We all experience fear. Some of it is reality based … other fears are psychological … but both get your adrenalin pumping and your flight response ignited. When you’re on the back of a thousand pound animal and either one of you is scared out of your wits you can almost feel the energy charging through his body…. zinging into yours and back into his.
Not a pretty picture.
For many years I lived with neighbors who loved to terrorize me. It’s a long and terrible story……but suffice to say that when I rode my mare they came after me on 4 wheelers and cars and actually shot guns off in rapid fire when we passed by. I lived alone and I was so frightened that I eventually stopped riding in my own neighborhood. (Thank God my house sold and I moved!!) However, they left me with a very strong and uncontrollable fear of the sound of ATV’s and gun shots.
I’m a trail rider and it’s inevitable that I WILL encounter cars, ATV’s and gun shots…….but I realize that my reaction to those things make my horse even more frightened than he would normally be. I stop breathing. I get stiff. I grip my reins. Reilly, understandably, wants to run for the hills! I’m lucky he’s such a good guy and will come back to earth pretty quickly. Let’s face it…….training rides can be an adventure! Just this past weekend we encountered dirt bikes, men with chain saws, trail runners, mountain bikes, and an excavator all on one trial ride and lived to tell the tale!!!
However……when we’re in the woods and fields around my new home on quiet evening rides I see tons of deer. The other night I counted a herd of 15 beautiful deer running across the path in front of us. I said out loud……”Oh God, aren’t they beautiful…..look at them Reilly……Wow”. I felt my body relaxed and melting. Reilly looked with great interest but didn’t move a muscle. Once he was satisfied they all passed by we continued our ride. I am NOT afraid of the deer and as a result neither is Reilly. I’m not saying he won’t startle when one pops out from nowhere…..that’s spooking for a reason………that’s not out of control fear.
So………I asked myself……is it possible to pretend that ATV’s are deer and react to them in a more positive way?
Or is that asking too much of myself without hours, or maybe years, of therapy? Just last night we had a good “test run” of my theory. Trotting down the trail I saw an ATV parked without a driver. Maybe out of gas….who knew……but I relaxed and calmly talked to him about the ATV and we walked past without incident. Okay…….that’s all well and good without noise and movement! But now I’m bound and determined to test my theory on a moving 4 wheeler.
I’d appreciate any advice from our readers and hopefully I’ll be able to tell you how my fear experiment works next month!!
Happy and Safe Trails!!
4 Responses to “I Scared!!”
Kerry
Nancy,
I myself dealt with fear issues and thought seriously about seeing a therapist. I had a mare that dumped me constantly, simply because she could. My determination to overcome my fear was greater than the fear itself. So I did something very similar to what you did. When something was scary, I would change my perspective of it. See it as an opportunity instead of a problem.
I would do two things.
1. I would change from defense to offense. I would see the concern and go towards is with a happy inquisitive mindset, like “ooh lets go investigate”
2. If it was something that maybe caught us off guard I would repeat a little mantra to myself, silly but it worked for me. “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” Not sure if you are old enough to know what Weebles are, but it helped me bring my body back to center on my horse. No matter how hard you push a Weeble it comes back to center. The mantra would always increase my confidence and make me smile. (I believe that Sally Swift mentions Weebles in her book Centered Riding)
I think all riders eventually have to deal with fear and I wish more was written on it. I feel the best way to train a horse to be more confident is to develop their skills with obstacle training. I have a Arab gelding who is the King of Flight! Every time we ride we do a little body control work – side pass over poles, back thrus, turns on the fore and hind in a box, etc. to develop body control. He is quite snazzy now and can do some pretty amazing things. More importantly, he is much more confident and when he does spook, for a legitimate reason, he listen to those cues and I can keep him between my legs. That regular work on body control helps him get his mind together and focus. It has built our confidence as a team.
Thank you for the article, you always have great insight.
Judy
Hi Nancy, I take our lab with me when I trail ride. He is great at flushing out deer and last week wild turkeys! We also have dirt bikes and ATV’S, you never know which direction they will be coming from:0 I always talk to my horse and after the scary stuff is gone, praise him big time and sometimes give him a treat from my pocket. I also sing to him, I make up some stupid song about him, that way I don’t hold my breath, sounds silly but it works. Happy trails
Ellen Jefferies
Hey Kerry! What you do works for me too. I found with Mr. Chicken (aka “The Pig”) who was afraid of everything and a real bully, that if we attacked (chased) anything and everything that he worried about, all was well. The psychology worked for both of us.
With all the horses I’ve owned, the worst thing to do was to stand there and stare at the scary thing, for then surely the anticipated spook would happen and since I would now be sitting on my butte (rather than balanced over my feet, my chances of staying with the spin and run were seriously reduced.
I also learned that if the horse was stopped in fright, trying to make him “face his fears” and go forward was guaranteed to have bad results too. The best course when the horse had balked was oblique movement, or if necessary a total retreat (for, as a young John Lyons used to say, the horse doesn’t know what direction you were thinking about so long as you go wherever you go decisively.
My husband, who at this point has made more than a few green horses in to good hunt staff horses, and can remount from the ground, will get off and lead his horses thru mentally sticky places, and they will go following him many places they’d be afraid to go as first in line (this is the lion will eat you not me approach, I believer). The horses whose feelings he respects and leads like this quickly gain confidence in him and themselves and end up excellent staff horses who will take him anywhere by themselves and are not afraid of anything.
I will, if I am sure I’m on a horse that is about to have a melt-down and I can’t get him out of there, dismount while he is still standing still rather than be on him when he loses it, thank you. Even if he ends up in the next county, at least I will be safe on the ground (and I do know that this runs very contrary to given wisdom in some schools, but frankly, I am too old and broken to guarantee I’m going to stay on a serious run-away and know for a fact that once you part company with a horse moving at speed, what happens next is in gods hands.)
Whew, that was long winded! And all I meant to say was I agree 100% with Kerry
Ellen Jefferies
Oh Nancy, one more thought. Your theory is excellent. Just remember to implement it in small steps so that you stay in the land of guaranteed success. I am going to offer a dissenting view of dealing with fear and pushing oneself. Fear beyond a certain point reduces one’s abilities and when pushed far enough guarantees failure (I learned what I know about fear from skydiving; you want to talk about terror…). Confidence is built by a string of successes; the more success and fewer failures (Optimally, no failures) the faster you learn and become proficient. I think people are more like horses than we want to think; the more often we make them do something that really frightens them, the more convinced they become that it’s a frightening thing.
So by all means go after the noisy, moving ATV, but try finding a helpful ATV owner and approach the beast at a distance that keeps you and your horse feeling reasonably safe and comfortable.