Once in a while, I don’t feel like getting out of bed and going to work. Yet, I get up, drink a cup of tea, and drag myself to the arena for my first lesson. I put a smile on my face and crack a really bad ‘dad joke’ that makes the student roll their eyes. I then get on with the job, despite thinking how much I want to go back to bed.
Do horses do the same? Do we accept that a horse can have an off day?
Every training video, article, or book I have ever read assumes horses do not have off days. No instructor (including myself) has told a student to check if their horse is feeling okay before the lesson and given their permission to go to work.
When our horse is not going well, we believe it is because of a gap in the training. Either there is a problem with the horse’s focus, or we are not being clear enough. Do we ever consider that it could be because our horse has a headache, or has not had enough sleep; perhaps it feels stressed by something that has happened in the herd, or maybe it is bothered by an ant bite? I recall many years ago my mare, Six, seemed a little off. She was like this for several days. I couldn’t figure out the cause until my neighbour, living about 1km down the road, told me he had borrowed a stallion to serve his mares. The day the stallion left was the day my mare behaved like her old self.
I don’t have a solution to being able to answer all these questions. But that does not mean they are irrelevant and should be dismissed. What it does mean is that we should stay open-minded and keep track of patterns of behaviours - both short-term and long-term trends.
It means we should commit to knowing our horse, its mood, its likes and dislikes, its triggers, its response to phases of the moon, and its views on climate change. We should try to know our horse and its patterns. We should know our horse well enough to predict its responses and to finish its sentences. When our horse has a bad day, we know why, and we know how to respond and not treat every issue as a training problem. Sometimes it is just a bad day. We should know the difference.
Cate asking her horse to think. But he is sure Cate was having a bad day and messed up laying out the poles.