Senior Horsemanship - Tips to Help Us Enjoy Better Years with Horses and More of Them

Approach your own personal voyage and projects like Michelangelo approached a block of marble, willing to learn and adjust as you go, and even to abandon a previous goal and change directions entirely should the need arise. Research on creators in domains from technological innovation to comic books shows that a diverse group of specialists cannot fully replace the contributions of broad individuals. Even when you move from an area of work or an entire domain, that experience is not wasted.

My initial spark of interest in this topic came after reading viral articles and watching conference keynotes that offered early hyper specialization as some sort of life hack, a prescription that will save you the wasted time of diverse experience and experimentation. I hope I have added ideas to that discussion, because research in myriad areas suggests that mental meandering and personal experimentation are sources of power, and head starts are overrated. As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a century ago, of the free exchange of ideas, “It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.”

This quote is from the book, Range - Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein.

There are lots of early specializers in various horsemanship disciplines.  And many of them end up as clinicians and authors later in their careers. I’m not saying we should ignore them, but I am saying that Epstein’s research shows that we can study them and take the principles and ideas that we find most useful and combine them with other ideas from other horsemen and horse women. By experimenting with a broad range of ideas from diverse sources of information, we can progress on the path to better horsemanship in the second half of life.

Here's a link to the book, From Strength to Strength, mentioned in the podcast.

And a link to Descript, the audio and video editing tool I use.

And a link to the Second Half Horsemanship website.

Nothing great, said Epictetus, is produced suddenly, since not even the grape or the fig is. If you say to me now that you want a fig, I will answer to you that it requires time: let it flower first, then put forth fruit, and then ripen. If, then, the fruit of a fig tree not perfected suddenly and in one hour, would you possess the fruit of a man’s mind in so short a time and so easily? Do not expect it, even if I tell you.

This quote is from the book, The Discourses of Epictetus.

Although Epictetus does not mention horses in the quote, it’s also true that better horsemanship is not produced suddenly.  It takes time.

As I’ve worked on this podcast, it became apparent to me that I couldn’t podcast daily and still find time for my horses and my horsemanship.  So I tried podcasting once on the weekends and three times during the week.

That was better, but the schedule also left little time for riding and training. So I’m going to try podcasting once a week on weekends.

That will hopefully allow me the time to finish the Second Half Horsemanship website and also spend some time riding and training my horses.

Here's a link to Descript,  my recommended audio and video editing tool.

And a link to the Second Half Horsemanship website.

Is the use of force really going to get rid of a horse’s nervousness? Are you joking? It’s obviously going to make it worse and worse. It has no place to go but downhill. And that is the secret about using force on a horse, any time, any place, for almost any reason. The more force you use, the more scared he gets. The more scared he gets, the more he resists. The more he resists, the more force you use.

See where this is going? Your only hope is to feel that original nervous tension and to instantly think, “Why? Why is my horse responding this way? Is he hurting in some way? If so, where and why? Or is my riding confusing him? Am I asking something he doesn’t understand? Am I driving him too hard? Is he getting tired, frustrated, anxious?”

Your only hope is to find the real reason and start by trying to fix it. No force. Don’t go there. Don’t start that snowball rolling.

This is a quote from Denny Emerson’s latest book, Begin and Begin Again - The Bright Optimism of Reinventing Life with Horses.

And a link to Shawna Karrasch Equine.

This is a link to Descript, the audio and video editing tool I recommend.

And a link to Second Half Horsemanship.

In hushed moments, we know that is our sacred promise to horses. We buy their hay. I was sternly corrected for these words, so I’ll double down and be more clear. Call “buying hay” the tip of the financial and emotional iceberg, call it an abbreviation for the ways we alter our lives for horses, for the love and commitment that we offer freely. It’s the base level, the easy task, cheaper than the list of pros we hire for their care, but it stands in front of the rest… if you ask horses. We’re romantic; horses are pragmatic. Hay.

Here’s my problem. I’m a trainer who has lived long enough to have seen some horrible things. What I haven’t seen, people have told me about in minute detail. My mind is haunted by descriptions of horrible things. People hire me to resolve issues that result from these horrible things. On a good day, it’s my job to see all the horrible possibilities and put a smile on my face and do my job. I feel anxious for you and your horse. And I’m selfish. I can only take so much and a helmet cuts the chances of serious brain injury in half, math even I can understand. Those are great odds. Put your horse first; wear the helmet.

