This question came from a poster on my Riding With Confidence Yahoo group (the source of a lot of good questions and discussions!) The second part of this question, of course, is how to deal with those moments of fear when they recur? Here’s how I answered:

Keep in mind that emotions originate, not in our conscious mind, but in the body and reflex brain, a very deep level with which our conscious brain has no direct connection.  We can only reprogram ourselves by retraining the body, with repetitive, safe activity until it gradually learns a new pattern. That’s what the Seven Steps are about. 

Nonetheless, if you get what appears to be a repeat of the original frightening situation, your body will react the same way it did the first time — unless you have been retraining very carefully. I tell people to practice over and over imagining themselves in the scary situation, then imagine themselves using the Seven Steps until their body goes back into ‘confident mode’. I have had students and people on the RWC list who have been able to do this successfully.

And why do some people seem to be unaffected by the same sorts of frightening situations? I think, first, that they have a higher pain/fear threshold, and second, they are more tuned in to the adrenaline rush, what I like to call the ‘roller coaster mentality.’  Think of a person on a roller coaster: her body is terrified, screaming and hanging on for dear life, yet when the ride is over she says, “Wow, that was fun! Let’s do it again.”  Some people are so addicted to the adrenaline rush that eventually they take too big a risk and get seriously hurt or killed.

I have known a couple of very brave people (the kind we think of as ‘fearless,’ but who, really, are simply ignoring their body’s subconscious fear), who got the crap scared out of them by a bad fall, and could barely get on a horse after that. I cured one of them in a couple of months, but he had only one bad experience.

I also have seen many, many ‘fearless’ riders who had appallingly bad positions, because their bodies were terrified, and they were ignoring it. Their adrenaline addiction was stronger than the fear. Again, eventually the fear usually won, but often only after something drastic happened.

If you are not one of the ‘fearless’ riders, a big reason why you may have a lot of trouble getting past strong fears is having riding peers who do not support or respect your riding preferences. If you have to ride with people who show contempt or impatience for your desire to be cautious, this increases your fear by undermining your overall confidence.

I used to have a wonderful horse who could be very dangerous because he had been abused. One day I was on a trail ride with a group of people who did not know me well. My horse started to lose control, so I hopped off. You should have seen the looks I got from these know-it-alls! I could see them thinking that I was some kind of wimpy idiot. My reaction (to myself) was “Shove it, you jerks. If I put you on this horse right now, you’d last about five seconds, and then we’d be picking you out of a tree!”

And after a few minutes of leading my horse I remounted and he was okay again. But just because I didn’t wait to get thrown, but chose to reach the ground under my own steam, these ignorant people thought I was stupid.

I hope this puts things in perspective for anyone facing these kinds of issues and these kinds of intolerant fellow riders! As long as your dismount is controlled, not a panic reflex, there’s nothing wrong with using it if you need it. And the way to avoid the panic reflex is to dismount before things get out of control. If you get sneering looks from your companions, just smile and say, “I prefer to be the one who decides when I should dismount.”  Similarly, if you don’t want to canter because your horse isn’t listening, you can say, “I don’t want my horse to be the one to decide what gait we should ride at.”

The world is full of riders who, because of bad training, think that being out of control is a normal part of riding.  I would just as soon not be along on a ride with them, and you probably wouldn’t, either.

Stand up for your rights and beliefs, you sensible ones!

In this book, Gincy’s approach to learning to ride is presented in depth, fully illustrated, and with new material and new techniques she has developed since the previous books. She offers more information than ever on how to become a good rider, from the very first lesson, on through the basics to the start of cantering, jumping and riding cross-country.

The book is also the perfect handbook for instructors who want a better way to teach beginners, a way that helps them become safe, capable and confident riders from the start, so that they will want to keep riding with you for a long time.

There’s new and amplified material on:

• Simple techniques that address the body’s instinctive fear and tension, so they are quickly overcome in the early lessons;
• Pacing the rider’s progress so that she can ride correctly all the time, from the very first lesson to the trail and the show ring, because she is doing only what she is ready to do;
• How to build that essential partnership with your horse, through learning to communicate with your horse and to understand what the horse wants to communicate to you;
• In-depth instruction on adjusting and using the WHYW grounding strap to improve your seat and balance, with and without the reins and stick.

And the book has over 300 detailed photos plus a number of diagrams illustrating every technique.So if you’re a rider who learns better from pictures than from explanations, this is the book you’ve been waiting for.

Visit our Books page to see more about all of Gincy’s books, including The Gentle Art of Horseback Riding. And you can find a link on each book’s page to buy it from the publisher.

When you get your copy, tell us what you think!

When I was learning to ride horseback in the 1930’s and 40’s, the basic principles we were taught were things like, “Don’t be a passenger, be the boss;”  “Don’t let him get away with that!”  “Horses are stupid;” and, “You have to fall off three times before you can call yourself a good rider.”

