Equestrian Tea Time
Emma Jenkinson and Isabeau Solace discuss the state of the equine industry with guests.
Equestrian Tea Time
Andre Pabel Deane and Essential TTouch
Andrea Pabel Deane shares her journey developing Equine Essential Touch, combining the Tellington TTouch method with essential oils to create deeper connection and cooperation with horses.
• Trained directly with Linda Tellington-Jones in the early 1980s as an alternative to traditional domination-based horsemanship
• T-Touch communicates directly with cells using circular movements, creating new neural pathways for horses
• Groundwork focuses on quality of movement and thoughtful choices rather than simply completing tasks
• Essential oils enhance effectiveness by engaging multiple senses and creating "aromatic anchors" for calm states
• Understanding freeze, fight, flight, faint and fidget as stress responses rather than stubbornness transforms training
• Three principles guide the work: connecting, cooperating, and using our brains instead of relying on instinct
• Approaching horses with the belief they're "doing their best" creates compassion instead of resentment
If you have stories about school horses or special techniques for working with them, please reach out to Isabel or Emma for our upcoming "Soft Spot for School Horses"
https://www.andreapabeldeane.com/
https://www.facebook.com/andrea.pabel?
emmajenkinsondressage@gmail.com
https://youtube.com/@emmajenkinsondressage?si=Zt9ma9vtpMK2iZV7
Hello everybody, Welcome back to Season 2, Episode 2 of the Equestrian Tea Time Podcast. I now know why so many podcasters are laughing hysterically at the beginning of episodes. They're laughing at themselves constantly having to retake things because they keep flubbing stuff up. It is quite funny to keep repeating the same thing over and over again. I am Isabel Salas. I am your host. My co-host is Emma Jenkinson. We are going to try releasing our podcast episodes in full video on YouTube, hence the hat. I think it'll look a lot better with half of my face covered.
Speaker 1:In this podcast episode we spoke with Andrea Pabaldin. She breeds Russian, Polish Arabians at her facility, Pecos Valley Arabians. She is an author, including two books that she co-authored with Linda Tellington-Jones. She is a certified Tellington equine practitioner, level two, and a Feldenkrais practitioner. She has developed her own equine essential tea-touch system, which combines the Tellington Jones T-touch system with essential oils. My takeaway from our discussion was her principles of connecting, cooperating and using our brains when it comes to our training and our interaction with our horses Three very good goals to have. Thanks for coming and I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2:Do you want to just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're doing currently?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I'm Andrea Dean and I wrote all my books under my maiden name, andrea Pavel. So sometimes that's confusing. Even Linda, when I got married, like 30 years ago, she said Andrea Dean, who's that? Yeah, it's not your Facebook name. So my books are all under Andrea Pabel and I kept it on Facebook because the people that read my books are looking for me, of course, under that name.
Speaker 3:So I really started writing books when I was 12, because I wanted a pony and it's a long story and I know we don't have time for the whole story, but it was the fastest way I figured out I could make money to get a pony. So that started that and it also sparked my interest in Linda's work because I went I grew up in Germany I went to the Stern German riding school where you know, an old military guy yelled at you to keep your heels down and hit the horse harder and that really wasn't what I wanted to do. I mean I almost gave up riding over it because you know you got handed the horse with the saddle on and got yelled at for an hour and handed the horse to the next person. There was no time to connect. By writing that book I actually did get my first pony and I found Linda. Linda was very Linda Tellington Jones was very well known and still is, but in Germany at that time and it gave me what I was looking for. I wasn't looking for just to push them harder and hit them more and make them do what you want by any means and force available, and I had studied Feldenkrais with Linda's old friend, roger Russell, when I was 18. And I really wanted to do something with horses and at the time all you could be in Germany was a riding instructor, and that wasn't even something that women did. So when I asked at a barn, they were like, well, hmm, a girl, well, you could schlepp our cases of beer for a year and sweep the barn aisles and then we might think about it. And I was like not doing that.