I require helmets at my clinics and I’ve written about them extensively, but lately, I was asked to write about vests, too. Yay. I love them as much as horses love hay. Please, consider a safety vest or an air vest.

Okay, say you truly are the exception to the rule. Your horse doesn’t eat.  Of course, serious riders wear safety gear but you’re tough. You don’t care, it’s about tradition. You are opposed to change (although you have managed to adapt to a cell phone.) Besides, you don’t do what the pros do, maybe you “only” trail ride. No jumping and really, your horse is old and seriously lazy. He is as bombproof as a horse can be.

The problem is that we have it mixed up. Humans are the ones who aren’t bombproof.

This is a quote from Anna Blake’s blog post titled, Helmet Safety and the Ability to Buy Hay. For more from Anna, I recommend her book, Relaxed & Forward: Relationship Advice from Your Horse.

We all know that riding horses increases our risk of a fall and traumatic brain injury. Why not wear a helmet to make it more likely that we can continue to buy the hay that our horses treasure? Why not wear a vest to make it more likely that our horsemanship path will continue in the years ahead?

Here's a link to the Harvard Health publication, A Guide to Cognitive Fitness.

And this is a link to Descript, the audio and video editing software that I use and recommend.

And a link to the Second Half Horsemanship website.

Sports only have meaning because a certain group of humans ascribes meaning to those activities. Think about the passion demonstrated by groups of adults on Saturday fall afternoons sitting in front of television sets. From listening to the screams of ecstasy and wails of despair you might think the survival of earth was at stake, instead of whether some other human carried a ball across some line drawn on some field.

In horse sports, it seems to me, that the FIRST question to ask is whether or not it does harm to the horses.

The horse has zero interest in the hopes and dreams of humans. The horse doesn’t wake up on Saturday morning thinking, “I sure hope I can make my little owner proud of me today.”

On Saturday morning, just like on every other morning, the horse hopes to get something to eat.

This is a quote from Denny Emerson’s Tamarack Hill Facebook page. For more from Denny, I recommend his latest book, Begin and Begin Again - The Bright Optimism of Reinventing Life with Horses.

Here's a link to Lynn Acton's book, What Horses Really Want.

This is a link to Descript, my recommended audio and video editing software.

And a link to the Second Half Horsemanship website.

Scientists used to think that brain connections developed at a rapid pace in the first few years of life, until you reached your mental peak in your early 20s. Your cognitive abilities would level off at around middle age, and then start to gradually decline. We now know this is not true. Instead, scientists now see the brain as continually changing and developing across the entire life span. There is no period in life when the brain and its functions just hold steady. Some cognitive functions become weaker with age, while others actually improve.

Some brain areas, including the hippocampus, shrink in size. The myelin sheath that surrounds and protects nerve fibers wears down, which can slow the speed of communications between neurons. Some of the receptors on the surface of neurons that enable them to communicate with one another may not function as well as they once did. These changes can affect your ability to encode new information into your memory and retrieve information that’s already in storage.

On the other hand, the branching of dendrites increases, and connections between distant brain areas strengthen. These changes enable the aging brain to become better at detecting relationships between diverse courses of information, capturing the big picture, and understanding the global implications of specific issues. Perhaps this is the foundation of wisdom. It is as if, with age, your brain becomes better at seeing the entire forest and worse at seeing the leaves.

This is a quote from the book, A Guide to Cognitive Fitness - 6 Steps to Optimizing Brain Function and Improving Brain Health, by the Harvard Medical School.

So in the second half of life your mental strength can be your ability to detect relationships between different aspects of horsemanship and different aspects of life for that matter. Your strength is probably not your ability to excel in one discipline. Instead it may be to combine the ideas of several disciplines into a unique horsemanship practice better suited to you and your horse.

In his book, From Strength to Strength - Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life, Arthur C. Brooks says that, “when you are young, you can generate lots of facts; when you are old you know what they mean and how to use them.

So I hope that you recognize your mental gifts in the second half of life. I hope that you can apply your wisdom gifts on your path to better horsemanship and a better life.

Here's a link to Descript,  my recommendation for audio and video editing.

And here's a link to the Second Half Horsemanship website.

