Learned Patience

Full disclosure, I'm kind of a bad fidgeter.

It's not all the time, but it definitely crops up when I'm anxious or under a lot of emotional stress, even if I'm in a completely calm, controlled environment like my home. On more than one occasion I've been sitting on the couch with my husband and he'll side-eye me, then gently reach over and place his hand firmly whatever body part I'm unconsciously moving. Oftentimes, I'm using some body part of his like a human stress ball, rhythmically kneading or tapping. I don't even know I'm doing it until he brings awareness back into my body.

I have certainly been accused of lacking patience by those close to me, so it's always with (somewhat satisfied) delight when someone outside my close circle comments on how remarkable patient I am (meanwhile, I'm thinking to myself, "yes! See? I have immense patience, dear, just not always with you.")

I view a horse that does not know how to stand tied the same way I view myself when I fidget: someone needs to step in and say "you're okay", and teach the animal how to be alright in that moment. Someone needs to bring them back into their body, reel in their faraway thoughts and show them just how enjoyable not doing and just *being* can be.

More often, however, I see riders completely ignore the fact that their horse is tap dancing all over the place on the ties or worse, "disciplining" their horse for not standing still. And I get it: I've been there. I've been the rider who is so irritated that my horse can't just keep his feet still or is screaming to his friends. I've been the rider who has to constantly circle their horse in a lesson or clinic because they wouldn't just park it while the instructor talks for a few minutes. I've been the rider whose horse makes a mess of the aisle (and their hind legs and tail) from all the wet, projectile poo I now have come to understand is a signal of a really, really worried animal.

Sometimes this ignorance is a bit willful - more than once I've heard a rider comment that they don't want to ruin the horse's energy, as if learning to stand quietly will somehow make him a dud under saddle. Usually, though, it's just plain ol' vanilla "you don't know what you don't know", and if you don't know how to teach a horse to stand quiet - that you even COULD - you'll get to thinking this is just how it is with horses.

It's not. 

Even without the hay bag, Soni's expression is one of total contentment. If memory serves, he hung out here for at least an hour during the lunch break.

The "early days" of learning to park it. Soni wasn't nearly as fit and shapely as he is now, but he didn't need to be to learn to get really okay just standing still.

Like everything else, standing quiet is a learned skill, but it's boring from the human's perspective and thus doesn't get the attention it deserves (and often needs). I spend quite a bit of time getting this working really well for me. The value is multi-faceted: I've got a horse who can "go to their room" so to speak while I deal with something, talk to someone, when the vet is running late, when the clinic gets rained out, when someone else's horse gets loose and takes off down the road and I get called in to help corral it (that happened once). I don't need to worry about them getting themselves in trouble because they just take a snooze and all is well. I've also got a horse who is much more elastic in their energy and emotional output - asking a big effort of them doesn't get them all jazzed up if they know how to also come all the way down.

Most important - to me, anyway - is that I have a horse that is willing to wait. They aren't thinking six steps ahead of me. They aren't panicking about being removed from their friends or that dinner might come late. I have a horse that is able and willing to exist in the moment I need him to be in for as long as I need him to be there.

Perhaps it seems like small potatoes - at the end of the day, when you struggle with anxiety, you know firsthand how valuable calming influences are in your life. You gravitate towards those people. I cannot imagine there are many horse owners out there who don't want their horse to value and gravitate towards them.