Mental Balance

     Raise your hand if you were cold today!!!! Both of my hands are up, I was FREEZING all day!!!

     I did a lot of thinking again on my drive home, about MENTAL balance and the difference between it and EMOTIONAL balance. I was getting really frustrated and started confusing myself, but I think I figured it out.

     First of all there is a HUGE difference between EMOTIONAL and MENTAL, and I feel kind of silly that I had not figured this out sooner. Lets take for example horses and their trainer: I work with horses of all ages, youngest being  a 6 month old filly, and some older mares, 4 and 9. The 9 year old mare "Indy" is a higher level horse, around 3/4, she has the mental capacity to handle new and more advanced scenarios in our training. Now, Catori, the filly, is immature and cant handle much more than a few of the Parelli games.  I would never go out to the pasture, get Catori, put a halter on her and ask her to sideways away from me 40 feet and then back. She would have absolutely no idea what I was asking her to do. Indy on the other hand, she would be all about it, she LOVES to play the sideways game and she is MENTALLY BALANCED enough to handle it. Will Catori be able to do that? Of course! And I am sure with her little dominate attitude we will be doing it a lot! But right now Catori cannot handle it, its going to take lots of working together, building confidence and becoming BALANCED in all three areas!

CATORI

INDY

     Now, lets take the trainer. In a few days I am going to have a girl come work with me who has never done NHS and has very little experience with horses. Sure she has ridden, groomed and probably even tacked up a horse, but not much more. She is not where near MENTALLY BALANCED enough to do some of the things that my more advanced horses are able to do. For example, our 4 year old mare "Salita" is very much left brain, which mean she is dominate, pushy, rude, and sometimes a little scary. It would be a pretty stupide idea for me to but this girl and horse together. First of all, Salita would think (MENTAL) that she is in control, she is the leader, and would take advantage of the poor girl. And oohh gosh that poor girl, she would probably be scared of horses after working with Salita having no experience at all. The girl is too immature mentally as a horseman to work with that horse, she would probably regress both MENTALLY and EMOTIONALLY and maybe even get hurt PHYSICALLY.

SALITA

    So, in conclusion, when working with a horse, make sure YOU as a person are BALANCED MENTALLY to work with that horse. Do you have the necessary maturity and knowledge to help the horse and be its leader? Is the horse BALANCED enough MENTALLY to understand what you are asking of it, and able to do it?

I hope everyone stays warm! Tomorrow is EMOTIONAL BALANCE! This is going to be a fun one!!!!!

Stay True!
-E