It’s common to come
across people with varying levels of fear regarding their horses. That fear can
range from mild to severe and can affect training and competition. In some cases
it prevents people from doing the one thing that they love most: ride. It
may surprise you to know that I am not a risk taker or an adrenaline junkie.
The only place where I have ever wanted to take risks is on the back of a
horse. My parents have often expressed how surprised they are that I train and
compete in cow horse competition because it goes against my nature. The fence
work in competition is very fast and the turns are quick. I have had a couple of
wrecks when horses have lost their footing and sustained many injuries during
my career as a trainer, but have been fortunate to have never been critically
injured. However, I know about fear.
I have experienced it up close and
personal. About 6 years ago at a futurity, I watched a competitor I knew get
killed during fence work. The memory is still vivid: the horse tangling feet
with the cow and stalling mid-roll, feet in the air, its saddle in the middle
of the rider’s back. I have not been able to erase that image from memory. For
many years, there wasn’t a time I turned the corner to take a cow down the
fence that it didn’t flash through my mind. It was a long road to getting over
that fear. In the same year, another prominent cow horse trainer lost her life
as she was slammed into a wall by a horse. It was a tough year for our industry. Most
people’s fears are simpler than those extreme, specific examples, but it still
boils down to fear of injury. The reality is that horseback riding is
considered an extreme sport because horses are large and powerful. All horses
are athletes by nature, and they are driven by flight or fight responses. Fear is
nature’s way of protecting us from danger. It serves a very important purpose
and shouldn’t be ignored. However, horses feed off of fear and when the rider/handler
is fearful it makes things worse.
The fear I often hear described stems
from a lack of understanding and a fear of loss of control. These same people
are all too often matched with a horse that is way out of their ability level.
They also lack tools to approach problems logically and safely. They understand
that trust is important, but they don’t know what that means, or how to find
that bond with a horse. One of the things that helped me begin to overcome fear
was to learn to trust my training and my horse. I realized I could
feel confident in my ability to control or react to most situations. Fear of
the unknown is something that can be remedied with time and experience. A
tougher fear to overcome is that which comes after an accident. Even the most experienced
horseperson can struggle to come back after a wreck as they discover they now
lack confidence in a place where they once
felt at home.
In my line of work, I expect a certain amount of being beat up. I have been kicked,
dragged, bucked off, fallen on, rolled over, bitten, and had a pitchfork kicked into my face.
I have many portions of my body where there is literally no feeling. When I
encounter a familiar situation where something negative happened, alarm bells
go off in my head. Percentage-wise, for the number of rides I have put on
horses over the years, I have been very fortunate. I believe that a lot of that
is because I am a risk minimizer by nature and learned from each experience.
“Alarm bells” are there to keep us safe; our education is there to tell us what
to do to prevent or deter a situation. Some of you might be thinking of a
terrifying memory or specific fear—realized or not—while reading this. It is foolish
to think that you will never get a bruise from your horse, but I promise that
if you truly can’t live without horses in your life there is a way to deal with
fear.
