13th September, 2012 There's no 'Con' in Confidence

Working with Roo and then riding Theoden over the last couple of days, as well as working with other horses over the last few weeks, I have been mulling over the concept of confidence and where it comes from.

Confidence cannot come from conning yourself that there are no dangers involved in riding, handling or loading horses, or in training a specific horse that has an underlying default position. Take Theoden for example, I know that he has a 'no' that involves dropping his head to the right, bucking and then, if I don't intervene straight away, continuing to buck and twist. My confidence in riding him doesn't come from pretending that couldn't happen again, it comes from having spent time training him, addressing the underlying reason for the behaviour and knowing what to do if he starts to get into a pattern. Yesterday for example he had a one little protest about going out with Joey instead of Petra and being asked to walk out properly. I was able to keep his head up straight away, redirect his energy and ask him, nicely, to go on again. I felt my adrenalin rise, felt a little shaky, but breathed properly and on we went. If I had been pretending that this behaviour no longer existed then it might have been a nasty surprise. I don't spend all the time dwelling on it, I just quietly accept that it is there and that I need to have a strategy to try not to precipitate it and to deal with it if if happens. One day, the default position may be entirely reset but until it is, it's just a default position.

In the same vein, when I was working with Roo, I quietly went through the scenario with her owner, finding out what had happened before so that I could hopefully guard against it, train in such a way that I didn't activate her flee response and had a strategy or two in mind for it I did. This isn't doom-mongering or trying to undermine anyone's confidence, this is quietly accepting that there are some risks, particularly with this horse, limiting them as far as is possible, training them out as far as we can and then knowing what to do if the very worst happens.

I had the good fortune recently to work with someone who is in the health and safety department in their own job. They understood this approach completely. Confidence comes from having a dynamic risk assessment and taking sensible steps to address the risks involved.