Who inspires you?

Today's growth mindset journal entry for my students was to describe a person that inspires you and to describe what makes them inspiring.  I was so excited because I literally spent a weekend with someone who has been inspiring me for a few months now and as soon as I saw the entry I thought to myself that I should write down my thoughts as the students were doing the same.  Plus I got to share my personal experience with the students and they claim they always love when I do that.  (I'm sure it has nothing to do with killing time in my reading classroom.) Since I went to the trouble of jotting a few notes in my growth mindset journal, I thought I would take the time to expand on those notes and blog about my weekend as well.

This past weekend I got to ride in my first clinic under a professional trainer.  Check another item off the bucket list! I have audited plenty of clinics, well a few anyway, but never gotten to actually ride in one.  Some friends of mine invited me along to a Jeremy LaRose clinic held in the Cities this past weekend.  Jeremy and his significant other, Macey, put on an amazing clinic that was beyond my expectations.  They are performing and keeping at the top of the game when it comes to western pleasure and they brought that knowledge with them to help all of us bring out the best in our horses.  But more so than just focusing on bettering our horses for the pleasure classes, it was about getting your horse more broke; for whatever purpose. 

Let me tell you, getting to be the student who struggles was great because it definitely gave me a new appreciation for my students.  I even got to practice telling myself, "I don't get this yet, but I'm going to keep trying until I do get it!"  One of the things I took away from the clinic had nothing to do with horses and everything to do with relating to students who are struggling.  It was very frustrating to watch everyone else getting it and to be the one who understood what to do but just couldn't make their body do what looked so easy to others.  It would have been very easy to just give up or say, I don't agree with what he's doing, he didn't teach it to me right or I can't do this.  One big motivator kept me trying and will keep me from giving up when I try to bring these techniques home to work on them - the love of a great horse.  I want to do right by China and more importantly, every single horse I sit on from here on out.  Many thanks to Jeremy for reminding me of that fact this weekend.

I also learned techniques for training the many young projects that seem to find their way into our hearts and home.  Not just the techniques, but the mindset about how to go about the training.  Jeremy stresses, and I love this mindset, that with the youngsters there is no rush.  There is no time frame when you have to accomplish something and there is no reason to lose your patience or get angry with a colt.  He demonstrated this time and again, even with broke horses that were put into situations they had never been before.  You never saw Jeremy lose his patience and he had tons of advice for how to wait out a young one and when to reward that colt for every bit of try.  This isn't new information but always refreshing to see a trainer who knows how to take their time with a colt.

There were so many things that I learned over the past two days that I can't possibly remember them all.  I'm thankful to Sophie for video taping as much as she could and to my friends that video taped many parts as well.  We touched on so many different areas of training for showmanship and western pleasure, one person's brain can't possibly absorb it all.  My goal is still to write as much down as possible before my brain decides to file it away under the old "Do not disturb" sign it seems so fond of.  Another goal is to work with my horses as much as possible to cement some of the techniques!  The more we do the more we remember.

I will leave you with a few of my favorite phrases from this weekend that I took the time to jot down in the notes on my phone for later:

"Ask a little, get a lot - that's softness in a horse."

"It's a marathon, not a race.  Take your time."

"If you change the question half way through the maneuver, you confuse the horse."  Then he illustrated by asking Macey 5 x 5 several times in a row quickly before changing it to 5 x 10 and we all got to see how it threw her off balance for a second.

"Your gym workout doesn't need to look like full makeup."


Lastly, you never attend these clinics believing 100% in everything the clinician says, but there was enough common sense in what we were doing that I am wholeheartedly behind 95% of what he shared, even some of the things he had to say that were brutally honest about China's potential and future as a show horse.  We all have our limitations and China is no exception to that rule.  However, China has had a way of exceeding my expectations so I'm not losing hope yet.