Speaker 3:Linda had a six-month training program at the Nacimiento Ranch. That was in 1981 or two, and so I heard about this through Roger and I was like that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to have a different way with horses. I wanted to actually connect with them and work with them. That's how I got started training with Linda, and I knew even when I had read about it and heard interviews with her and read her first books. That that was how I wanted to relate to horses and not just this dominating way of you know, you do what I say or else. That's never been my thing, it still isn't.
Speaker 3:So I still work with T-Touch. I still I didn't teach clinics like through COVID, but I'm starting back up with that. So I teach. T-touch is telling. T-touch is basically two different things One is the touch work and one is a groundwork, and then we also have the joy of writing. So there's three different elements to this work. And then I have incorporated essential oils in it and developed it further into what I call equine essential touch, which is basically tea touch with essential oils. So I do all of that and I still have my ranch and have where I've been breeding Russian, polish Arabians, and I still do that on a small scale.
Speaker 2:Beautiful, beautiful. So the clinics, are they in person or are you doing online clinics? When you do start back up?
Speaker 3:now I do both. I offer a six week course where it's two hours online on Zoom every week and then a week break where people can really practice and then a Q&R at the end so they can say I tried this and this didn't work and this worked and the nice thing about that is that you can have people there from all over the world.
Speaker 3:Somebody from Italy, can be there and not have to travel to New Mexico. However, there is nothing like in person to me, and especially with this work I did bring for you to see. That was the first book I wrote with Linda, because Linda is so busy and she's always had somebody, a co-author, to write with her. And this was a special book because my parents, when I first started training with Linda, they were like oh my God, you've got to be kidding me, you're going to America to massage horses, like what's gotten into you. And when they finally met Linda, they became really close friends. So my dad, who was a very famous journalist and never done anything like this before he'd been a war correspondent, but I don't know if you can see this, but here's my dad so he photographed all the pictures in this book put it together.
Speaker 2:together, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:We went to Canada for like two weeks and took all the pictures there. And this little guy can you see him? Yes, this young man is turning 35 tomorrow. That's my old boy and he was our little model for like a little chapter. What do you do with your pesky little brother who also wants to get on the horse? What kind of exercises could you do? Because I had talked to Linda and I had said look, linda, you always write for adults and I had written these two, a series of two books like that about T-touch and you know, groundwork for, say, age 10 to whatever 16. And I said you know you always teach for adults. How about a book for young adults and children? And that's how we came up with this. And I still get messages of people saying I know this was intended for younger readers, but we love it and we read it all the time and that was.
Speaker 2:Well, I did find it as a kid. I'm so grateful that you wrote it. I found it in a tack shop in Taos in the book section and you know you, you were the first introduction to that stuff and just gentler, kinder ways of working with horses, yeah, and and so you know a lot of people always ask me so, is it massage, are you doing body work?
Speaker 3:And it really isn't. I love massage. I think there's a wonderful place for chiropractic work and there's beautiful body work methods. However, a T-touch isn't one of them. Beautiful bodywork methods, However, a T-touch isn't one of them.
Speaker 3:It really is about communication and we do these T-touch circles and other things. But the idea behind this or the thought behind this is we're communicating directly with the cells and Linda always says the message that we have with these circles to the cells is like remember your potential for perfection. And she always talks about like a string of Christmas lights and maybe through trauma or just even tension or something, some of those lights, some of those connections have gone dark. They're not available to the nervous system and the horse or the person. So with that T-touch we can gently kind of encourage them to come back on and to connect. So it really is a method of connecting and communicating directly with the cells and with the heart and offering more options. So instead, I mean you know there's all this natural horsemanship. So I always say this is unnatural horsemanship because we don't work with the horse's instinct in saying, okay, I'll whatever make you run from me and that establishes me as the herd boss, but it is. How can we work together and how can we come out of simply fright and flight and survival mode, which every horse knows? That language, right, they all know how to run when they get scared. But we're engaging higher levels of thinking, frontal lobe of the brain, which horses have too, into a more intelligent response. Say, if they hear a noise and they run, they don't have to learn that. They know that. They know how to do that. Anybody who's ever been on a horse head spook knows that. But what they don't learn at birth or in just wild behavior is how to stop, look around, check in with you, say what was that? Do we really have to do something? That's unnatural for a horse. No horse in the wild does that and if they do, they probably get eaten.
