Uncinched Confessions: Advice That Tok You Down the Wrong Path Pt.1

All right.

Submission number one on pieces of advice that sent you down the wrong path.

This person says, honestly, this is going to be an unpopular opinion.

We love it already,

but emotion centered horsemanship.

Specifically, the kind that convinces people that a horse should never feel anxious and that if your horse is showing signs of anxiety, tension, or whatever, that you're doing something wrong or even abusing your horse.

I'm not saying that we should ignore our horse's stress signals, far from it, but I think the pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction, to the point where people are really limiting themselves and their horses for fear of stressing them out and doing something wrong.

Some degree of anxiety is normal when learning new skills and having new experiences.

So I think nuance is lost in a lot of emotionally aware horsemanship circles.

Temporary anxiety is a normal horse experience and a normal even expected part of expanding comfort zones.

Oh shit.

This is an interesting one starting off from the get-go.

It's a really cool perspective, honestly.

I agree with this because as I was reading it at first, I was like, emotion-centered, what do you mean by that? Because I don't hear that word often for how they...

But I knew what they were kind of implying after.

Yeah.

I think it's true though.

I think that there is a level of anxiety for anybody, not just horses, when you're starting something new or you don't know something.

So you get a little nervous or you're not sure of things.

And I think that should be always taken into consideration that you have to kind of get through those learning bumps.

And if you don't, you won't get through it at all.

And so I do agree with that.

And I like how they're not saying ignoring your stress signals.

It's just saying like, hey, make sure that you know, your, your understanding that there is a level of anxiety that you're going to have when you do new things.

Yeah.