Choose Joy

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.

 

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4 thoughts on “Choose Joy”

  1. It was when we started leasing a horse that I saw the relationship really grow with my daughters and the horses. When they had time to really just connect outside of their lesson time. They would just go around the arena and do what ever their horse wanted to do and that when I saw their connection to the horses truly grow.

  2. Exactly! I hate when I feel like the horse is annoyed or bored. If they aren’t into it time to change it up!
    I used to have a friend that said all the time ‘if you’re not having fun you’re not doing it right!’
    She was talking about life In General .. totally applies to horse training.

  3. I’ve been having a lot of trouble with this lately–so much of my time seems to be filled with the care-taking aspects of the horse, oh, and the house and now the yard, etc. and etc. And as I age, the physical tasks are becoming a bit harder. So finding the time for the “joy” is the new challenge….

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