Speaker 3:But nowadays, when we have fences and cars and we're riding them in the environment that we do, we need a horse that has overcome that flight instinct and is looking for choices and is looking for communication with you and is wondering what to do instead of instinctively just taking off. So we have this whole playground of higher learning, which is a groundwork where horses get to learn to like, say, over a tarp. There's lots of methods where a say over a tarp. There's lots of methods where a horse goes over a tarp, and I'm not so interested that the horse goes over the tarp, but how does she go over that tarp? Is she rushing over that tarp? And then we say, okay, she did it, she ran over the tarp. Can she put a foot on there? Can she put her head down? Can she breathe? Can she take a step forward? Can she take a step backwards? Can she be in rest and digest on that tarp? Or is it just, oh, we'll get it over with?
Speaker 3:Because my interest is not so much that she does it, which she will do, but what does she learn in the process? Does she learn to put her head down? Does she learn to be curious? Does she learn, oh, I can differentiate a foot forward, a foot back, instead of just going over the thing and say it's done, she did it, good, good. So all of our groundwork is like that. Looking at it under a, what did the horse learn doing this? What new movements did she try out? What could she differentiate her hind feet from her front feet, could she stop at any moment, could she reverse at any moment? Because that is real having control and being in a thinking frame of mind instead of just like get this over with. So it's all geared towards that towards giving choices, towards communicating, towards cooperating and working together.
Speaker 2:And so you were describing T-Touch and the benefits, and then T-Teen, just now, I believe. And what's the third one? Because I have not heard the joy of riding.
Speaker 3:So Linda is really famous and she did it this year again at Equitana. She just turned 88. She still goes to the Equitana every year and is famous for taking bridles of these horses and riding them bridle-less, with a neck ring, with a balance rein, and you know there's a lot about the joy of riding in a light seat and giving a horse a chance to stretch. I mean, she's worked extensively I have too in Germany with these super tight dressage horses that could not lengthen their neck because they're so packed, so tight. And she's worked a lot with horses from Klaus Balkenholz, for instance, who would spook at every show they had and ruin the show and doing T-touch before bringing them into a different frame of mind and nervous system and lengthening their necks and giving them a chance to just move freely has made such a difference.
Speaker 3:So the joy of writing is really writing in a different way and, like in this book, there's a lot of things where we did it with the kids. I mean Linda, like me, grew up with like military instruction how do you bring a horse from going in a full bridle to just going in a neck ring? I mean there's a transition to that, Really a different style of riding and experimenting with bridle-less. We have a bitless bridle that's called a Lindell work, with a neck, a neck rein and a neck ring. So the rein is like a softer, like a rope kind of almost. That just helps a horse, bring a horse back in balance, especially young horses who might be struggling with balance, and so that really is a wonderful part of the work, the Joy of Riding.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm definitely going to look more into that, because I just didn't know about that part. And is that the kind of thing you do in your course, or what is in your course? So what? I?
Speaker 3:teach online is a basic. The tea touches, all the different tea touches there's plenty different all these. Let's see, look at the cow's tongue. Can you see that I can a little the cow's tongue? Can you see that I can a little? That's like a. That's a tea touch. That is a bigger tea touch that goes up and down like this. But the basic tea touch is if you put your, can you see that, if you put your hands together like this, if you just use the tip of your finger here, that would be a raccoon touch.
Speaker 3:And it's the smallest tea touch we have, the lightest. That's great for in the face, around the eyes, around wounds, sensitive areas, and it is really like if you wanted to try it on your face. We always think six o'clock is down, 12 o'clock is up, nine o'clock and three o'clock and you very gently push your skin around in a circle and a quarter, or your horse's skin around. And we've done a lot of brainwave testing with the circles and if you just do a circle it does not engage all the brainwaves the way it does, strangely enough, when you do a circle and a quarter. So it's a very light touch mostly.
