Pony Guilt - "Neglecting" your horse to prioritise adulting
Are you feeling the guilt’s because you are adult life is getting in the way of your pony play?
Ok, so its not true neglect but you know you should be spending more time with your horse. Their needs are met. They are well fed and cared for.
But you’re on a time budget and most days you only seem to be able to run in, feed them and race out again.
The older we get the more responsibilities we seem to accumulate, the more our energy is pulled in more and different directions, the less time we seem to have for ourselves and our horses.
While you may not be kicking goals with 5 x 1 hour training sessions every week, we can still bring our horses along nicely if we know what we are working towards.
Here are my top tips of making the most of your spare time with your horse:
Be realistic about where you are going with how much time you have.
If you are dreaming of the Olympics but only have 20minutes a week to spend with your horse, you may have to shift that goal out to a time when you can prioritise your horses. If however, you just want to take your horse out to local shows and even low level state events you can achieve that quality with just 2 – 3 ridden training sessions a week.
Quality over quantity.
This is not only in your time spent riding your horse but also time spend being with your horse. If you can spare an extra 10 minutes with your horse when you’re feeding them just hang with them quietly. Give them a pat if they ask for it otherwise just be with them. And leave the phone behind!!!
A good session doesn’t have to be a long session.
We can do a good quality training session in as little as 30 minutes (need help? Check out our lesson plans on pinterest). For prelim, novice and even elementary level dressage, this only needs to be done twice a week with some cross training like hacking out, poles or grids.
Block out a mental health break.
Horses are great for our mental health and just pottering around the yard can lift even the worst moods. It can be helpful to explain to your family you just need this time to be a better human. And then spend that time not putting pressure on yourself to do rush in, rush through your training and rush but actually do some relaxing with your horse. This can help with your overall all connection and therefore willingness with your horse.
Play games with your horse.
Another way to improve your horses willingness - and therefore resulting in less time needing to discipline your horse - is engaging them in games and positive reinforcement activities