The Road Runner view of fear! Who loved watching the Road Runner as a kid? If you haven't watched it before, check it out on Youtube. I love that no matter what, the Road Runner was always fine and no matter what, Wile-E-Coyote was in a pickle. Isn't that true with us when we stand in courage vs. when we curl up in fear?
My accident felt like one of Wile-E-Coyote's disasters! Every time I thought of it or talked about it, I could feel the overwhelming fear rise up and consume me. Have you had an accident that seems to just take over your life, especially when you think about riding your horse? Your fear is preventing you from enjoying the riding you and your horse deserve? Are you the SMASHED Wile-E-COYOTE????
Why not rewrite our memory in the form of a Cartoon? And if the fear is in the future, why not write an amazing cartoon of cool places you are going to see or goals you are going to achieve with your horse? Be the Road Runner!
I turned around my "TERRIFYING ACCIDENT" and made it a cartoon!
There I am, the Road Runner, Running around the campground on the back of a big bay horse, who happens to be wearing a pink Tootoo and ballet Slippers! We are zipping along and out of nowhere, Wile-E-Coyote attacks us with his ACME product of the day. The big giant ballerina horse FLOPS Over from the blast on top of Wile-E-Coyote, and as ALWAYS, he is SMASHED right there in the campground! I pop up fine….BEEP BEEP…..and off I go for another adventure! (If you want to hear my original story of terror, check it out here on Youtube!)
You can convince your brain of anything you want to. Why not look at the funny side of things instead of the bad? Why not store things in your brain in a way that makes you feel good even when bad stuff happened?
If I look back over my 51 years of riding history, I have had maybe 5 scary falls and only ONE that was terrifying and yet that one has defined the last 20 years of my riding on the trails. I added it up, and conservatively, it is TEN THOUSAND HOURS of joy to less than a minute of TERROR. The percent chance of something happening is much less than ZERO!
And yet, for 20 years, this fear has held me back from trail riding. I can honestly say, the process of creating a cartoon of the accident and really feeling the laughter bubble up was HUGE for me. I can now look back and instead of tears, there is laughter, I am lighter. There is HOPE!
I challenge you to look back at your accident and create a cartoon, make it as funny as you can make it. Revamp it to make it funnier! Get to where you can laugh about your situation. If you have not had an accident and are just having a growing fear of getting hurt. Picture that accident you are afraid MIGHT happen and then turn it around into a cartoon. The laughter will serve you well as you feel fear. Embed this cartoon memory into your brain, replace the original. Nobody says we have to keep our memories "true". Fear never goes away, we have to know that we can handle the fear and laughter helps us to see that WE CAN HANDLE IT.
If you would love help writing your cartoon, or just want to rise to Courage, please join my free FB Fear to Courage support Group and share your CARTOON With us! We all need a little laughter and levity when we are sharing our fears!
My accident felt like one of Wile-E-Coyote's disasters! Every time I thought of it or talked about it, I could feel the overwhelming fear rise up and consume me. Have you had an accident that seems to just take over your life, especially when you think about riding your horse? Your fear is preventing you from enjoying the riding you and your horse deserve? Are you the SMASHED Wile-E-COYOTE????
Why not rewrite our memory in the form of a Cartoon? And if the fear is in the future, why not write an amazing cartoon of cool places you are going to see or goals you are going to achieve with your horse? Be the Road Runner!
I turned around my "TERRIFYING ACCIDENT" and made it a cartoon!
There I am, the Road Runner, Running around the campground on the back of a big bay horse, who happens to be wearing a pink Tootoo and ballet Slippers! We are zipping along and out of nowhere, Wile-E-Coyote attacks us with his ACME product of the day. The big giant ballerina horse FLOPS Over from the blast on top of Wile-E-Coyote, and as ALWAYS, he is SMASHED right there in the campground! I pop up fine….BEEP BEEP…..and off I go for another adventure! (If you want to hear my original story of terror, check it out here on Youtube!)
You can convince your brain of anything you want to. Why not look at the funny side of things instead of the bad? Why not store things in your brain in a way that makes you feel good even when bad stuff happened?
If I look back over my 51 years of riding history, I have had maybe 5 scary falls and only ONE that was terrifying and yet that one has defined the last 20 years of my riding on the trails. I added it up, and conservatively, it is TEN THOUSAND HOURS of joy to less than a minute of TERROR. The percent chance of something happening is much less than ZERO!