As the little horse stood quietly with his head in my arms, a lady in the crowd who owned a local Arabian farm of her own spoke up. “Buck, now that you’ve gotten this horse coming around the way you have, when would we be able to start with the whips again? Would we be able to start tomorrow or would we have to wait till next week?”

She had no idea what she was saying. It was the most bizarre thing I’d ever heard, and from a woman who appeared to be so sophisticated. How could she say something so uncivilized?

I couldn’t take it, not after what the little horse had been through. “Some of you can go to church on Sunday and claim to be holier than thou, but the other six days of the week you’re torturing horses and committing crimes against them. You make me ashamed to be a human being.”

But that wasn’t all that bothered me. That little horse had made a friend that day. He appreciated what I had done with him — I know he did. Yet I went away with a sick feeling, wondering if maybe I had done him wrong. On one hand, I had helped him, but I had also showed him there was something good in life that he would always miss.

I later learned that he went back to his same life. In that world of barbarians, defense was his only means of survival, and I worried that I might have taken it away from him.

This is a quote from the book, The Faraway Horses, by Buck Brannaman.

Your horse will respond to your kindness. Build a trusting relationship with your horse with your horse’s relaxation as your goal. You and your horse will both be the better for it.

This is a link to Descript, the audio and video editor I use and recommend.

And this is a link to the Second Half Horsemanship website.

We often forget that horses can do what they do, often in spite of us. In spite of our tension, our imbalance, our defiant grasp on the reins and our breath. A horse and rider can be poetry or a master’s work of art. Horses make us grander than we are on our own two feet. Their four hooves become an expression of what moves us when no one’s looking.

We often give ourselves credit for the activities horses do with us, as though we were the ones who taught them what it means to rise above the ground with such elegance. As though their balance and precision at a gallop were something we schooled. At their best, horse are who they are in spite of us. Not because of us.

This is a quote from the book, Getting Along with Horses - An Evolution in Understanding, by Crissi McDonald.

We have to keep the joy in our horses as we work with them. That should be part of the joy of horsemanship in the second half of life.

Here's a link to Descript, the audio and video editing tool I use and recommend.

And a link to the podcast website - Second Half Horsemanship.

We can decide to live with joy. Or we can allow ourselves to live looking back with bitterness. We can be bitter about all the things we wanted to do, but felt too constrained to risk. We can be bitter for all the hours we gave to a company that was able to say goodbye to us, without so much as remembering to send a card at Christmastime. We can be bitter because we chose security and independence rather than depth and companionship. We can decide to be bitter because at the end, only the end is left. But whichever we decide, bitterness or joy, decide we must. The rest of our life depends on it.

It can take a while before we begin to realize that retirement really plunges us into joy. But if we decide to live this new, unscripted time with joy, then life will come pouring into us, almost more fully than we can sometimes bear.

This is a quote from the book, The Gift of Years - Growing Older Gracefully by Joan Chittister.

So I hope that you are feeling joy in working with your horses. I hope that you are at a place in your life where you are content with your life and the new freedoms that retirement may bring to you. I hope that you can convey joy, peace and contentedness to the horses you work with and the people in your life.

This is a link to the Business Insider article.

And a link to the Descript video and audio editing software.

Here's a link to the Second Half Horsemanship website.

“The point I would hope to make is that my choices and your choices are all valid as long as we adhere to the first principle of horsemanship — that whatever we choose is always in the best interest of the horse.”

This is a quote Denny Emerson from the closing paragraph of Begin and Begin Again: The Bright Optimism of Reinventing Life with Horses.

In describing that competitive mindset he says, “everything I had been doing was based on too much — too much force, too much pressure, too much too soon, too much assumption that my horse knew what I wanted but was simply not doing it right, too much, too much. I wasn’t teaching, I was forcing.”

I think that most of us who have been riding horses for some time have been guilty of doing too much. I certainly have and it’s resulted in lots of “make them do it” moments and “don’t let them get away with it” decisions.

As Denny says, the use of force with your horse “always escalates because force creates anxiety in the horse, anxiety creates resistance, resistance elicits more force from the rider to counteract it, and down the rabbit hole we go”.

So I hope you're listening to your horse, and you're experimenting with ways to train your horse with connection and relaxation. Please remember that you are an individual, your horse is an individual and your relationship with your horse is unique. Please choose in the best interest of the horse because that choice is in your best interest too.

Here's a link to the Second Half Horsemanship website.

And a link to Descript, my go-to choice for audio and video editing.