I grew up in the Midwest in the regional hunter/jumper business. I showed a lot, from the 4-H level to the A-Circuit level. Because I showed a lot, I rode a lot and I also hung around the barn a lot. I was a “barn rat”. I watched and I listened. I learned the jargon, I memorized how the grooms bandaged the legs and cleaned the tack and how they hung a halter on a stall door. I would hang around hoping to be an extra hand when someone needed it. I’d get tapped occasionally to hold a horse for the farrier, and I’d pepper him with questions while no one was looking. I would get a thrill when a groom would ask me to put a cooler on a hot horse and walk him around until he was cool. I’d check his chest carefully and present him back to the groom when he was JUST the right temperature. It felt like fooling around a lot of the time, but I was learning.
By the time I was in my late teens, I was working around the horses every hour I wasn’t at school. About that time, I began getting the same lecture from many different sources. Be prepared to pay your dues, they told me. Don’t expect to be handed anything for free. Expect to work your fingers to the bone for every dollar earned or favor granted. Do your time. There’s no substitute for hard work. Do the work that needs to be done. Don’t expect to skip your way up the ladder.
There were lots of clichés in those lectures, to be sure. But I’ve been thinking about those lectures lately. They have helped prepare me for this journey that has turned out to be my own horsemanship. As I’ve worked four horses a day all winter, I’ve thought of those early lessons. Do your time. Do the work. Practice. Don’t skip things. Know your subject from the bottom up. Those early lectures prepared me for the work I do now.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Outliers”, he explains what many call the “10,000 Hour Rule”, which proposes that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to gain a level of mastery in a skill or field. I think this might be what all my lecturers were talking about all those years ago. They hadn’t put numbers on it, but they sure did say that competence would come with hours spent working on it.
It seems to me that much of the time and money being spent in the horse industry these days is being spent by middle-aged women who have returned to horses after some time away as they pursued their educations, careers, or maybe even raised a family. These women fill the bulk of horsemanship clinics around the country and fill horse show classes in all disciplines and breeds. They buy feed, they buy tack, they buy grooming supplies, and they buy horses. They keep a substantial portion of the equine economy here in the States functioning.
What’s interesting about this demographic of horsemen is how they tend to fare in the quest to collect 10,000 hours of work with horses. For example, I have a student who is a professional and who also has a husband and children. She has one horse. She has been involved with horses for over 15 years. This makes her sound very experienced, doesn’t it? When she added up her hours, she found she had only 2,500 hours over those 15 years. Heck, she’d been in college, then grad school, then she got married and had children! When did she have time to collect hours working horses?
But this horseman was frustrated with her horsemanship because she felt like after “15 years” in horses, she should be further along than she was. When she added up her hours, she found that actually, she was exactly where she should be in her horsemanship considering how many hours she’d put in. She was able to deal with herself fairly and have realistic expectations of herself and her horse. And she could take pride in maintaining her career, her marriage, her children AND her horsemanship.
All of us have limitations on how many hours we can collect over time. Many of us have families, jobs and other commitments. But I’d also propose that we make choices that can either maximize or minimize those hours spent with the horse work. There is no substitute for doing the work. No book, no DVD, no daydream can replace the actual hands-on experience of working with horses. All that other study helps, of course, but we still have to go out and do the work. We talk about how the horses are the best teachers, but then I think some of us end up spending more time reading books, watching DVDs and e-mailing about horses than we do actually putting our hands on them.
We can’t expect to skip levels. Sometimes we’re in such a hurry to be somewhere else that we don’t get everything we can out of the level we currently inhabit. I’ve done this myself on my journey. It’s kind of like getting into a gorgeous valley at a National Park and standing there and looking around and wondering how soon you can leave and look at what’s on the other side of the valley walls. When we do that, we can’t take in what’s in front of us. Maybe it’s one of those Zen things, that sometimes in order to move forward in our horsemanship, we need to be still for a bit and be happy (but not satisfied) about where we are right now. Maybe that gives us the chance to squeeze every last drop of knowledge and mastery out of that level, I don’t know.
And there’s another wrinkle in this thing here about working with horses and putting in the time it takes. I think we need to realize that as we do our work, we do our OWN work. Many of us have a mentor, instructor or other expert figure who we attempt to emulate and learn from. We may try to do their work. But only they can do their work. Only Ray Hunt can do Ray’s work. Only Mark Rashid can do Mark’s work. No one else can do Mark’s work. Mark’s work is only Mark’s when he’s doing it. Same with Ray and Harry Whitney and Pat Parelli and you and me. Their work is only theirs when they are doing it. Our work is only ours when we are doing it.
As our summer riding season approaches, let’s encourage each other to put in the time it takes to gain a level of competency. Be kind to yourself and realistic in your expectations of yourself. Add up your hours and see where you fall in the journey toward 10,000 (+) hours. Vow to put aside the phone, the computer, the other distractions and get some dirt under your fingernails. Explore, experiment. Get help if you need it. Go and do. Turn theory into practice. Do the work. “Do your time”, as they told me so long ago.
There’s that old joke, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice”. Hmmmmm…… |
