE SCARY THING OMG. Sometimes it's to walk past the mirrors at the end - also terrifying. Sometimes it's to get all the way through longing without them spooking or turning towards you. In my case today, it was to have accurate transitions with Cara and a straight long diagonal with Spice. In Cavi's case, it was simply, to not die. (Surcingles are actually barrel-grabbing goblins, didn't you know?) BUT, those weren't necessarily the goals I started with. With Cara, I started with the idea of developing her canter all the way around the ring with 20m circles at E & B as my "finale". But after feeling what she gave me for the day, I realized that training the transitions was a better idea. With Spice, I wanted to develop the transitions, but after a spaghetti noodle for a diagonal, I realized she was drifting when I'd rebalance her with the new inside leg, so we came back to that first. In Cavi's case, truth be told, it was our goal from the beginning not to die, so I'd consider that a success! BUT the point is that while I abandoned those ideas, I had a new one - one that I assessed to be better for the given situation based on where I was at that moment.

Maybe it's split-second, maybe it's developed over the course of the ride, maybe it's based on how your first test went at a show. But always start with a goal and go from there. I make it an absolute point to never get on without a plan, regardless of the plan to trail ride or train piourettes.

So if we're combining our metaphor from Mac & Cheese with the one about what lemons life is throwing at you, we make the decision to have mac & cheese with lemonade on to drink, even if it's take out because the Turkey burned in the oven and the cork disintegrated into the wine bottle.

As my idol says, "If something isn't working, change it. No one will change it for you. And don't mistake change for quitting." - Courtney King-Dye.

Plans for Piourettes,

Lauren