Transcript for this weeks message

Shane

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of The Horsemanship Journey. We are the leader in personal development for horse people. Today we're proud to present Julie Goodnight. Julie is an internationally renowned trainer and clinician. She is a rarity in that she's ridden and trained exclusively in multiple disciplines, both English and Western, working with multiple breeds. Julie travels domestically and internationally to teach horsemanship clinics and expos. She was named the Exceptional Equestrian Educator by Equine Affair, which is one of only three such awards ever given. Her focus is on classical horsemanship and developing the horse and rider relationship. Julie, thank you for being with us today. We appreciate your time.  

Julie Goodnight

It's my pleasure. Thanks for asking me.  

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Shane

Right on. Well, your household name in the horse industry. If there's anybody left out there that hasn't heard of you, tell us a little bit about more about you and where you came from, how you got to be here.

Julie Goodnight

Well, I'm not so sure about household name everywhere, but thanks for that compliment. I have been in and around the horse business my whole life. I grew up on a small backyard horse farm in Florida. My father was a horseman and my first influencer, I suppose. I had a big interest in riding and he recognized that and he encouraged me and got me the horses I needed and the instructors I needed to pursue a competitive career as a youth rider. And so I grew up with horses, showing horses, showing hunter jumper primarily. I went on to college never imagining I would be in the horse business, but I rode race horses all the way through college and then afterwards got offered a job training in horses right out of college.

Horses were always the path of least resistance for me. And even though I never thought I'd make a career of it, it just unfolded in front of me. And I leapt at every opportunity and fast forward three or four decades, I'm still at it hard, traveling around, doing clinics, expos, a lot of media events, and so on and so forth. I've really had a great ride and I've learned so much. I learn on a daily basis about horses and people and helping them get along better so I couldn't have asked for more.

Shane

That's awesome, right on. Julie, in all your time out there, which has been a lot, you have a tremendous amount of experience. I'm sure you've seen possibly everything, but what are some of the most common things that you see when we run into roadblocks with horses that you see people have?

Julie Goodnight

I think if I were to choose one of the most common issues, it would have to be confidence or a lack of confidence. Horses are funny animals in the way that they react to a human's lack of confidence and a self -assured human.

Sometimes even someone that doesn't really know much at all about horses, but comports himself in a very strong and confident way, could get a horse to do almost anything. Whereas someone who may be highly skilled and knowledgeable and even experienced, but perhaps had a bad incident and lost their confidence, things just can really fall apart fast. Of course, horses tend to adopt the emotions of the animals around them.

 So, that doesn't help and they are fear -based animals. So I think confidence, there's no age, there's no ability level, there's no gender, there's no discipline. Even between professionals and amateurs, there are times when confidence can be severely hampered with horses. And as my husband likes to say, a horse can either build your confidence or take it away in a heartbeat. And they are...Big scary animals.

 So most of us that have been around horses for a while have had periods where we've had incidents or frights that have affected our confidence. So I'd say that's really one of the biggest things. And if I were to choose a second one, it would probably be miscommunication. You know, horses are very communicative animals, but humans are not always communicating the right information to the horse. There's a lot of conflicting signals we give horses or lack of input when they need it most, contradicting ourselves. This is a lot of times when horses are willing and wanting to do the right thing, but they're not getting the right information from the human.

Shane

Excellent. Yeah, wanted just to wonder if you'd come jet back just a little bit your good friend Barbara Schulte I understand you do some events with her. She talks about a lot a lot about rider confidence also When we when we have our confidence jarred Maybe some people seem to come back and you're able to bounce back some people not so much. Maybe some people are never able to completely recover and I mean, what do you see is some of the key components and successfully either maintaining confidence or I mean sometimes maybe something just happens out of your control that jars your confidence but so what are the what are just some what's the basic confidence recovery look like?

Julie Goodnight

I would say the first thing is to recognize when you are having a crisis of confidence, a lot of times people pretend it's something different. They look for ways to blame the horse. This horse has a problem. I can't ride my horse today because I have to do laundry. You know, they dance around it in avoidance or blaming the horse instead of recognizing within themselves that there's an issue. And once you've recognized it, the next thing is to work on it.

