Spending time with your horse should always be joyful.

Sometimes it’s easy. When it’s going well, when your horse is having fun, those are the times when all you have to do is be in the moment, and the joy is there waiting for you.

But often, joy has to be a conscious choice. It’s so easy to forget it’s supposed to be fun, when you’re working on a new skill, or trying to get something done and it’s not going as smoothly as you’d hoped. But in those moments, you can still choose joy. Laugh at the mistakes, find a new way to approach it, or try a different activity for a while.

When that little uncomfortable feeling of frustration first starts building up, that’s the moment to catch it, to make a change, to steer your path back to joy.

Because if you’re not having fun, your horse isn’t having fun.

Choose joy, for you and especially for your horse.