I am trying to better understand the thought process of a boarder/student. She is exhausting to teach, and I feel I am missing something to help me help her. Older client. Highly educated professional. Learned to ride in her later years. Had started lessons as a child, but had a traumatic experience and stopped.
- she often talks over me when I am talking. I usually pause to let her talk and then start again with what I was saying.
- She takes things as “rules” without considering context, and it is hard to get her to modify a “rule” to fit circumstances.
- She likes to think of her horses as the “worst/best”- “My horse is the spookiest” “My horse needs the vet out the most” “my horse is the last to shed”. It is never true - she is rarely around with other riders, so I am not sure what this is about.
- She holds her horse to a higher standard than herself. She sometimes is very reactive when riding (horse trips, and she screams/yanks up), but she gets very upset when her horse spooks at anything.
- She absolutely loses it sometimes. Example - she wanted to do ground work to get her horse walking over/through puddles. I was helping her, but she wasn’t able to stop and listen/process what I was saying and just kept trying to force her horse through the widest part (and upset that her horse would step to the side to go to a narrower part). She ended up in full meltdown and had to get sit and cry while I held her horse. her horse didn’t endanger her. After her meltdown, she became coachable and could process my explanation /reasoning. She also screamed when I was riding her horse and her horse shied at a grasshopper hitting her.
Part of the reason I need to really develop a better coaching style is she wants to start riding her one horse on “trails”, We are currently doing ground work, and arena work over obstacles. Next I will walk with her out and about. but eventually she will want to go ride out with me on another horse. I DON"T THINK I CAN…unless I can feel more confident she won’t have a meltdown when riding. I have told her that - and I am ok continuing to say no, but if I can find better coaching strategies that would be great. Client is moving in the next year or two to her own rural property and she wants to feel ready to ride out and about on her own.