And it's easily overcome. Well, perhaps I shouldn't say easily, but I know hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who have overcome their crisis of confidence just by working on it, being diligent about having positive thoughts, about being acutely aware of your body language, your breathing, your deliberate positive thoughts, coming up with a plan to tackle your confidence in small steps, breaking it down into small chunks you can tackle and feel good about, slowly expanding your comfort zone rather than all at once trying to jump out there and do the big things. So it takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of introspection. There's a lot of great resources out there. Barbara Schulte has many great resources. I've got a few on my website as well. But anybody who has the desire and a little bit of information can tackle this confidence situation.

Shane

That's excellent. And that's hopeful too. I appreciate that. Do you want to touch on the other one, the miscommunication about... I mean, that's a big one right there.

Julie Goodnight

Yes, well, you know, whether you're talking about on the ground or in the saddle, we are constantly communicating something to our horses. Just in general, on the ground and being around horses, horses are very communicative animals amongst themselves, and they try hard to communicate with us, but we're not very good at listening and receiving their messages until their messages get really big.

But horses communicate primarily with body language and postures and gestures. They have a little bit of audible communication, but primarily they're looking at each other, watching the reactions of the other horse, the gestures, the flick of the ear, the swish of the tail, the stomp of the foot, all kinds of different gestures that indicate what they're thinking, what their emotionality is.

And us humans tend to be very stuck on the spoken word and we often don't pay attention to our body language. We are often, for instance, yielding space to a horse when we think we're driving them forward, but yet we're stepping back and we're not even aware of it. We can show of course your mind body and spirit are connected the mental the emotional and the physical

So, when you have a thought there's a physical reaction in your body when you have emotionality there can be a physical reaction in your body so if you're not aware of the body language that you present to your horse you may be for instance sending him a message of fear when you were hoping to send a message of confidence and leadership to the horse. So being aware of those nonverbal cues, just being aware in general,

I find that people, I often say I teach awareness more than I teach Horsemanship because horses are really, they can be quite obvious in their behavior and what they're wanting, whether that's pulling towards the gate or pulling towards its friend or something. And, people just go about their business in an oblivious way, so stuck on what's going on inside their own head that they forget to be aware of the horse and what his motivations are, what his intentions are, what his emotionality is. And then also being aware of the environment around you is super important to a horse.

He needs to think of you as the person in charge, as the one who's got a handle on everything, as the one who's gonna keep him safe. And when you sort of get stuck on yourself, look down at the horse's withers, you're sending this message of a lack of awareness to the horse. And that's scary to him. He thinks you're the one sor tof on the end of the lead rope or on the end of the reins, but you're not aware of what's going on around you. So that's a disconnect.

And then, finally, there's some real specific miscommunications that riders give to horses every day. And I've never taught a clinic where I didn't see people, for instance, kicking a horse to go and then immediately pulling back on the reins as soon as it goes and asking a horse to canter, but then not giving the release to the horse. The horse hits himself in the mouth. So you effectively punish the horse for doing something you asked him to do

So these kinds of miscommunications, miscues, people not being aware that they're pulling on the wrong rein or two reins at the same time when they're asking the horse to turn. Just a lot of misinformation. They're perhaps pushing on the stirrups and clenching with their heels at the same time they're asking the horse to stop and slow down. So conflicting signals are constantly occurring to horses and it gets real frustrating to a horse. So he might start acting out a little bit in this frustration.

And then that makes the rider even more nervous and tight and things just sort of devolve from there. So communication, whether it's intentional or unintentional or conflicting information, it's real frustrating to the horse.

Shane

Wow, that is so much, that is so true. You said that there's so many obvious signals, if you're aware of what those signals are. And there's just so much to learn. I mean, this whole horse industry, it amazes me. I noticed that when I asked you to expand on just a little bit about who you are, that one of the things that you said is, you're tremendously experienced yet you continue to learn. Wanna touch on that a little?

Julie Goodnight

Well, just when you think you know it all, a horse comes along proves to you that you don't, but they are such individuals and in the way they react to people, in the way they react to each other, and the dynamics between horses and humans is even a stronger variable. As we all know, a horse can act one way for one person and then totally act differently for another person based on how they're reacting.