Speaker 3:I mean we have some on a scale from one to ten. Right there is um, lighter touches, one, three, five heavier touches, the seven or eight we hardly ever use, maybe on a very heavily muscled dressage neck or something like that. That is very, very closed, basically. So I teach the key touches in the course and go over some of the groundwork. I have a lot of videos of the groundwork, but writing is really. I feel like writing is really more something that we need to do in person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or at least back and forth with somebody.
Speaker 3:Yeah, back and forth with somebody, and I've also developed this hair pad that I could send to you if somebody wants to have that, which is basically the telling touch and essential oils and overview which touches which oils. When would you use it? What is it good for? Sort of a 101. Help you make it a one that's digital. I have it on my website as a download.
Speaker 2:Okay, then we'll just be linking your website and I'll get all that from you. And then let's talk about oils essential oils, yes.
Speaker 3:So you know, when I started with Tea Touch very early in my, when I was in my 20s, I played with essential oils and used them in Germany and then I kind of forgot about them and then I brought them back into this work a few years ago, probably like 10 years ago actually, and you can do tea touch without essential oils, absolutely.
Speaker 3:There is no, no, nothing saying you can't do tea touch. You can, of course. However, you can enhance it with essential oils and I always think when you want to sort of get a message across or have a learning experience, the more of your senses and the more of the horse's senses that you can involve, the clearer your message is. So if we have movement and touch and sound your voice, movement and touch and sound your voice and then you have smell, that really the smell is so interesting because it goes right from your nose directly into the limbic system of your brain. So that is learning and emotional learning and also repatterning that all happens in the limbic system. So I found that when I combine the oils with T-touch, which is as simple as putting a couple of drops of oil on my fingertips and then doing the T-touch, it really is more effective and it has a different level of information for the horse, because not only do they get the touch, but they also get the smell, which involves another sense.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so affecting more senses, that's so cool. I've had some really good results just personally, like with myself working with the horses, and I just wanted to see if you would talk about anchoring with the scent as well. So curious about that.
Speaker 3:Yes, so you can create an aromatic anchor, you know, for yourself or for your horse and I always like to imagine things, I guess because I'm a writer. So if you think of you have your boat anchored in a nice, safe place, like no big waves, in a harbor, somewhere nice and safe, so you could do that with an oil, like when your horse is feeling good, when they're having a nice experience, so you take lavender, something calming, right, and you establish that as a nice, safe, feel-good place. So then if your boat drifts away from that out into the open ocean the waves are throwing it around you can pull up your anchor and say, oh boy, let's go back to where we are safe. So if your horse, say, gets excited or afraid or nervous, or there is trailer loading, for instance, or something, you can use that lavender oil and anchor her back to that safe place that she knows you can remind her of. Like, oh yeah, that smell means everything is all right, that smell means everything is good, I'm safe.
Speaker 3:I could take a deep breath and just lean into that and that feeling will help her and will bring her out of survival mode and back into rest and digest, where we can actually think, and so can your horse, because if they are stuck in survival mode, it's almost like you've lost that part of your brain. It is not accessible, it does not need to be accessible while you're, like running from a tiger, say you don't need all that fancy thinking. Strong legs and strong heart, that's you're going. But for a creative solution you need. So this oil can bring back in action those parts of the brain that you really need and that your horse really needs to be present and to use their potential of thinking and making a good choice.
Speaker 3:Because horses can think and make choices instead of just reacting from instinct. They can respond and question and connect with you, Because I think you've all seen it a horse that has their head iron, rolling their eyes and they don't even see you anymore. They've gone some other place. Like how do you get them back to you? So an oil can be really helpful in that process, like I use balance, for instance, every time the farrier comes, that is my farrier oil. You know it is all about balance. So much that we do with horses is about balance, right?
