Jerry the Life Coach

My new love is this dude Jerry Tindell. He's some fat old cowboy who is like magic on horseback. Some neighbor (I'll call her cussing hairdresser from New York)gave me his dvds and I've been watching them on the treadmill and learning how to get into the mind of Maggie.

I have to watch everything like 20 times to understand what the hell he's talking about, and then I run out and try it out on Maggie. It's a good thing I have the discs, because Katie moved to her new house yesterday and without her here I decided I better get rid of this impossible horse. But then the dvds give me inspiration so I go out, get on her back and try all this bending and flexing and teaching her the leg cues, and it's kind of fascinating. She actually DOES the stuff he says it's possible to teach.

All I want is for her to be able to go out on the trail and be a regular and safe horse. But what he said that was most interesting is that horses don't respond to the pull on the rein, it's not the pull they're going for, it's the release. So you think you're pulling them, but really, when you pull them, they go with it because at the end of the pull is the release. They're looking for the release. I thought that said alot about pretty much everything in life. The horse will try anything for you because at the end you're letting go. That's a pretty nice promise.

Learning horses is just like learning music or learning any other invisible thing. It's all about finding balance and figuring out how to float along with something as seamlessly as possible so you can hear its own silent song. Hopefully you can match up with it for a few strides where you dissolve together. That seems like beauty to me.