So there's a lot of variables there and a lot of complication. And I've been teaching people to horsemanship for several decades now, probably four at least. And I've learned a lot along the way in terms of how to help people, how to explain things better. But there are a lot of times when I see a dynamic between a horse and a rider, and I can't really, like, I see the problem, but I can't see the solution.

Just this past weekend, I was teaching a horsemanship clinic in Oregon, and there were several complicated horses in the clinic. They were hot -blooded horses with, hot -blooded and reactive horses with nervous riders on them.

And I could see many, many times I could see what the problem was. I just couldn't figure out how to help the horse. So in those instances, sometimes I just have to get on the horse. And to be honest, Shane, I don't know what happens then, but I get on the horse and I just start feeling them out. And I often do things that I wouldn't have thought to tell the person to do. It just comes to me in that moment as I'm feeling the horse out.

So you learn more and more by getting on a lot of different horses. Unlike a lot of trainers, I really enjoy getting on as many horses as I can get on. And I do that a lot in clinics. So I end up riding a lot of different horses, a lot of different breeds, a lot of different types of training. And it's fun because you learn a lot. The best teachers are the horses.

Shane

What you're describing proves that horsemanship is definitely in art. Julia, along these lines, I was wondering if you could comment on people's expectations and just speak to expectations as far as, I don't know, maybe definitely in people that are newer to the horses, but things like what to expect in certain amounts of time frames as far as training a horse or maybe training me and really just like the time commitment. I mean, do you see that sometimes people have unrealistic expectations as far as what they can accomplish in the amount of time given?

Julie Goodnight

Yes, I do. It's actually one of the most frequent questions I get at horse expos when people are just coming up and asking questions is how long do I have to ride my horse? How long should a training session last? And also how many times a week? You know, is it okay if I can only ride my horse once or twice a week? And of course, many people have lives that dictate how much they can spend with horses. But if it's a young horse or an untrained horse you're dealing with, he needs a lot more time than that. He needs consistency of daily interaction, probably minimally five days a week, if not six for that horse that needs a lot of training.

And the amount of time you spend in each training session, I think that depends drastically on how effective you are as a trainer. I think that professional trainers will get a lot more done and far less time because we are intentional and specific and very effective. We're goal oriented. We know what the long range plan is. We know what the shortrange plan is. We know what exercise we're going to work on that day. So we might get a lot more done in a shorter amount of time.

I generally only ride my horses 20 or 30 minutes, but I'm pretty busy during that 20 or 30 minutes. I would say that today, you know, when I was growing up, girls, especially there wasn't that many sports we could participate in. It was there wasn't really, you know, high school horse showing and stuff like there is today. But as far as sports at school, there weren't many that girls could do. There was tennis and swimming when I grew up, and I didn't like either one of those.

So I spent all my time on horses. I was at the barn every single day, all day on the weekends, going to horse shows almost every weekend. It was a very dedicated sport. And today's kids are involved in so many different activities that they may only have time for riding activities once or twice a week. And this sport takes a long time to master. You know, no one really entirely masters it. You can always get better. No matter how good you are, there's no such thing as a perfect rider. But just learning basic proficiency in riding horses can take years to master.

So, unlike some other simpler sports, you can't just in a week or two or three or a month be at a high level in this sport. And so the time that you dedicate is really important. The more time you put in, the going to learn, the better you're to get, the more your skills develop. But I would say one more thing along those lines, Shane, that oftentimes I see in my clinics today, that horses have a serious lack of work ethic. I often am teaching, a lot of times we divide the clinic into a lower level group and a higher level group. And often in the riders in the lower level group have a hard time even just keeping their horse trotting all the way around the arena one time without the horse breaking gait and kind of starting the whole thing over again. And it is, It can be a serious problem with horses if there is alack of a work ethic.

It's something that we not only try to instill in young humans, but we try to instill a good work ethic in young horses as well, which is, you know, we're out here to get a job done. This is a work session. Let's go to work. And a lot of riders today, whether it is a lack of fitness or a lack of confidence on their part, or just a lack of awareness of the problems that's going to develop further down the road.

