Agruments,regrets,and missed moments.

I find myself in a most reflective state as I muck a stall.
My mind wanders as I move around the horse,sharing his world for a few minutes.

I realize that my past mistakes and arguments have led to regrets and regrets are sometimes hard to manage.
Many of my regrets are about missed moments. Moments that could have been very important, and moments that would have made a difference.

So I started to think about missed moments with my horses and what I may have missed with the simplest of things.
My mind wanders around for a bit collecting some profound moments in training that I thought that I would share in the hope that you would give me a few of yours back.

I became aware of a moment when I was putting on a halter on a young colt one day,that I was not giving the colt a choice.
I would walk up,put my arm over the colts neck and slip the halter over the nose,put the end in the buckle and be done.
The horse would comply and we left it at that.

I started to ask myself, he wants to go with me,he is not afraid of the rope or halter,why am I putting the halter on the way that I do?
So I started to pause for just..a... moment and offer the colt the opportunity to put his nose into the halter. Well this was just contagious in my mind and before you know it,I was offering the horse other moments that he could make the right or wrong choice.

And then I saw the great metaphor of life showing me that if I had just paused....a moment with past arguments then I might not of had so many regrets to manage.
Horses are the great mirror for our souls if we let them.

Wonderful post. I do the same thing all the time. Sometimes we are in such a hurry to do something that we forget about the horse's feelings and perspective on what's going on. Thank goodness they are so forgiving!

I feel that those are words of wisdom !

Great post!!!

Very insightful.

Mucking stalls is like meditation. I find myself reliving past mistakes over and over as I scrub buckets, fluff shavings or move the manure pile. From the regret comes inspiration and motivation to be a better person, resolve not to commit the same errors and hope to be a better person and horseman. Everyone should go into a barn in the morning and listen to horses munching hay and muck a stall. It's positively therapeutic.
I came to a realization today as I did the 14 stall routine. I've simply bitten off more than I can chew with this colt, and I need to get help. For HIS sake. Forget about my pride. We both need the help. I feel so much better after letting go and admitting that!