The Choice to Change

Life is kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. Do you remember reading those as a kid? I loved them. I would read through, choosing whichever adventure appealed to me the most. But I didn’t stop there; when I got to the end of the book, I would go back to the start and read it again and again, choosing a different adventure each time. Wouldn’t it be great if we had that option in life as well? To be able to go back and do things over, and choose a different way? There’s a reason for cliches such as “Hindsight is 20/20,” and “If I knew then what I know now.” We don’t get to go back and fix our mistakes, or try taking a different path for the fun of it. But we do get to choose our next adventure. We can change how we do things the next time. We can choose not to repeat the same patterns.

Photo Credit: Mutt Love Photography

We have so many options in life; so many choices to make, so many paths we could follow. I marvel nearly every day at how many things I can choose between doing with my time. Some days there are more options than others. It depends on how many things are on my “need to do” list as well as how many things are on my “would like to do” list. The “need to do” list gets broken down further by priority level; some things have to be done today, others can be postponed as they are less urgent. There are always far more things I could be doing than time in a day. That is part of life on this planet; we have to choose how we spend our time, as it is the one thing that is finite. We cannot create more time, unlike other things in our life such as money. In fact, we often end up trading our time for money. We sacrifice time to earn money to spend on things we choose to do with our remaining time. Unlike the novel, where we can go back and take an alternate path over and over again until we’ve enjoyed every possible combination of options, life only permits us to live through each moment in time once. Therefore, we must choose wisely how we spend each moment, and choose to use our time doing what we find most fulfilling and rewarding.

In one sense, a lifetime with horses is similar to a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. With each horse, we get to start over. We get the opportunity to choose a different way of doing things. To use what we learned in the past and apply it now, when working with the next horse. Each new horse is like a blank canvas we get the gift of starting fresh with. To change our choices, to draw on past experiences and make more educated decisions. I have often reflected on how much further I could have taken each of my past horses had they come into my life at a later time, when I knew more than I did when I owned them. But that is one of the gifts horses give us; they teach us things we don’t learn elsewhere. Every single horse teaches us something slightly different, because they are all unique individuals. My past horses were my teachers to prepare me for my current horse. And my current horse is teaching me to prepare me for future horses.

However, as with life, the time we get to spend working on things with each horse is also limited. Partially by our own schedule and the limited number of hours in a day; but primarily by what the horses are happy to give us. We can only do so much in a session and work with them for as many hours, or perhaps merely minutes, in a day as they are able to handle. If we try to do too much, we overstay our welcome and things begin to regress instead of progress. This can be because of where their minds are at on any given day, how their bodies are feeling, and so many other factors. We need to choose wisely which options we are going to pick each day, because we cannot do everything at once, and we cannot explore endless options in a day. Horses need time to process what we teach them, time to physically recover after a workout (just like a human after going to the gym), and time to just be horses. We also need to remember that horses don’t forget. Tomorrow we can come out and try a different approach if today’s didn’t work, but the horse won’t forget what you did today.

When I first got Lacey, she was highly anxious and a very active horse. She could only tolerate being in the barn for 10-15 minutes at a time. If I had more I needed or wanted to do with her in a day than I could fit into those 10-15 minutes, I would bring her in multiple times for short periods so as not to exceed her time limit. Otherwise, her attention was gone, and I wouldn’t make any progress; it would be a negative experience for her instead of a positive one. By splitting her training into installments throughout the day, she gradually relaxed into the routine of doing things in the barn. She started to realize that it was temporary; she wasn’t going to be stuck inside permanently, she wasn’t going to be separated from her friends. That is a big deal for a horse, being an animal who’s dependent on the herd for survival. Especially for a young horse that is in a new location after never leaving their breeder’s farm in their early years. They don’t know that they aren’t getting moved again, or that they won’t be seeing their current herd mates for the last time when you take them out of their field, which was what happened when I purchased her and brought her home. They don’t know they successfully completed a lesson until you put them back in their field. Realizing it was temporary built Lacey’s confidence in being inside, and she was able to focus on being present in the moment instead of worrying or wanting to be somewhere else. Now she is content standing in the crossties, being groomed, being tacked up, et cetera for however long it takes.

Each day we go to the barn, we can make conscious choices. There will always be some things that are out of our control, such as the weather, injuries, cancelled shows. But there are many things we can choose. One of the most important things is our attitude. We can’t always control what happens, but we can control how we react to it. We can choose a positive attitude versus a negative one. We can choose to prioritize our horse’s well-being over our goals. We can choose to treat our horses with compassion, empathy, kindness, understanding, and care, even when things don’t go our way. We can choose to look at things from their perspective, not just ours. We can choose to learn from our mistakes, instead of repeating them. We can recognize when we’ve screwed up and choose to do things differently tomorrow. We may not be able to undo the past, but we can choose a different approach the next day. Even if we don’t choose the exact adventure our horses take us on, we can always choose how we respond to it. Every ride is a chance to choose a better way.