Sometimes you have to take a few steps back before you can move forward—especially when you and your horse are short on confidence. That’s what I kept telling myself after a day of riding with Devin Warren.
I’d been talking to him about how well things had been going with my horse—until they weren’t. Suddenly, we were butting heads over things that hadn’t been an issue in months, maybe even years. It felt like we’d hit a wall.
Slow It Down
The first thing he told me to do was slow everything down. Two weeks earlier, I’d been working on spins and sliding stops, but now all I was focused on was loping a circle. There was a lost in translation happening, and before I could go back to the fun stuff, I needed to take it a step back, and make sure my horse and I were on the same page doing something as simple as going in a circle.
The day after my lesson, I took it even one step further and went back to a snaffle bit. I needed to find the cracks in my foundation so that I could fix them and give my horse the confidence to move forward.
Keep Focused
Like most people, I’m guilty of letting my mind wander when I’m in the saddle. When doing something as simple as trotting and loping circles, it’s easy for me to get distracted and start thinking about everything else that needs to be done.
Devin reminded me that it’s not fair to my horse if I’m asking her to focus on one thing while my mind gets to wander. If my brain is thinking about other things, my body language is definitely not telling my horse that she needs to be circling a certain way.
My horse is so in tune with what I’m telling her that when I’m not focused on the task at hand, it’s easy for her to get distracted, too—and that chips away at horse confidence fast.
Create Horse and Rider Confidence
Somewhere along the way, my horse had lost a bit of her confidence—and I realized I probably had, too. The resistance I was feeling wasn’t about her being difficult. It was her not being sure. And that uncertainty showed up in every ride.
By taking a few steps back, changing the bit, slowing down, and revisiting fundamentals, we started to rebuild confidence in both my horse and me. It didn’t happen overnight. There were plenty of frustrating moments. But after a few weeks, I saw a shift. Not only was my horse back to her confident self, she was better than before.
Sometimes progress means pausing. Sometimes it means going back to things you thought you had figured out. And that’s OK. Because the quiet work, the circles, the fundamentals—that’s where the real progress starts.