And yet, for 20 years, this fear has held me back from trail riding. I can honestly say, the process of creating a cartoon of the accident and really feeling the laughter bubble up was HUGE for me. I can now look back and instead of tears, there is laughter, I am lighter. There is HOPE!
I challenge you to look back at your accident and create a cartoon, make it as funny as you can make it. Revamp it to make it funnier! Get to where you can laugh about your situation. If you have not had an accident and are just having a growing fear of getting hurt. Picture that accident you are afraid MIGHT happen and then turn it around into a cartoon. The laughter will serve you well as you feel fear. Embed this cartoon memory into your brain, replace the original. Nobody says we have to keep our memories "true". Fear never goes away, we have to know that we can handle the fear and laughter helps us to see that WE CAN HANDLE IT.
If you would love help writing your cartoon, or just want to rise to Courage, please join my free FB Fear to Courage support Group and share your CARTOON With us! We all need a little laughter and levity when we are sharing our fears!
How many of you (of the wiser generation) dreamed of having Mr. Ed? I remember thinking, Wow, a horse that I could have conversations with! That would be the Bees Knees!!!! I really believed that it was possible, that it was the normal way of the horse and the human, I had the rose colored glasses on for sure! Communicating with your horse is powerful.
In steps my Co-riders, trainers, and others, always saying: "Show them who's the Boss", "Step up and be the Leader", "You can't let them get away with Anything", etc! How many times have I listened (and acted) but it just didn't seem right? More than I would like to admit and I still fall into that trap once in a while. Telling my horses to do something! There are times when you have to tell them, like when I was on a trail ride and saw a Rattle Snake, but it should be like a parent telling a child, once in awhile. Most of the time, it should be a two way conversation!
I listened to a popular trainer and was doing the things he told us to do, and my horse was getting more and more frazzled! It got to the point, I couldn't catch her in the pasture, if I did catch her and take her in to "WORK", she was a wreck, sweating, nervous, completely wanting to get away from me. It was like being slapped in the face! I DID THIS TO MY HORSE!
Well, I went on a mission to LEARN all I could and to have conversations with my horses and it has changed my life (and theirs)! I have amazing conversations with my horses now! It takes time, they really didn't trust that I was listening to them at first. They didn't "TRUST" that I was really hearing them and going to have a two way conversation.
Once I saw them starting to trust me, our relationship really started to blossom! My horses would come to the gate and put their heads in the halter, ready for whatever adventure was going to come our way! Mutually grooming became MUCH MORE Interactive! They would show me where they wanted scratched and I could point to my back and get the BEST back scratching EVER!!!! They are really good!!!!
The more our conversations blossomed, the more my courage returned riding them! My mares are calm, quiet, not buddy sour, not herd bound, and the best part, THEY ARE CURIOUS! I feel completely Blessed to be having true conversations with my horses. They don't always get what they want, again, think Parent and child relationship and I am responsible for their health and well being so I do have to do things they may not like. Treating wounds, trimming feet, staying safe riding, etc, but for the most part, we get to be PARTNERS in the joy now and it is worth everything to me!
I know you want to hear more, you made it this far! Here I talk about my 3 favorites in my goofy Youtube video, or, if you prefer you can read them in my Snippets!
I absolutely LOVE summer, heat, humidity, they agree with me. But I also use summer heat as an EXCUSE not to ride!!!!
Who is with me on this one???? You get all dressed up to go ride, you walk out the door, and you think, maybe later, maybe I will get up earlier, maybe after they eat, maybe after I eat, EVERY EXCUSE in the book, I have used.
But what if you look at this differently. My main reason for not riding is FEAR, I will admit that. The FEAR of getting hurt! The heat seems like as good a reason as any NOT to ride. Can I USE HEAT, to my advantage?
What CAN I DO in the heat?
- Walk
- Halt
- Backing
- Small Bending Circles
- Turn on the forehand/haunches
- Leg Yields
- Serpentine - Using Reins or just the legs
- Etc.
GENIUS!
I have been doing this for a few days now with Taika and I have to admit, I am having a BLAST. Every minute spent on her back adds Courage Penny's into the Piggy Bank! I can feel my confidence growing and it is so simple. We are developing our partnership!
It is hot so she doesn't want to run off or bolt or do anything except stand. She gets the reward of a nice cool bath after. We find places that are in the shade which pushes me out of my comfort zone and are places I haven't ridden before but it is easy because she wants the shade too.
