Visualize Your Desired Horseback Results

It's important that we're able to visualize the results that we hope to achieve on our horses, or for that matter even when on the ground with them.

Most of us utilize the intellectual capacity in our minds, when learning, that translates into words. When we can attach language to an idea, we assume we understand it.

But horses don't think in words. The language that's common to us makes no sense whatsoever to them. Thus, we have to learn to understand the world as they do. Try as we might, we'll never ever teach our horses to speak English.

So in our first efforts toward this goal, we have to picture the results that we seek to accomplish along with the steps required to meet that end.

See not only the end result, but the details of each step; how are you requesting each movement from your horse? Where are your hands, your legs, the angle of your heels (you're not inadvertently torturing your horse with spurs, are you?), how is your body angled, and what is it all saying?

When you take post-training-session notes try, rather than writing out your reflections, to sketch them.

Learning to put our horseback experiences into visual images, picturing the intentions, reactions and results in a way that's more akin to our horses' experience with the interaction, will ultimately produce a deeper understanding and more effective basis for our equine communication.