There are two conversations that I want to share with you, that appear to be very different but then loop back together in a (somewhat) neat little bow in a way that I think (hope) will be interesting to you.
The first thread of the story involves a discussion I had with my fabulous Liz about Saffy. It had been a mixed bag day where she had never really found what us humans would call ‘a good spot’ and I left the session with a gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction in what I had offered her, and a healthy dose of consideration on what to do should the same situation come up again.
The second thread involves writing- specific women writers- and how in the last few decades, with women’s work being published more in combination with the rise of the internet, the entire fabric of the writing world has changed. I’m going to start with this point and then weave back to the first (I promise they relate).
Up until very recent times, there were very few female authors whose words ever made it to print. It wasn’t that women weren’t creative. They were, or are, as creative as they / we have ever been. But we know that the climate of our culture did not value nor deem women’s words important enough to share, and thus literature, for the most part, remained male dominated, and again, more often than not, the reserve of those with the means and time to devote to artistic practice.
Now, this is changing, and alongside it, the whole tone of the type of writing that you find available has changed with it.
Women’s roles have historically involved caregiving. Most female writers that I come into contact with- myself included- are juggling many different roles. And this is not to say this isn’t true of male writers also, but if we specifically talk about this through the role of caregiving, it’s women who are doing the lion’s share.
Because women are writing and creating in the edges and the seams; because time is so scarce and so often informed by caregiving roles, the form of writing has changed.
Instead of big tomes, we find writing offered in fragments. Snapshots. Essays and prose that is poetic, contemplative, involving stories we have not had access to before.
Writing that offers more questions than answers- something that was never acceptable previously.
The constraints of writing in a way where time is limited can be seen as restrictive on the one hand, but it has also created a whole new field of writing that didn’t exist before.
The constraints created the form.
The work exists in response to the conditions that created it, not separate to it.
Now back to Saffy. I thought about the different possibilities of options we could work through, and I listed four or five different trainers whose work I am familiar with, thinking out loud about what I thought that would do.
Person 1, I said, would let her find her flow. She would introduce limited interruption, let her move until she found some form of self-regulation.
Person 2 would not do this. They would be asking many things of her in quick succession to get her attention and look to ‘bring her back’ that way.
Person 3 would probably do some more structured in hand work with her to help her find her balance.
Person 4 would be concerned only with getting her focus, regardless of what her body was doing.
The list went on. How anyone new to the horse world makes decisions on who to follow is beyond me, but that remains a conversation for another day.
The point is: what was interesting was considering what applies to me and my horse, the context of each of these people’s training and how the reality of their lived experience shaped how they approached working with their horses has to be considered.
Person 1 is a mother to young children, a full-time trainer and takes horses for long periods of time before she goes anywhere near getting on.
Person 2 has a high turnover of horses and expected to have a horse ready for riding in a relatively narrow window. Incredibly skilled but how can this not inform style?
Person 3 has a more classical background; the onus is on managing the body as a way to influence the mind, in more structured ways that traditional horsemanship might present.
None of these people are wrong. They are all incredibly skilled and I would work with each of them any day of the week. But when you are considering what applies where, also consider the context that they are operating in.
Because you can’t separate form from function.
What we are seeing now is a rise of trainers that veer from traditional tenants of riding and horsemanship because the climate of how we are relating to our horses is changing. What we see as being different is actually responsive. Just like the arts and writing, training and the approaches offered is a living entity; we carry some things forward, we discard others, we shape-shift along the way.
But what this means is that we have an array of options that can be completely overwhelming and confusing. So, with that in mind:
- Always consider the context of the work that’s being offered. How is their approach informed by the outcomes they are looking to create?
- What does your horse need? What are their tendencies? What do they love? There are four people in my family, each of us very different. I would never assume there is the ‘right one thing’ to suit us all.
- Do you trust yourself? Are you willing to play? Are you willing to stick with something long enough to really understand it, ensuring you do not abandon your own instincts and intuition along the way?
- Does the context of your life currently mean that you need to be more creative in how you approach time with your horse? How can you do that without it becoming a shortcut? OR how do you need to change things to find the time that’s needed?
What we are presented with- the work that is on offer- has been shaped by the conditions that created it. It pays to learn more about it when making decisions for both you and your horse so you can find ways of working that feel possible and exist in service to you both.
