|
February 2008 • VOLUME 30 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine
Use your Hand Last
After the last issue, I had a reader/friend contact me, concern lacing her voice. Asking - so what now? Knowing that fundamentally there was no way I could not present the article on bit pressure and not be deeply affected by it. And she was right, the article has truly given me pause.
And isn’t that exactly the point? As a magazine, we don’t want to play it safe - to write and present the same information over and over again. Whether you agree or disagree, the point, the fun, is to challenge. Challenge preconceived ideas, to make you pause and examine from a different perspective something that you assumed, or thought you had confirmed through experience and time. To a take a second look, perhaps a third. Challenging our own preconceptions in an open way, willing to change if we are proved wrong, willing to adapt with new information, willing to add to our already wide experience. If we are not open to the ideas and experiences of others, we will end up closed to the horse. We have to be willing to always stay open, so we can hear that one judge above all, the horse that we are with.
So was I about to start riding without bit and bridle? Was I worried about the pressures talked about in the article? Of course I was. I am troubled. Worried, even perhaps feeling guilty, replaying in my mind each and every time I have taken, held, fought back against the horse, again and again.
I was/am struggling to put together my voyage through the years of finding one level of lightness after another, and the worry that perhaps at any point in time, I may have possibly hurt the horse unknowingly or perhaps just not thinking about it. I don’t know yet what the answer will be. I am still on that voyage. I will keep my eyes open, and I will toy and worry, perhaps to death, this concern of pressure of the bit, no matter how light I try to be.
I do have to say, that the one element that I have become even more than ever concerned about, is
|
|||||||
|
