#aldunning

Ok… So I’ve been a stranger lately. I do apologize. I have always promised to be honest, true to who I am & what road I am walking down… I could not do it until this point because I did not know.

I started the Al Dunning Protege Program… But for the wrong reasons… I had something to prove. My ego was in full force…I wanted to make sure everyone knew that I am a legitimate trainer that I can do more than start horses & fix problems. (Like that was a bad thing??!) that I just had a baby & that WILL NOT slow me down. I am super human & am a prime example of someone with outstanding work ethic & I had super human powers… Lie… I had anxiety attacks, small meltdowns, freak outs… (Totally awkward and uncomfortable to admit!!) Whatever you want to call them. Let’s blame it on hormones (my Dr did) blame it on sleep deprivation …whatever you want It was a task I was trying to accomplish with the wrong motives… My ego to be exact! My horse was unhappy, I was unhappy… Even though I was passing the videos, we were not having fun. And what the hell is the point if we aren’t… Let me start somewhere else…

I have had a bad taste in my mouth about the word “natural horsemanship” for as long as I can remember. Because I don’t think what we do is in any way is natural for them. Natural is out in the wild with each other and no human interaction…. I think the people that market themselves as “natural” trainers are doing it to appease the people who have very good intentions. The people who genuinely want a pure relationship with their horses… The people who want to make their horses like them & who want to create a good foundation. Natural is running from predators & searching for food & water. Not banging on stall doors @ 6 am & knocking water troughs over… I will say the lives we provide for them might just be better than “natural”… The environment which we put them in & the tasks we ask them to perform are nothing close to what they would chose to do. This does NOT mean they can’t enjoy what we have planned for them. But do not insult them & try to market it as “natural”! I did the John/Josh Lyons Certification Program because I wanted a path to follow. I wanted a foundation to work from. A step by step layout of a direction to follow… I did get that and am so appreciative of the time I spent there. Then I wanted more… But what?! I LOVE CUTTING & WORKiNg COW HORSE!!!! Nothing in the world makes me feel like putting my hand down and cutting a cow or going down the fence full speed. Total disregard to all the things that could go wrong, just catch that cow!!!! Giving up all control & putting total trust in your horse to take care of you, no control of the cow, or of the situation. Something some people can only achieve sitting in the stall watching them eat. I would like to point out that is also one of my favorite things to do and is in no way an insult. But I hear so many people say they can be that relaxed & soothed by sitting and just being with them (again, not a bad thing or an insult) but less often you hear of their ability to achieve such a sensation while on their back in a performance setting. I crave the same sensation of relaxation after I’ve cut my cow & put my hand down. I want to be ok with getting out if their way, trusting what I’ve done up until that point was good enough to let them shine… I want that more than anything! Back to my story of where I’ve been. I stopped at “walk a turn around”… Section 2 out of three… I passed it, but my horse looked so miserable. So I stopped. He was spooking at everything & was on edge, he wasn’t enjoying what we were doing and I couldn’t make sense of that. I have spent the last month sitting on him, trail riding him, pushing a ball around, ponying horses off him & being a horse mom to him. Because I was at a loss at what to do to fix where we had gone. That being said I have come to some conclusions. If I really wanted to be a reining/reined cow horse trainer I would already be much further than I am. I am a driven person who goes after my passion. All this time I wanted to get away from the title “natural horsemanship” trainer and get me be know as a performance horse trainer. But I haven’t. And I needed to stop and ask myself why. I can feel when horses give it to me correctly, I know how to get a proper turn around & stop & roll back. I feel all of that. But when I think of that being my all day tasks I don’t feel right. I don’t want to haul to shows, I don’t want the pressure of clients who have horses too young to push pressuring me to push, when I know I shouldn’t. I don’t want my career to teeter on wether I win or not. I want to go show my own horses because I enjoy it. Maybe I don’t want to ruin what I love with turning it into something I HAVE to do!! Whoa…..

I want to keep showing to myself as my fun thing to do… Holy epiphany.

I want to help people enjoy their horses. I want to help people achieve their goals, no matter how “big” or “small” they may seem to me. That’s what I want to do everyday. I want to help people develop a better relationship with their horse, I want to help people who have lost all confidence in their partner, with real legitament fear… I want to help re balance their relationships! I have been much more clear minded about my focus now & am so excited about the ideas I have been having…

I WANT TO DEVELOP A PROGRAM THAT LETS PEOPLE ACHIVE THE SAME RELAXATION ON THE BACK OF THEIR HORSE AS THEY DO SITTING IN THEIR STALL WATCHING THEM EAT OR BRUSHING THEM, OR WATCHING THEM IN TURNOUT BEING A HORSE.

I want people to be that comfortable in the show ring, down the trail & doing everything in between.

