I have been thinking, if I were Santa, what is the one training skill I would want to give every horse person for Christmas? Many things come to mind - feel, patience, kindness, a questioning mind, etc.
While it is possible to have correctness and mental softness, it is NOT automatically true that one leads to the other. Yet so many instructors and trainers talk as if you can’t have one without the other.
There is a saying that was popularized by Ray Hunt and which has been repeated again and again by many people, “A horse knows when you know and knows when you don’t know.”
We all want horses to enjoy their job. It doesn’t matter what the job is; we want working with us to be something they feel comfortable about and not dread.
