I believe that your horse can tell a lot of things about you.
- He can tell when you get scared. Some horses will even take that to their advantage and try to gain dominance over you
- He can tell how much are you determined to make him listen to you in case he doesn’t.
- He can tell that you like him even without you petting him all the time or feeding him treats.
Your horse feels good with you when you feel good.
When you are stressed on the other hand he gets stressed and it doesn’t matter if you are stressed because of him or because of something else.
Your horse can tell everything that is going on in your head.
By that, I do not mean knowledge, I mean emotions.
He is not able to read your thoughts but he is able to read your behavior and your body language.
Every emotion, fear, confidence, uncertainty, determination, nervousness, focus, or also the lack of focus translates to your body language.
The exact same aid, a very different outcome
Horses are experts at reading your emotions.
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For example, when a dedicated person asks a lazy horse to go to trot, he is likely to just go to trot.
If the horse can feel that the rider is confident, focused and really dedicated to make him listen, no matter what, the horse is going to pick it up and just listen straight away willingly.
If another person that is uncertain and not very dedicated asks the horse for trot, in technically the same exact way, the horse will likely just barely go to walk.
A rider that is not focused, not determined and doesn’t even really know what he would do if the horse doesn’t listen is very likely to have issues with his horse challenging him.
I have seen this many times, over and over again with different riders and different horses.
There is no faking it
Your horse sees emotions and he sees through any attempt to pretend an emotion.
He sees how you really feel, not how you would like to feel or how you pretend to feel.
There is a big difference between being calm and decisive and between pretending to be calm and decisive. If you have the “wrong thoughts” in your head, your horse will listen worse, if you have the “right thoughts” your horse will listen a lot better.
When you go riding next time, focus only on what you want your horse to be doing and keep in mind what exactly are you going to do if he doesn’t listen.