There are some programs I have been putting together that will bring me & a great amount of people joy. I can’t wait. I am grateful for the clarity that has recently come to me. I feel like I am in the right path finally.

That being said I will now continue my Protege program in a better frame of mind.

To be continued… Haha…

I surrender to the journey… I will keep my intentions in my focus & remind myself to remain grateful for the path that is laid before me.

Phew! Now back to work!!

As I lay here at 3:46am listening to my 31/2 month old son kick, grunt, squeal and slowly start to be upset… I want to help him. I know if he figures out how to work it out on his own he will be so much better off. I know I can give him his binky, I can flip him over on his stomach & rub his back and it will put him back to sleep. But in the long run its not helping him… So to stop myself I’m writing this… I took my lesson this Friday… Hmmmm… Fascinating … Different trainer same theme as Al’s feed back. “Slow Your Hands Down!” Ahhhhh. I feel soooooo slow!! NOTHING’S happening fast enough! Haha! One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…four… I have come to a conclusion, one that I have come to several different times in my life in various different places. I can’t deal.. Well wait, I have a hard time dealing with things (ie people & animals) struggling. Wether it be physically, mentally or emotionally. It is so hard for me to sit back and just let that happen. Even though I know it’s for the better. *sigh* I have a story about that as well. Where I REALLY learned that.

As some of you may know I am EAGALA certified. That is a EAP organization. Equine Assisted Physiotherapy. As I said I like to help people so naturally the idea of combining the two was obvious to me! In this model there is an Equine specialist (me) and a therapist of some nature. Little did I know it’s all about letting the patients figure it out in their own… Not telling them where they’ve gone wrong & how to fix it haha… You are just there to provide a safe and effective environment for them to do that..You must attend follow up continuing education so my partner, Angela Sherman and I headed up to the course together. I will explain what a session may look like, specifically one we were put into together as an exercise that really resignated with me.

We were the “patients”… “Fun!” We thought! “Like acting!” The rest if the group would take turns conducting a session with us as the client. This exercise is meant to help ask questions the right way at the right time. Sometimes it means not speaking at all. So we thought about what we would “pretend” we were as everyone came up with a “task” for out session. We thought “I know! We will be a new team starting out, trying to get our business together and become better partners!” Because that’s what we were. But we decided to pretend she wasn’t a horse person and was doing dangerous things around the horses ect ect. About a min in of unnatural acting we found ourselves smack dab in the middle of something very real… There was an obstacle course of a bridge, some ground poles and barrels to get around. We were to name the obstacles and take one or all three if the horses through the course with out talking or touching the horses (in these sessions horses are turned loose in an arena, how many depends on the session the facility ect ect) As the facilitator you watch the horses (essentially mirrors of the people out there interacting with them.) You ask questions based on what the horses are doing. A lot of times people will project their own feelings out to the horses. They are much more willing to speak about what is going on for the “horses” that with themselves as in traditional talk therapy… So thats where you gather your information on what might be going on with the patient… Ok back to my story. So we take our few moments to sort out what the “names” of the obstacles are. I can remember we named the bridge “get more clients” so we set out to navigate through the course. The dynamic between her and I is me being the “lets just wing it” person and her need to plan plan plan went out the window. I wanted to talk about a plan & she just said” let’s just see what happens” “what?!” Haha I immediately felt the anxiety she probable does when I say that. I was all of a sudden very aware and empathetic to that (that was the first 30 seconds of the session!!) so off she went & I followed right behind thinking piece of cake. I made my career out of getting horses to go where I want just by body language. We got them through the poles… No problem… Then around the barrels… Simple.. We got to”get more clients” & they all bolted!!! What!!! Errrr… “Lets try it again! Something must have spooked them” haha. So again around “business plan” through “workshops” then boom!!! Scattered!! So we stopped to sit and contemplate what that meant. The most helpful thing in that whole session was when we were trying to talk through what was happening, the “facilitators” running the session were trying to “help” by trying to make us see what was going on… Obvious to them but we needed to come to the conclusion on our own. Finely silence. They let us sit there in the session for about 10min with out saying a word. That was the most powerful part of the whole session (as the one facilitating the session sometimes you feel the need to “talk” or “ask questions” to feel like you are giving people their moneys worth ect ect. But sometimes what people/horses need is a safe place to figure it out in their own)… Much more powerful then them shouting out what they see going on! As we sat & contemplated what it all meant the horses walked over the bridge all in their own… First horse, second horse, third horse… WHAT!! So what our realization that we came up with was if we spend the time building and planning our business model, and stop trying to force the process the clients will come. It will just happen when the time was right. And we also gained empathy for each others natural way of operating…We both needed to meet in the middle and everything would come together… Surrender.