The Horse's Friend Newsletter

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By Tiffany Deering printer friendly version (PDF)

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This cliché has often made me think that having good intentions is a bad thing. But this saying really means that NOT following through with your intentions is bad. Recently I have been learning more about intent, fear, worry and focus. The general idea about the theories of intent going around is that your thoughts have the power to influence the situations within your life. The catch is, that this power does not understand "NOT". In other words, having a thought that you DON'T want something to happen actually puts an energy out that attracts that very thing to happen, because the energy does not understand the "DON'T" part. Applying these new concepts in my life has not been easy, it does not come naturally. For instance, when I get on a horse, I might be thinking, "Please don't take off with me". But I am essentially sending an energy out to that horse to take off with me. My intention is to get on the horse and have him stand still until I am ready for him to move, and for him to move out at an acceptable speed. But I am worried that he won't do this. I may even fear that he will buck. Horses are such sensitive creatures, and this worry and fear is easily discerned by them. Now unfortunately, I am rather pessimistic in general. It isn't the easiest thing, but I have realized that I must make the choice to be optimistic, and to focus my thought and energy on what I desire. I am sure that if you examine your life, whether it be in your equine or human relationships, you will notice a pattern that whenever something didn't go your way, you were probably thinking alot about the exact way you didn't want it to go.

Last week I was riding a nice little paint gelding in an outdoor arena where the fencing had just been painted. It was my first time riding this horse, so he didn't quite have a feel of me, and his typical riders usually had heavy hands and used harsher bits in order to make him listen. Now that's not my style of riding, so I put him in my French link snaffle and gave him his head. He took of at a trot pretty quick.

Continued...

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Intent, continued printer friendly version (PDF)

Usually, when I first start riding a horse, as long as he's not blasting off at a full gallop, if he wants to move out a bit, I just go with him, give him his head and go for the ride while we get acquainted with each other's feel. My balance isn't the best, so I focus on my seat and let him choose the path. But I was concerned about the fresh paint at one end of the arena, which just happened to be the end where the gate was.

This little gelding was extremely gate sour. We'd be doing fine, doing some serpentines and trotting at the far end, then he'd get it in his head to run down to that gate, blowing the sand up into the wet latex. All I was thinking was "Don't go to the gate! Don't go to that end of the arena!" I'd look at the gate and the wet fence, and guess what, that's exactly where he would take me. We went through this about five times. I did my best to stop him, tried to one-rein stop him, turn him into the fence, I admit I got a little heavy handed, and the harder I pulled the faster he went. I almost was unseated after losing a stirrup, but managed to hang in there.

Once we got down to the gate, I stopped thinking about NOT going to the gate, because we were there. I was then focusing on getting away from the gate. I went back to my usual method of just focusing on my seat and getting us out of there, and we'd trot or canter very nicely down the fence to the other end. That part was even enjoyable. Then came the time to end this debacle of a ride. There were some spectators as well, so I was also worried about the embarrassment... I mean, these people are paying my husband for riding lessons, and his own wife can't ride worth a lick!

Now there happened to be a second gate at the other end of the arena. We came to a stop at the wet gate, and sat there. I decided that we would leave the arena through the other gate, that he would take me to that gate, I would get off, and walk him out down there. I focused all my energy and thought on doing this. I verbally told him my intention, encouraged him to go with a little feel from my legs (NOT kicking or spurring, I move my legs away from their belly and rotate my ankle a bit as my "cue" to go), and otherwise relaxed, looking intently on that far gate and thinking "I will dismount when you take me to that gate".

It was starting to lightning and thunder in the distance, the slightest drizzle began to fall. The person painting the fence hinted about getting out of the rain. I told her the same thing I told the horse, that I would get off as soon as he took me to the other gate. It wasn't but a few minutes after that the gelding calmly, purposefully walked to the gate at the far end and stopped. I patted his neck, verbally praised him, and dismounted. I look forward to riding him again soon, even if they're still painting the fence, because now in retrospect in writing this I see where I might have a chance to prove this theory of intent. I'll keep you posted!

As one more example of intent, this is our daughter Kaitlynn at age 5 spinning a horse around. We didn't instruct her how to do this. She was riding, and my husband said, "See if you can spin her." And she did! With a pure intent she let that horse know exactly what she wanted through her focus on the sole thought of "I want to spin". And the horse responded. Perhaps this is what the Lord Jesus meant when he said that we must be like children in order to receive the Kingdom of Heaven.

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If you want your horse to go somewhere in particular, look exactly where you want to go and don't take your eyes off of your goal. Do not look where you don't want to go, because that is exactly where the horse will take you! Tiffany Deering	Many thanks to Pleasure Gait Farms for many of the horse graphics you see here!

Horses and children, I often think, have a lot of the good sense there is in the world. ~Josephine Demott Robinson
The Horse's Friend Newsletter is published by T-C Equine Services. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, please e-mail the Editor, Tiffany Deering, tbarcequine@windstream.net. If you wish to no longer receive this newsletter, please click here.