Читать книгу Geoff Teall on Riding Hunters, Jumpers and Equitation - Geoff Teall - Страница 22

Regardless of how much talent or ability you may possess, no horse or rider is perfect. When a problem arises—and it will—it helps to have a methodical approach to solving it.

To discover the underlying problem, you have to take an unemotional moment to analyze the symptoms you don’t like. Decide, first of all, if something is a symptom, or if it is a problem in and of itself.

If you don’t accurately diagnose the problem, you will waste your energies on tangents. This happens all the time at horse shows. People who are going too slowly work on straightening instead of pace. People who are nervous work on pace rather than trying to calm themselves. All of their hard work is for nothing because it does not begin to fix their fundamental problems.

Problem solving is one reason why it is important to surround yourself with knowledgeable, competent horse people. Use their expertise to help you develop the art of looking at a situation and identifying the problems that exist.

Once the problems have been identified, it is important to choose the one that is the most pertinent at that moment. After isolating the core problem, then you can come up with simple, unemotional solutions to fix it.

If things go wrong and the rider freaks out over a symptom, riding becomes nerve-wracking. It becomes conflicting, uncomfortable, and worrisome for both horse and rider, because focusing on a symptom will never correct the underlying cause of the trouble.

When a problem manifests itself, you have to stop. Remove any emotion you bring to the situation. Look for the root cause; then decide what you will do to solve the problem.