Speaker 2:I have had a lot of success with the Mustangs Loving to check that out, the wild ones and my gelding that you know about. Who's had all these issues. That one helps a lot. Are there a few others you might suggest that are maybe just like one oil that would help with anxiety or something like that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean my one go-to for anxiety all things calming is lavender, of course. Right, there is several calming oils. There's also serenity, there's peace. There's different oils and, you know, not everything will work the same for every person or every horse. Some horses might really love lavender, Some horses might prefer serenity, so there are different. But basically lavender is never wrong as a calming oil. You can always try that. And I, you know, I've used Breathe for respiratory stuff. I used On Guard for protection, like if a horse is super sensitive or if they are experiencing, you know, just some sort of like. I had a horse that stepped on a nail the first time ever and she was super sick. It was really infected. I diffused OnGuard in her stall and I think it really helped. I mean, we also did IV antibiotics, we did everything. It's not like you just do that, you do that and you do what your vet says to do. First I wanted to say here's my T-Touch book. I read like a Bible in the 90s and just totally immersed myself into this.
Speaker 3:Thank you for Linda.
Speaker 2:And I know you were on this one, but I didn't.
Speaker 1:I didn't read yours yet I'm probably going to get there now and I just wanted to clarify what.
Speaker 3:If you want to become certified in T-Touch, you have to go through the T-Touch office and they do offer online courses and the equine essential touch that I'm offering is wonderful and educational, but it's not. You get a certificate of completion, but you're. I can't certify anyone in T-Touch. There's only like a handful of teachers in the world that do that and it all goes through the official t-touch organization um, so would you consider t-touch a?
Speaker 1:healing modality. It seems like emotional regulation and it seems like it would work through some trauma. It does.
Speaker 3:It does and but I think just the thing is it is a healing modality on the basis of cellular health and cellular connection. And so there I mean a lot of. We've had a lot of horses with severe trauma that we've worked with, worked with and you know, even just on their, how they are standing, how they are holding their breath, how they are checking out and not connecting. You know because of what has happened to them. So that really gives you know. When you give new neural pathways or open the possibility for that, you also open the possibility for a new connection and trust and breathing and lowering your head, and it all works together into creating a new pathway, a new pattern, a new connection and a new way of being.
Speaker 2:And something I've noticed with my clients is, since I've got them breathing and doing the T-touch, it just really, really helps their nervous system. And then they go and do training and we get just such amazing results. I don't know they get to connect with their forces.
Speaker 3:That is such a big part of it and Linda's done a lot of stuff with the HeartMath Institute part of it, and Linda's done a lot of stuff with the Heart Math Institute. When we trained years ago we had these little monitors where you could. It would show if you were in heart coherence or not.
Speaker 2:And we teach this heart hug that you've probably seen me do a million times but that is one way to really come into heart coherence and when you are in heart coherence, everything you do with your horse has a completely different quality love the heart hug and I just think that the work with oils and the tea touch and what you teach because I have been to a few things that you've done are just really great for our nervous system too and to like feel better about our training and with our forces, and that's what I'm really focused on with my practice. So I just love it and I'm so glad you came on. Is there anything else that you'd like to tell us about you?
Speaker 3:know, one thing for me that was really like a deciding factor in learning this work and sharing this work was I wanted to do something that I would feel good about, not something where I would feel like I would have to, like apologize to my horse afterwards Because you know that early training in Germany I, deep down inside, I came away from these lessons feeling bad and sad and not feeling happy, not like, oh, this was great for me and the horse. I was really unfulfilled and I really, when I started doing teacher, I was like, yes, this is what I wanted. I wanted this to be good for both of us. I wanted the horse to have learned something and be happy and I wanted to feel good about it and not feeling like I needed to say I'm so sorry I did this.
