Читать книгу Finding the Missed Path. The Art of Restarting Horses онлайн

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Ultimately, between the supplements we had given him, along with taking the time to fill gaps in his understanding of some of the simple things he was already doing, Cooper was able to relax enough to fix the transition issue more or less on his own. This is a far cry from the days when I was younger when I would have looked at a situation like this as strictly a training issue and handled it as such. Back then I would work and work on a transition a horse was having trouble with until he just gave up having trouble. Of course, at the time I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to consider that there may have been internal or physical issues going on that I was working against, and that probably made the horse feel worse emotionally, even though the transition seemed to be better.

Today, many years later, I understand that behind every behavioral or training issue, there is always a root cause. As horse people, I believe it is our responsibility to try to understand what that cause might be and then start there, rather than always relying solely on training to solve the problem. It’s like being a skilled martial artist. Just because someone is skilled in the martial arts doesn’t mean that he or she must end every disagreement by punching the other person in the face. You see, when it comes to martial arts, or horse training, along with the development of skill should come the responsibility of educated discretion.