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This...

I love the word incisive. in·ci·sive - adjective, intelligently analytical and clear-thinking I don't use it often but yesterday Claire Barker made this incisive comment, "I see a lot of "PhD" level horses with elementary school riders, and they are SOOOO shut down." regarding riders not working to achieve unity with their horse. There were also several comments about how sad it is that so many riders never feel that feeling of unity.

Claire's comment on how riders who sit in the saddle with no sense of unity is indeed sad, but the "shut down" part about the horses is even more heartbreaking. It got me thinking again about how money undermines horsemanship and how dangerous that is becoming. Riders are dying and being injured because they have the money to buy a PhD horse and they haven't learned the skills that keep a horse like that awake and agile. They have the money for the best instruction but very often a wealthy person's idea of "the best" means comfort, status or the ability to win without the fundamental skills.

The other side of that coin is that riding instructors need to make living and wealthy students are often not into "no pain, no gain". It is difficult to teach a rider who is entitled by their wealth and sees a trainer as a service vendor. No pain, no gain becomes "here's a big check, I expect gain". I have been there and because I need to live with myself more than make a living (I live very cheaply) I refused to teach students who refused to take the time to do the things that make a rider secure and safe on a horse, which is probably why I learned to live cheaply.

It's simple, a dumbed PhD down horse that starts to phone in their performance is dangerous. A PhD horse, forced into dullness by elementary school riding, gives up on unity and accepts aloneness. Sitting on a horse as if you are a passenger on a bus, makes your horse into a bus, and because your horse has become a bus that has no driver, only has a passenger, it is safe to assume a crash will come. No one seems to be telling the wealthy students that this is the truth of it. Thank you Claire for your incisive comment. It caused me to see the problem more clearly.

Scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock... and money kills truth.