Speaker 3:And I think so much in the horse world, I mean by now I think it is very clear that horses have feelings. When I started that was not clear. I mean, not only was that not clear, that was kind of unheard of. That was like you know. So I think we've come a long way in the horse world in acknowledging that horses have feelings and acknowledging that they are wonderful beings that respond so well to cooperation Instead of just suppressing them. And you know this whole attitude of I'm going to just hit you harder T-Touch work is that we are bringing and fostering that there is a better way and that there is a different way and that horses respond to a very light touch and to being invited to work. And you know that really there is a way where everybody can be happy, there is a win-win. It's not just like, well, I had to do this, so my horse would do this, and really it wasn't what made my heart feel good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that can take just so many obstacles out of our way with our mindset. But it's so hard when we've got one person over here telling us just man up, and you got to do this and your horse is going to eat you if you don't, if you're not heard. And then we've got people over here doing there's many avenues to the same path of allowing for consent, having a gentle touch. There's classical massage, like some of this newer work. We've got he touched Tellington Jones, all this work you're doing with work. We've got T-Push Tellington Jones, all this work you're doing with oils. We've got positive reinforcement and, yeah, I think it's really taking on or taking off in the horse world and I'm so excited that hopefully we're a part of that, getting the word out about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know one thing that I wanted to touch on really briefly, if we still have a moment. We teach this whole thing about's all too much. The initial thing is wanting to take off. If they can't do that, there are horses that will fight some of them. And then there is freeze, and freeze really is so often misunderstood when they just stand there and don't do anything. And so many of these horses are called stubborn and oh, they just don't want to do anything. And I think the freeze response, out of all of them, is really misunderstood where people don't realize that this is a stress response and that in order to bring that horse out of it, you have to do something, that is, you know, taking a few steps, lowering the head, breathing, something that engages them back into an action, a movement that comes out of that freeze, and that that freeze isn't to be punished. So many horses get punished for being in freeze. It only makes it worse, of course, right.
Speaker 2:I think they spend a lot of time there or in shutdown because we keep them right at that edge of threshold, right, and then we keep pushing and we get fight or flight and then they go back down to freeze and we don't give them a moment. And this work can just taking a little moment to get them to breathe and for you to breathe and then to move is just key.
Speaker 3:it is so transformative right, and I mean just to even recognize that they're not being stubborn, uh, that this is a reaction of their nervous system for overwhelm and not knowing what to do. And then there is faint. Any of you ever seen a horse go down Like too much pressure, with trailer loading, no preparation for the first time, mounting? I've seen horses just drop and again it's being punished. Oh, they're just trying to. So giving them this understanding of that, these are stress responses. And then fidget. Fidget is the last one, the nibbling, the undoing the rope, the back and forth, just like kids. But fidget is also a stress response and that does not make any of this like preferable. Or yeah, just let them fidget around, that's okay, it's a stress response. You still can do things to teach them a better way. But to understand that, first of all, this is not just like they're being stubborn, bad, whatever else.
Speaker 2:And once we change our mindset, everything changes. Everything opens up to us, yeah, and our horse.
Speaker 3:So that was something that I wanted to touch on because I see that so often misunderstood, simply because people don't think about it in this way or don't know that about horses. And I think if more people would look at it that way and understand that it is a stress response, then you can come at it in a completely different way and to think that your horse is always doing the very best they can. And I used to think, well, that might not be true, they could be doing better. But what that does for you is come from a point of compassion and softness and openness.
Speaker 3:If you think, oh, they did this better yesterday, but for some reason today, but because otherwise you come at them from a point of resentment, dang it, you did this yesterday and today we're alone in the trailer, like, come on, but that makes you hard and that makes you resentful and that brings an energy in it that mirrors that with the horse, and then you all get stuck. I've done it myself, right. But when you come at it from this, well, even though it doesn't make any sense, but obviously this is the best you could do right now, then you can be creative and you don't get hard and you don't get this angry thing. So that is another thing that I've really learned from Linda is like, ah, they're doing the best they can, what are we going to do? And I love always when somebody comes with a really difficult horse and says she says, oh, how interesting, that gives us something to work with.
Speaker 2:And then you've got all these tools in your toolbox so you can be in something in that situation once you know all this.
Speaker 1:Isabel, was there anything that you wanted to say? I'll tell you quickly a story about when I had a horse. He was very upset because, uh, his, all his friends got loaded on the trailer and left the property and he was left behind and it occurred to me. I'm like you know why don't I try to stick him in his friend's stall? I wonder if just the smell of his friend will calm him down. And the horse quieted down so fast. It was shocking. I was like he quieted down immediately and was fine After I let him just stand in the stall for a few minutes and then was able to put him back in his own stall and he was completely chill and he went. I wish I had video of that.