All of which are based on a confrontational relationship, with the horse as rebellious, stupid slave, and the human as the necessarily aggressive master.

Since then, the approach to handling and riding horses has been gradually undergoing a change. The Dorrances, Tom and Bill, were among the very earliest proponents of a more horse-centered approach, teaching that you should listen to what the horse is telling you, and help him to understand you as you work to understand him. The ‘Horse Whisperer’ opened up this concept to the general public.

I myself began working in this direction in the 1970’s, when I accidentally discovered that it was much more effective, and benefited not only the horse, but the rider and the instructor as well. Gradually, through Centered Riding and the American Riding Instructors Association, I met instructors who were moving in the same direction and connected me with other sources.

When I published my first book, ‘What Your Horse Wants You to Know’, in 2003, only about half a dozen well-known trainers were teaching this way.  As an appendix to my newest book, ‘The Gentle Art of Horseback Riding’ (out this spring), I asked my e-group for suggestions of clinicians and authors who followed this philosophy. They came up with 35 major websites! If you multiply that by the number of followers each of these clinicians and authors must have to be successful, it becomes apparent that a large portion of the horse industry is following this line of thought.

So what? Who cares what the horse industry is doing? It’s a tiny little group statistically. But look at it in a different way. All these people have gone from an aggressive, bullying way of working with the horse to a collaborative, cooperative approach. Why? Because it works better!  It’s safer for everyone, the horse learns faster, everybody makes fewer mistakes, and everybody has a lot more fun in the process.

Is it too much to hope that some, if not most of these people will start applying the same principles to other humans as well? It’s interesting to note that the biographies of the Dorrances emphasize what gentle, kindly men they were. And this from a society—cowboys of the old west—that has a reputation, deserved or not, of being aggressive and settling their arguments with a six-shooter!

If they can change, and with modern communication their methods can slowly change an industry, how much farther can it go? There are people all over the world using a positive approach to deal with all kinds of animals, and inevitably with people as well. Who knows, perhaps in time the world itself can change!

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
~ Margaret Mead

I was on a trail ride with a couple of friends, on Pride, one of my students’ horses who had always been trouble free.  We had had a good ride, and stopped at an intersection in the trail to decide whether we would go on a little further, or take the trail home. Pride was more or less facing down the home trail when, I suspect, he picked up sounds from the barn, about a mile away, indicating that feeding was starting.  Anyway, one second I was sitting there with the reins loose, the next second he started to take off as though he were at the starting gate at the Cheltenham Festival.

A split second after that I was standing on the ground facing him, stopping him dead in his tracks. I said something along the lines of “Where the %^&* did you think you were going?”  I then turned him around, remounted and we rode another ten or fifteen minutes at a sedate walk and jog before heading back.

The moral of this story is that there was no thought involved on my part. That is, I didn’t think to myself, “Oh dear, he’s going to bolt home, and if I don’t do something quick he might end up falling down when he hits the hard road, which would not be good.”

I didn’t think at all. Instead, my body recognized what was happening, realized he was geared up to bolt, and got me off safely.

And that, dear friends, is the result of learning the emergency dismount at the very beginning of your riding career, and then a lot of practice, practice, practice, so the reflex is there when you need it. (My practicing was playing jumping off games with my brothers and sisters when I was growing up.)

This is also the result of knowing that dismounting in difficult situations is not letting the horse win.  Pride the horse lost. Gincy won.

Note: If you need to brush up on how to do your emergency dismount, you can find it in How Your Horse Wants You to Ride, Chapter 6, pp 119-125. Emergency dismounts will also be featured and illustrated in my new book, The Gentle Art of Horseback Riding, coming out in April.

I’m not the only one that thinks this way, and not just about riding. Not long ago I was watching Fareed Zakaria on CNN interviewing former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill about his time as the chief of Alcoa aluminum. O’Neill had come into the job at Alcoa with no experience in the metal industry.

At the time he took over, Alcoa was kind of trudging along, not doing badly, but not doing great either.  Their safety record was one of the better things they did, industry wide. They had just under 2 injuries per 100 workers that caused the worker to miss a day of work, as opposed to a national average of 5 injuries per 100.

So what did he do first? He said, “We’re going to concentrate on safety. People who work at Alcoa should never be hurt at work. One per hundred is one too many. We should have zero injuries.” 

Everybody said “Whaaat? The guy is nuts! First place, our safety record is already great, and, second, working with hot metal is dangerous. People are always going to get hurt!”

Being CEO, he got his way, and guess what? Not only did the safety improve even more, but production went up, and over the years of his tenure the company went from a $4 billion company to $38 billion company. A 900 percent increase!