When you have a horse that just quits on you whenever he wants, a horse that won't go into the trot or stay in the trot or same thing for the canter. So I think that's all related to how much time people are willing to put in, how much work they're willing to put out this sport. This is a very difficult sport. It takes a lot of commitment. There's a lot of opportunity to get banged up and bruised up and stepped on and bit. And you got to kind of have to be tough. You have to tough it up. But if you are committed and if you do put in the time, you will get somewhere.

Yes, I do. It's actually one of the most frequent questions I get at horse expos when people are just coming up and asking questions is how long do I have to ride my horse? How long should a training session last? And also how many times a week? You know, is it okay if I can only ride my horse once or twice a week? And of course, many people have lives that dictate how much time they can spend with horses. But if it's a young horse or an untrained horse you're dealing with, he needs a lot more time than that. He needs the consistency of daily interaction, probably minimally five days a week, if not six for that horse that needs a lot of training.

And the amount of time you spend in each training session, I think that depends drastically on ho effective you are as a trainer. I think that professional trainers will get a lot more done and far less time because we are intentional and specific and very effective. We're goal oriented. We know what the long range plan is. We know what the shortrange plan is. We know what exercise we're going to work on that day. So we might get a lot more done in a shorter amount of time. I generally only ride my horses 20 or 30 minutes, but I'm pretty busy during that 20 or 30 minutes. I would say that today, you know, when I was growing up, girls, especially there wasn't that many sports we could participate in. It was there wasn't really, you know, high school horse showing and stuff like there is today.

But as far as sports at school, there weren't many that girls could do. There was tennis and swimming when I grew up, and I didn't like either one of those. So I spent all my time on horses. I was at the barn every single day, all day on the weekends, going to horse shows almost every weekend. It was a very dedicated sport. And today's kids are involved in so many different activities that they may only have time for riding activities once or twice a week. And this sport takes a long time to master. You know, noone really entirely masters it. You can always get better. No matter how good you are, there's no such thing as a perfect rider. But just learning basic proficiency in riding horses can take years to master. So,

 Unlike some other simpler sports, you can't just in a week or two or three or a month be at a high level in this sport. And so the time that you dedicate is really important. The more time you put in, the more you're going to learn, the better you're to get, the more your skills develop. But I would say one more thing along those lines, Shane, that oftentimes I see in my clinics today, that horses have a serious lack of work ethic. I often am teaching, a lot of times we divide the clinic into a lower level group and a higher level group.

And often in the riders in the lower level group have a hard time even just keeping their horse trotting all the way around the arena one time without the horse breaking gait and kind of starting the whole thing over again. And it is, It can be a serious problem with horses if there is alack of a work ethic. It's something that we not only try to instill in young humans, but we try to instill a good work ethic in young horses as well, which is, you know, we're out here to get a job done. This is a work session. Let's go to work. And a lot of riders today, whether it is a lack of fitness or alack of confidence on their part, or just a lack of awareness of the problems that's going to develop further down the road when you have a horse that just quits on you whenever he wants, a horse that won't go into the trot or stay in the trot or same thing for the canter.

So I think that's all related to how much time people are willing to put in, how much work they're willing to put out this sport. This isa very difficult sport. It takes a lot of commitment. There's a lot of opportunity to get banged up and bruised up and stepped on and bit. And you got to kind of have to be tough. You have to toughen it up. But if you are committed and if you do put in the time, you will get somewhere.

Shane

That's a lot right there. That's super interesting. I think a lot of people are not even aware that their horse can form bad habits. They may be looking at the horse as if, you know, they might not be aware. I mean, when you talked about your horse just kind of quitting you, and just the idea I think could be foreign to people that it's their responsibility to be the leader and help that horse develop these kind of habits rather than just, you know, yielding to whatever the horse, kind of wants at the time, right?

Julie Goodnight

Yes, that's huge and I heard myself saying it frequently last weekend is horses are not good decision makers. You don't want horses making decisions about where they go and how fast they get there. And one, if you allow a horse to make one decision, he's going to make another one and another one and sooner or later, you're not going to agree with the decision she makes. And a lot of this kind of ties into this in terms of just generally being aware of the horse. Being able to think like a horse is challenging. He is incapable of thinking like a human. So we have to adjust our way of thinking to his way of thinking. And I'll give you a really super commo example. I see it almost every day.