Speaker 1:I mean, when I think about this kind of work, I mostly as someone in the industry my whole life I think about this kind of work. I mostly as someone in the industry my whole life is the conflict between the industry and what's rewarded in competition and doing this kind of work with horses. It's very hard to make this kind of thing into. You know, the market rewards certain things. The market rewards flash and jumping big fences and getting huge extended trots where the horse is going to bump his chin with his knees. It's amazing to have the internet available and to go find instructors, you know, all over the world and in different places.
Speaker 1:When I was a kid I was stuck with whatever was in town, you know, and that led me. I spent a year or two working off riding on a walking horse facility with show horses up on stack beds. That's what was available to me. I got to ride a big black stallion, which I thought was cool. I didn't know anything about. You know ethics of horses on stack beds or anything on 15, 16, you know that's what's there. That's my opportunity to ride and that's what I did. But now people have so many more options, you know, if you don't want to compete and and you know you don't want to run the barrels or jump you totally do have the option to go online and find all these different modalities and all these different instructors and all this groundwork and um, really have a great time just training your horse yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah no, andrea, thanks for coming on. I'm really, it's really awesome to have this opportunity. I wasted a couple of decades trotting around online talking to people on discussion boards but, um, you know a lot of people who are interested in this stuff aren't hanging out there and you know to be successful there requires that uh, I'll go ahead and name somebody here Clinton Anderson. Personality you know you need a big, forceful personality. You know, to succeed in that larger marketplace and to get a message out there and through, you need, you need a big message and a big mouth and a lot of energy to keep pushing it forward, which, you know, folks who are doing the alternative kind of horsemanship generally don't have that kind of personality. The alternative kind of horsemanship generally don't have that kind of personality. So I'm really curious about how to move forward with trying to get this stuff. Get more to tickle more people's interest in this stuff, but try to figure out how to make it something that's a functional economic model.
Speaker 1:Horses are freaking expensive. I've gotten by by working for people who have a lot more money than me riding their horses, living on their farm. You know. Otherwise, somebody who has kids and a house and, you know, only goes to the barn maybe three or four days a week A lot of time. They just don't have the time or the brain space or the energy to get this deep into stuff. How to try to make this kind of stuff more of a viable option to people?
Speaker 1:People feel a lot of pressure. They got to go to the horse show, they got to go to the event, they got to go do this stuff and it's almost not an acceptable choice to just stay home with your horse and enjoy making them happy. It doesn't mean you don't ride. I ride a lot Definitely a different, more internal focus and it's hard to take feedback from your horse and have them tell you you are woefully insufficient and you need to improve a lot. That's tough. So, yeah, thanks for coming on to talk about this. I really appreciate this and I think Emma and I have found ourselves a good little project of collecting folks like you and jody and getting us all together and talking. Thanks for having me. I'm so moved by this conversation and I'm glad I got to connect with you. Thank you for the opportunity awesome, thank you and you know it.
Speaker 3:Really, what got me to this work was it was not about being dominant, it was about connection and coming, you know, into partnership, not from dominance, not from I'm the boss of you, but from a connection and cooperation on, on a heart level. And that does not mean that we let our horse eat a bag of grain because they want to, or run on the highway. You know, we're still in charge, but in what way and how are we and connecting and what level is our playing field? You know, are we on this instinctual level of move, while I'll bite your butt? Progress to somewhere where we are connecting, cooperating and actually using our brains and our hearts together.
Speaker 1:Hello again, I'm back. Thanks for coming. I hope you enjoyed our conversation. Connecting, cooperating and using our brains A very good goal to have. Emma and I are going to do a special series in our podcast. We are going to call it Soft Spot for School Horses. So if you have a special story about school horses or a special technique or service that you provide for school horses, or if there's anything that you would like to talk about relating to school horses, Emma and I would love to talk to you. So please reach out to us. I'm pretty easy to find on Facebook Isabeau Zarabeth Salas there aren't too many of me floating around or you can reach out to Emma at Emma Jenkins Cintrasage. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for coming. Bye-bye.
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