Building Strength through the Struggle

Struggle: to try very hard to do, achieve, or deal with something that is very difficult.

I had the privilege of enjoying a beautiful fall day with Tumbleweed today. First, by myself. Then, joining up with my trainer. 

Because of our travels, it had been a whole week off for Mr. Tweed, but you wouldn’t have known it.  

Which brings up a point we discussed during the lesson about time and consistency. My trainer said everyone has difficulty finding the time, but in her experience, if you get their best effort when you do work together, the next time should build on that. In other words, quality is more important than quantity. 

She also doesn’t interpret anything Tweed’s doing as disrespect. She sees it more as energy that needs to be directed or redirected. That energy can be nervous energy, when he’s unsure about using his body. It can also be environmental—new sights, sounds, smells. 

She said these are his “struggles,” a word she prefers to use, rather than evasions or disrespect or whatever other word we often hear but implies something negative or sinister.

She says that when he does get anxious, and struggles, I have to meet his energy and slightly exceed it. If he goes to a 5, I have to go to a 5.2, not a 10 and not a 1. She calls this “supporting him.”

Regarding the hills, she said the reason he does better on the shorter ones is because he is able to get through them faster before that energy builds up. On the longer ones, like last Thursday, he built up his energy / anxiety, I tried to slow him, and then the energy was redirected into headshaking. She says the energy has to go somewhere and it’s our job to direct it or, in that case, redirect it, by turning him back up or riding it out.

For now, she gave me some exercises to do during the winter to get him engaging his hind end and reaching or extending in front with various degrees of collection, as needed. I start him out in vertical flexion, then slowly release a little back to him, just enough for him to continue in vertical flexion on his own. If he drops it, which he often does, I pick it back up and start again.

When we get that going well in all gaits, we move to riding to new objects (for example, a barrel with flowers on it or anything else new) gathering him into flexion about 3 horse lengths before the object (a signal that something is coming up that I want him to pay attention to) then walking him slowly to the object and asking him to acknowledge it by stretching into it and dropping his nose. 

After he’s doing that well, the last exercise is walking and trotting circles in collection but asking him to move his shoulder over to the right or left just one hoof length from where we’re tracking. And when he’s doing it consistently to ask him to move into the circle in a smaller circle (maybe a 10’ circle) same gait, hind end engaged, and moving his shoulders over, rather than dropping them.

It was hard work for Tumbleweed today, but his evasions or “no’s” or, ahem, attempt to redirect the conversation and expectations, were only trying to slow down, stop, or get too fast. It was all easy to ride and redirect.

These will be the things we continue to do to strengthen his body and my ability to communicate and direct him, but she also encouraged me to keep riding the trails and give him that exposure piece, even if it means walking him down some of those steep hills. 

She also encouraged me to look at everything he can do, his successes and how far we have come. 

When she put it like that it seemed obvious how comfortable we have become as a riding team and how much effort Tumbleweed has really given me—a ton of effort. It is up to me to help him through his “struggles,” when they arise, and be the kind of team leader that navigates him towards success.

Come to think about it, life is about the struggles for all of us. We become stronger, smarter, braver, by working through them.