His business philosophy was very simple: every individual is important. If you let employees know that the company considers each of them important, and that the company cares about and respects the needs of everyone, from the first VP to the newest employee on the floor, they return the favor.  Everybody tries harder to help the company to succeed, and succeed it does.

I have been saying for some time that working with horses and riding should be a life lesson, especially if you teach young people. Now as I think about it, even at my rather advanced age I am still learning the importance of that first basic, mutual caring, trust and respect.   Whether it is with your peers, your students or your horses, it’s the foundation on which everything else is built, and which is the surest road to success.

Happy New Year!

Gincy, age 2, and her siblings, 1935.

Gincy teaching in Vermont, 2009

Gincy Self Bucklin was born 80 years ago today, in a 200-year-old colonial farmhouse in New Canaan, Connecticut. Here’s a short list of her accomplishments so far:

• 68 years of teaching riding to students of all ages.
• 30+ years of operating riding schools, including New Canaan Mounted Troop (founded by her mother, Margaret Cabell Self), The Wilton Riding Club, and Lion Hill Farm, which she founded in 1978
• 3 published books and a 4th due out in 2013
• Hundreds of column inches of articles and columns in newspapers and horse magazines, including her current column in Riding Instructor
• Riding With Confidence, a Yahoo discussion group with almost 900 members, especially for horse lovers learning to deal with fear
• What Your Horse Wants, her life’s work – an innovative and in-depth approach to riding instruction, that teaches people to ride in a way which is kind and helpful to the horse, and which develops the partnership that all horse lovers want to have with their horses.
• Plus 2 children, 6 stepchildren, numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and countless horses, dogs and cats.

Happy Birthday, Gincy!

Setting up a western riding series. Left to right: Boomerang (bombproof equine model), instructor Kim Mastrianni (back to camera), model Stella Silverman, instructors Caryl Richardson & Meg Kluge, Gincy, photographer Neil Bernstein

The location is Caryl Richardson’s barn and ring in Putney. We did 260 shots in 3 days – each shot requiring multiple takes, plus different horses, equipment, riders and locations. To get the perfect photo for each shot could take less than a minute, or almost an hour!

Caryl’s off for a change of tack, while Gincy, Meg and Neil discuss the next series of shots.

The shots covered all kinds of different ground and mounted techniques and equipment, using 6 different horses and 16 models.

Gincy (at right) coaches models Morgan, Kit and Amy for a ground exercise shot, while Kim watches.

Gincy and Neil review the previous shot in his camera, while Stella waits her next turn as model. We never moved on to a new shot until Neil was sure Gincy had exactly what she wanted.

Neil takes a break from being a photographer to play hairstylist, while Stella makes silly faces.

Many of these photos are from one sequence, late Sunday afternoon, because no one had time until then to pull out a camera and shoot all the activity, we were too busy being in it!

By late Sunday, Boomer is so blase that he won’t prick his ears for the camera, no matter how much we dance around, whistle or rattle paper!

Despite all the hard work involved, we had a good time, mainly because everyone involved was so cheerful, hardworking and fun to be with. Thank you, everyone!

Finished at last! 260 shots in 3 days? Time for a nap!

Japanese dressage competitor Hiroshi Hoketsu is the oldest competitor in London, at the young (for a rider) age of 71. Read about him here.

Canadian jumper Ian Millar is breaking an Olympic record. This is his 10th Olympics, more than any other competitor in history. He first rode for Canada in 1972! Read about him on Yahoo; and on NBC; and on Canoe.ca.

And if you’re looking forward to riding for the rest of your life, you will especially like Millar’s comment about his chances of medaling this year:

“I have so much more experience, so much more knowledge and my capabilities are so much higher. Therefore, my chances of success are way greater.”

Ride on!

The design is the work of designer, artist, writer, and fellow horsewoman Liz McDonald of Mistress Pixel in Rhode Island. We think she did a fabulous job!

Liz went the extra lap around the course, and gave us a second, horizontal version of the design, for use any time the square logo won’t fit. Pretty nice!

We’ll be using these designs not only on the web site, advertising and the usual places, but also on any equipment WYHW develops for sale, such as the neckstrap breastplates featured in last week’s post.

” Enter Gincy Bucklin and her western breast plate neck strap.  This wonderful invention offers the rider a sense of security and balance (by having something to hold on to) as well as enabling the rider to develop a sense of following with the hands and staying supple through the arms all at the same time.  This is the combination we have been looking for.”

The article then goes on to a long, enthusiastic write-up of one of Gincy’s signature pieces of instruction technology, the breastplate neckstrap. Read on and let us know what you think.

And you might like to know that we are now actively pursuing the manufacture of our own WYHW breastplate neckstraps. Watch the blog for news.

UPDATE, 3-19-2013.  We expect to start production this year!