There is some prep involved that I recommend. If it is really hot you can hose off before riding, just make sure you sweat scrap. I always use my Thieves for Courage and Stress Away for Calm and they really help me! I wear my FROGG TOGG which has been a HUGE game changer for me (link at the bottom). I keep a bottle of water right by my grooming area, with my amazing electrolyte stuff to save me from passing out when I get off.
All of this has made for a GREAT Summer and I know that every foot step I take on the back of a horse, gives me one more penny in my Courage Bank!
If you have read this far, you might be interested in joining my FREE SUPPORT GROUP for people searching for their riding Courage!
I also have a bonus for you, 3 Easy Ways to Build Courage with Your Horse! Click Here To Get the BONUS!
I remember the excitement to go see this 3 year old filly at the track that would replace my heart horse I had lost. She had unlimited potential.
I would ride her for 20 or 30 minutes with a lovely trot and canter and then all of a sudden, she would REAR to full height and come down like a BRONC in a rodeo. It would last 20 or 30 seconds and if I could ride it, she would go right back to the lovely trot that we has started with, if not, I hit the ground.
Then after just a few months, diagnosis and Devastation! KISSING SPINE! I felt like I had been punched and all the air had left my body. My new amazing horse that I planned to start competing with in the Spring of 2014, had Kissing Spine (along with a fractured skull). I felt completely helpless!
Everyone I knew didn't even hesitate, they all said put her down! She will never be SAFE, she will always be in pain. The more I learned, the more I felt CRUSHED. She was just the sweetest young mare and I had bonded with her immediately at the track when I went to look at her and our bond had only grown.
On top of that, the treatments were THOUSANDS of dollars! I just couldn't fathom putting this sweet young horse down, I had to find a solution.
Lots of research and an Amazing Chiropractor and we had a GLIMMER OF HOPE.
THE GAME PLAN:
1. Teach her to carry herself to build her "ABS", yes, you read that right…."ABS" to support her back. We did this with free lunging, no side reins, no lunge line, it had to be on her terms so that if she did hit that spot, she wasn't confined, she could move through it on her own. No trotting, this was all WALK and CANTER. There are a lot more details if you would like to know more Contact me.
2. Monthly Chiropractor work at first and in the end, it was every 6 months (this took THREE YEARS!)
3. Fix her feet. She had really low heels as most horses in the US do these days. I am now trimming myself because I could not find one trimmer that didn’t take too much off the heels.
RESULTS:
A sound horse, cleared 100% for everything, even jumping. I still have to do maintenance when I see her abs letting down but for the most part, she is MY HEART HORSE, no rear, no buck, just amazing riding partner!
I would ride her for 20 or 30 minutes with a lovely trot and canter and then all of a sudden, she would REAR to full height and come down like a BRONC in a rodeo. It would last 20 or 30 seconds and if I could ride it, she would go right back to the lovely trot that we has started with, if not, I hit the ground.
Then after just a few months, diagnosis and Devastation! KISSING SPINE! I felt like I had been punched and all the air had left my body. My new amazing horse that I planned to start competing with in the Spring of 2014, had Kissing Spine (along with a fractured skull). I felt completely helpless!
Everyone I knew didn't even hesitate, they all said put her down! She will never be SAFE, she will always be in pain. The more I learned, the more I felt CRUSHED. She was just the sweetest young mare and I had bonded with her immediately at the track when I went to look at her and our bond had only grown.
On top of that, the treatments were THOUSANDS of dollars! I just couldn't fathom putting this sweet young horse down, I had to find a solution.
Lots of research and an Amazing Chiropractor and we had a GLIMMER OF HOPE.
THE GAME PLAN:
1. Teach her to carry herself to build her "ABS", yes, you read that right…."ABS" to support her back. We did this with free lunging, no side reins, no lunge line, it had to be on her terms so that if she did hit that spot, she wasn't confined, she could move through it on her own. No trotting, this was all WALK and CANTER. There are a lot more details if you would like to know more Contact me.
2. Monthly Chiropractor work at first and in the end, it was every 6 months (this took THREE YEARS!)
3. Fix her feet. She had really low heels as most horses in the US do these days. I am now trimming myself because I could not find one trimmer that didn’t take too much off the heels.
RESULTS:
A sound horse, cleared 100% for everything, even jumping. I still have to do maintenance when I see her abs letting down but for the most part, she is MY HEART HORSE, no rear, no buck, just amazing riding partner!
Here is a bonus that has helped on our journey to health! If you would like to get my "3 Snippets of Removing Toxins from the Tack Room!" and to stay in touch!
Detoxing Your Tack Room SNIPPETS!
