Strategies for strong-willed red-headed mares

Some horses are more sensitive than others, just like people. Some intelligent horses have busy minds, just like people. Others are very sensitive to language and stimuli in their environment. And others care more about their own agenda than yours.

If you're working with a redheaded mare (LOL!) you don't want to get (metaphorically) bucked off, do you?

If you have an intelligent, observant, strong-minded, divergent thinker on your staff, consider these strategies:

• Observe carefully what conditions set the team member up for success, and which set them off.

• Visualize success - believe it or not, research shows that visualizing lays down the same neural pathways as actual practice. Visualization is your multiplier in your success formula, whether it's sports or a difficult conversation.

• Make it easier to do the right thing and harder to do the wrong thing - ease off on the pressure when you see a tendency to come toward the desired direction. Ease up and let them breathe!

• Give the horse/person their head plus a little leg - get them to move off in *any direction*, but get them moving. All that energy needs to go somewhere or it will blow up in your face.

How does this look? Let them have some agency (freedom to choose), get their negative energy re-channeled into something of their choosing - easier to nudge a moving object than it is to drag a stone.

This red-headed mare (below), Alice, is a sweetheart - she won't buck me off, but she will resist work. She wants to know the boundary conditions - exactly how much is going to be asked of me, in what format, and...when is my food? I put her "brain work" at the end of the lesson - we do difficult but slow-paced footwork and movements to keep her mind active and her heart following me (discipline) but the reward is - she knows we're done.

Another red-headed mare is more of a challenge, but I thrive on sorting out our relationship and it gives me a chance to develop my own anxious rider program so I can coach myself, see what works, and offer it to others dealing with anxieties related to activities they love. Looking forward to Tuesday when I'll test it out!