I could hear it in her voice.

 
The voice mail was nearly identical to one I’d left my mentor a few years ago……….

“Oh My Lord, what am I going to do with this horse??!! She is KILLING ME! Nothing works, and I’m going crazy, PLEASE CALL ME!!!!!!”

The horse she was talking about happens to be offspring of THE KNUCKLEHEAD to beat all knuckleheads.

See “How I was Outsmarted by a Warmblood” for more about that Knucklehead aka The Evil Twin aka The Warmblood aka The Horse with No Name……

I had made that same phone call myself a few years ago….. about Daddy Knucklehead himself. Apparently the ability to push their person right over the edge…………

runs in the family.

This horse managed to outsmart me & outlast me on every level. The worst part was I had been a fairly solid green horse trainer for YEARS when he crossed my path.

Give me a sensitive, nervous, scaredy cat and I turned them into reasonably brave, solid citizens in short order. Nearly every time.

But The Evil Twin…… He wasn’t sensitive, nervous OR scared.

Before long *I* was the sensitive, nervous, scared one………….

And HE was sour, in charge, and bored.

He’s the horse that changed my views on motivation.

I’d always had horses that responded well to exercise, patterns, repetition, and structure. The more times you repeated an exercise the more confident and agreeable they became.

But THIS horse…………if you did something ONE TIME. He got it.

It was etched in there permanently, and if you did it twice he was bored and looking for something else to do with his time.

He is the REASON for the phrase…….. Less is More.

When I figured that part out we finally started getting somewhere.

I also learned that I had to find other ways to motivate this horse because his “willingness to please” was nonexistent very short lived.

Hopefully I gave my desperate caller some ideas about motivating her knucklehead…… or at least talking her off that cliff that I know so well!!

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Bad Eventer shirts, flasks & other swag can be purchased here.

Wouldn’t a Bad Eventer flask full of an adult beverage be the perfect “Tail End / Last Place” award??