Making Mistakes With Horses

Welcome to 'The Club' about sums it up!

I saw in the comment section from a nice lady who said she had made over 12K mistakes and is learning, I have to say, you're doing it right then... *snorfle*

The horse biz is trial and error then trying to learn the right thing only to find out that that particular horse won't tolerate what you just learned and so you have to re-think your training. That's the horse biz.

Anyone who tells you they know it ALL, doesn't know a damn thing. There is a saying, "The more you're around horses, the less you know'. That is the truth. Horses are so much knowledge and it's a lifetime thing. You can NOT pick up a book or go to A clinic and KNOW horses. You have to sit out at the barn and watch and learn to 'be' with your horse.

You WILL fall off. If you don't EVER fall off, you haven't ridden enough then. There is yet another saying, 'When you fall off 12 times, you're a rider, when you fall off 24 times, you're a horseman'. The number of times will vary, depends on who's saying it, I guess, but the basic truth is there.

If you only ride one or two horses your entire riding career (or life) then you're a passenger, not a rider. You have to get on many, many horses to call yourself a horseman/woman.

If you hear someone who only touts how great they are with horses and never 'fesses up to making a mistake, I'd say avoid them. They aren't real. Now, I'm old school and we used to talk about our mistakes with other riders and learned. Nowadays, it's a lot more cutthroat and people don't want to admit they have holes in their training/teaching. To me, that's silly.

You can't buy your way into being a horseman. I know plenty of people who've tried, including National Champ owners...who have no clue about training, they bought their way in. I've seen trainers/instructors who insulate their clients so they keep their money and as a result, don't want their clients to make mistakes, because that will reflect on them.

I don't get this and probably never will but my message, I think, is still true. If you want to be a horseman/woman, you have to get in there and make mistakes and then learn from them.