Disclaimer - I am not a vet and do not give medical advice for horses. I am just sharing what I went through and what worked for me.
Detoxing Your Tack Room SNIPPETS!
Disclaimer - I am not a vet and do not give medical advice for horses. I am just sharing what I went through and what worked for me.
Disaster struck a few weeks ago! Horses get into the craziest things but this time, I WAS THE CAUSE!
I have 3 mares, you know, MARES. I have one that has high liver Enzymes and COPD which makes things additionally challenging and has me on a whole new journey into the world of TOXINS and what is not toxic. My horses and I have been "Clean" for over a year now!
I used to have hot flashes, lots and lots of hot flashes but I fixed that. The horses have very mild cycles and all 3 get along great. I never have issues, feeding time, taking one or two of them out, they are always just calm and quiet. Truthfully, they are better than my geldings used to be.
Three weeks ago, I found a "STASH" of SWAT. I thought hmmm….I better use this stuff up. It had been a year since I had used anything commercial on my horses, I make my own. After finding the Swat, I just put a dab on their bellies for the no-see-ums. That was it….just a DAB!
24 hours later, I noticed pinned ears. 48 hours I had 3 horses in FULL CYCLE, Kicking each other and extremely aggressive. I also noticed that I was having hot flashes again, HUGE NASTY ONES. Was it possible that a dab of Swat could influence hormones that drastically????
The answer was yes, sadly, it was the SWAT That was fully responsible for not only mares trying to kill each other, but also for me feeling horrible and not even wanting to function! It took a full week for the 4 of us to recover. From TWO NIGHTS of a little dab of SWAT! That is what started my journey into Toxins and hormones.
Mares always get a bad wrap and it got me wondering, are we, the HUMANS, the cause of the mares bad wrap?????
I decided to go through and check the ingredients of EVERYTHING in my tack room, no small feat and I actually gave up after only a few items. EVERYTHING had Toxins, cancer causing, poison control warnings, Endocrine Blockers, you name it, it was in the ingredients. I just used CDC and the Center for poison control to look stuff up, stuff I could not pronounce or even type! The worst were the cleaning products.
The SWAT Went in the trash, I developed a non-toxic salve (I like to call it TAWS since it is the Anti-Swat) and if you have read this far, the recipe is in the Three Snippets for you!
If you are interested in finding out more, click here to get my "3 Snippets of Removing Toxins from the Tack Room!"
Detoxing Your Tack Room SNIPPETS!
I have 3 mares, you know, MARES. I have one that has high liver Enzymes and COPD which makes things additionally challenging and has me on a whole new journey into the world of TOXINS and what is not toxic. My horses and I have been "Clean" for over a year now!
I used to have hot flashes, lots and lots of hot flashes but I fixed that. The horses have very mild cycles and all 3 get along great. I never have issues, feeding time, taking one or two of them out, they are always just calm and quiet. Truthfully, they are better than my geldings used to be.
Three weeks ago, I found a "STASH" of SWAT. I thought hmmm….I better use this stuff up. It had been a year since I had used anything commercial on my horses, I make my own. After finding the Swat, I just put a dab on their bellies for the no-see-ums. That was it….just a DAB!
24 hours later, I noticed pinned ears. 48 hours I had 3 horses in FULL CYCLE, Kicking each other and extremely aggressive. I also noticed that I was having hot flashes again, HUGE NASTY ONES. Was it possible that a dab of Swat could influence hormones that drastically????
The answer was yes, sadly, it was the SWAT That was fully responsible for not only mares trying to kill each other, but also for me feeling horrible and not even wanting to function! It took a full week for the 4 of us to recover. From TWO NIGHTS of a little dab of SWAT! That is what started my journey into Toxins and hormones.
Mares always get a bad wrap and it got me wondering, are we, the HUMANS, the cause of the mares bad wrap?????
I decided to go through and check the ingredients of EVERYTHING in my tack room, no small feat and I actually gave up after only a few items. EVERYTHING had Toxins, cancer causing, poison control warnings, Endocrine Blockers, you name it, it was in the ingredients. I just used CDC and the Center for poison control to look stuff up, stuff I could not pronounce or even type! The worst were the cleaning products.
The SWAT Went in the trash, I developed a non-toxic salve (I like to call it TAWS since it is the Anti-Swat) and if you have read this far, the recipe is in the Three Snippets for you!
If you are interested in finding out more, click here to get my "3 Snippets of Removing Toxins from the Tack Room!"
Detoxing Your Tack Room SNIPPETS!
