By Glenn Stewart
"What is the most common issue you see with your clients and their horses, and how do you solve it?" This is a question I was asked to write about. Here are some thoughts I had around that topic... Hard to trailer load. Won’t slow down. Can’t get him to go. Won’t stand to be mounted. Won’t stand to be saddled. Can’t take him away from the other horses. Can’t ride with other horses. Spooks at things. Jigs on the trail. Bad with his feet. Hard to catch. Pulls back. Bucks when I try to canter. Doesn’t lead very well. Kicks at other horses. Horse doesn’t mind stepping on the owner or running into them. Doesn’t like water. Can’t ride him through mud. Runs up all the hills. Pins his ears at feeding time. Only spooky inside arenas, only spooky outside. Bangs his head in the trailer. Tosses his head. Hard to bridle. Hard to needle. Hard to worm. Can’t get a right lead. Can’t get a left lead. Jumps too high. Won’t jump. Aggressive to other horses. Can’t get him to quit bucking. He’s got a hard mouth.
16 • JUNE 2021
SADDLEUP.CA
T
he list goes on and you’re welcome to add any that you can think of. These are just a few that crop up regularly; I’m not sure which is the most common. I think I was meant to pick an issue and give an answer. A person might take a more lateral approach and talk about something that could benefit all these areas of issue. The list above of can’t, won’t, doesn’t, hard to, is very common with the horse owning public but does not have to be. I could pick one but thought it more effective to talk about something deeper than what is on the surface; and that is: being open to learning. I have found that the more I learn, the more I see the value in being open to learn and the more I actually learn to learn. I wish I would have been blessed to be the perfect student. When a person starts a young horse, if they know what to look for, they can witness the horse slowly learning to learn. The horse learns from the herd but is not used to learning from humans. I thought I was open to learning, because my first clinic for 2 days cost $300 and I organized it for 3 months prior. My next clinic cost me $15,000 for a 3-month course and that was 25 years ago. A lot of money today; and quite a bit more back then. That sounds like someone that surely must be open to learning. Looking back, there were many things that I did or didn’t do that really affected the pace at which I learnt. At times pride and ego got in my way, at other times my ability to be able to really stay focused on what I should be doing slowed things down. I didn’t know that watching and then doing was only one of the ways to learn; it was just the way I preferred to do it. Over time it was shown to me that reading and writing about the things I was learning were very valuable. I refer to things now that I wrote down 10 years ago. I just wanted to do it, not read or write about it. I barely wanted to talk about it, let’s just get on with it. That whole ‘charge straight ahead’ thinking gets in the way of good horsemanship. Reading, writing and watching DVDs alone is also very ineffective for good horsemanship. There is no substitute for experience, but back it up with the reading, writing and watching. Some people have a much more open to learning attitude and they are always the ones that go the furthest the fastest with their horses regardless of their physical abilities. After 25 years of teaching horsemanship clinics it has been proven to me over and over. That is not to say do whatever a person tells you because there will be lots of information that you might want to stay away from. If the person