Let's say you have a horse that is you ask it to go left and it says, no, I'm not going left, I'm gonna go right. Either he's trying to get towards something or get away from something. In either case, in this moment, he is refusing you and you pick up the left rein to go left and he kind of just pulls into the right rein and says, no, I'm going right. No matter how hard you pull me left, I'm going right. About 99 % of riders in that moment will think they are outsmarting the horse and what they'll do is go ahead and cave in and go left, but then they circle around and thinking that they're getting somewhere when they circle around and get back to where they started. But in that moment, all the horse knows is I don't want to go right, I don't want to go right. Oh good, I get to go left.

And so what you just taught that horse in that moment is that when he refuses you, you will cave in and let him go the way he wants to go. So is it going to happen again? Absolutely. It's going to happen again right away because it worked so well the last time. Yet, no matter how many times you tell people, no, no, go right, no, go right, stay with right, they cave in and go to the left because in that moment, I think a lot of times they feel a lack of control and they think, oh, well, I'm going to reestablish control in this moment. But it has the very wrong effect of the horse because you just reinforced his refusal. So that kind of awareness of understanding your horse's behavior and what his motivations are, what his intentions are, and how your actions relate to that is really important. It's hard for us to think like a horse. It's much easier for us to think like a human.

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Shane

That is so fascinating. I mean, it's true. I mean, it's just right at that moment what that decision is. What you described, I think a lot of times, a lot of it's seen in trailer loading where you'll get to the end to the, you you'll step up in the trailer and the horse refuses. And so that you walk away from the trailer, you know, rather than finishing your thing. Exactly…

Julie Goodnight

Oh, yeah. Yep, give him everything he wants.

Shane

That's so interesting. That's a great point. Julie, would you just speak a little bit about boundaries with horses.

Julie Goodnight

Sure, well, horses are again, very, very set in their ways in terms of boundaries. It has a lot to do with the hierarchy in the herd. In the horse herd, it is defined, the hierarchy of a horse herd is defined as a linear hierarchy, meaning each individual of the herd is either dominant over or subordinate to every other individual. There's no equality in a horse herd even amongst bonded individuals within the herd, one of them is dominant an done of them is subordinate.

And one of the really important ways that horses establish hierarchy, there's actually only two different factors involved in establishing hierarchy, and one of them is spatial awareness. The dominant horse controls the space of the subordinate horse. A subordinate horse would never barge into the space of a dominant horse. And if he even accidentally found himself there, he would be met with swift and sudden retribution. So horses are very demonstrably clear on their boundaries, but a lot of us humans are not. And I think there's one, it's a really common thing that you'll see, you won't see it in professional trainers. Professional trainers are very clear on their boundaries to horses and horses love that.

We don't stand right next to them kissing their nose and snuggled up against them at every moment. We want to have space between us and them. For one thing, I've been bashed in the head many times by a horse head. I've had quite a few concussions and some oral surgery. I don't want to be anywhere near a horse's head with my head, but I'm very clear with my boundaries around horses, and any horse that's around me within just a matter of seconds, they're going to learn my boundaries if they cross the line

To me, my boundary is as far as I can reach with my outstretched arms, and I don't want any horse coming uninvited into that boundary. I'm very clear about it, and you don't have to be mean about it, you just have to defend your boundaries. And this not only has to do with your own safety, but it has to do with the way horses interact with each other.

They will respect boundaries very carefully if you have them. But if you don't have boundaries or worse, are unclear on your boundaries, meaning that one minute you let the horse come up a nuzzle on you, and then the next minute you're doing groundwork and trying to push him away from you and act like you're the bossy one, that kind of inconsistency is very frustrating to a horse, and he ends up ultimately becoming disdainful of you because you're unpredictable, you're untrustworthy in this regard. But having boundaries, you know, having boundaries just human to human is important as well. Not letting yourself get run over by another human is pretty important. And I think, you know, I've learned some of these lessons the hard way.

I've learned them quicker with horses because they're big animals. They can do a lot of damage pretty fast when they don't have respect for your boundaries. But I think it's, I've learned some hard lessons in human to human interaction as well on having boundaries and when somebody crosses a line. So I just think it's important that you're clear, you have boundaries, and you're very clear about what they are and where they are.

Shane

Julie, I'm curious to know your position on whether it's ever appropriate to... I see sometimes it's the idea that sometimes some people want to nurture and they want to show affection and I mean it seems to be like a really high priority for some people and their horses. Is it ever appropriate or is it just something that we just... it's really best for safety just to have that boundary.

Julie Goodnight

I think it's important to understand how horses show affection to each other and how you can stay within that realm when you do want to show affection to your horse. There's only one known affectionate behavior of horses that's non -reproductive related and it's called mutual grooming and everybody's seen it. It's when two horses face each other and they take their teeth, and they actually take a little bit of little pinch of skin from the other horse, usually around their wither area, and then they they give a deep massaging scratch with the blunt face of their teeth. And they do that to each other, and they find the scratches that the horse likes. And this behavior, by the way, only occurs amongst bonded individuals in any grouping of horses, each individual in the herd will have one or at the most two other horses that they're specially bonded to. Behaviors call those associates, we call them buddies, and only buddies mutual groom.

So if I want to show affection to my horses, which I do regularly, I will find that sweet spot around their withers, on their neck, sometimes it's on the chest, and give him a nice good scratch. I don't do it all the time, but when we're having a special moment, when I feel like my horse has really given a lot of himself tome, maybe we've just finished a training session and I'm real happy with him, I'll give him a nice good scratch, he might have the urge to reach around and scratch me back, but I never let a horse put his lips on me.

There's a boundary and it's an important one. I acknowledge his sentiment and I appreciate the fact that he wishes to show affection to me, but I'll gently push his nose away and say, no, I don't want you putting your lips on me. So horses do not kiss on the nose. Now, male horses do spar. They, if you watch, you know, a bunch of geldings or colts out in the field playing and they're biting at each other and nipping at each other and they're rearing up and striking out, that's called sparring. It's playful fighting. And a lot of biting of the lips occurs during that time.

So I would hesitate to do a lot of smacky face with your horse and being careful not to end up getting your lips bit. But horses, you know, horses are not super overtly affectionate animals. And really, they do love acknowledgement. They appreciate your acceptance and praise when they've deserved it. A scratch on the withers. I like to rub my horse's head down after we've ridden, rub the sweat marks off of him.

So these gestures of kindness are really important. But l always tell people, if you're looking for an animal that will adore you and worship you and wag its tail and sit on your lap, you should get a dog and I recommend a golden retriever because they're super super affectionate.

Shane

That sounds like great advice and I appreciate that. Julie can feel your wisdom and experience. You've left us with a lot of good and actual useful information so far today. I'm just wondering what you'd like to leave us with. Last thoughts today for The Horsemanship Journey.

Julie Goodnight

Well, again, I would go back to awareness, trying to be aware of your horse's behavior, his motivations, his attempts to communicate. They're sometimes overlooked because we're busy thinking about other things. But if you can really become aware of your horse at all times and the way he's acting, the way he's thinking, the way his emotions are impacting him. You'll really start getting along better with your horse. And I think that people need to seek help.

It's a complicated sport. These are complicated animals. And none of us can do it alone. And whether that's getting help online or getting help from a more experienced friend or professional trainer, it's really important to learn as much as you can. I've studied horse behavior from the scientific point of view as much as I can all my life and that helps me round out what I experience and what I learn in other ways. So I think the more information and education you can get, the more aware you can be of your horse's behaviors, motivations, and intentions, the more successful you'll bein this sport.

I've got a lot of information on my website about this kind of stuff. It's all searchable content. My entire career's worth of work and that's @juliegoodnight.com. And on all flavors of social media, we're pretty active as well @JulieGoodNight.

Shane

All right, awesome. Your experience and wisdom, you can feel it right coming through the, coming right through the air here. We so much appreciate your time and thank you for joining us today on The Horsemanship Journey. Ladies and gentlemen, Julie, Goodnight.

Julie Goodnight

Thank you, Shane. It was a pleasure.

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