Horsemanship 3: Teamwork and Communication
The past week at Horsemanship has flown by. Each day we have been focusing on a specific social skills alongside learning more about our horses and we wanted to provide you with an update on what we’ve been doing so far.
The beginning of this week has been all about teamwork and communication, which are both important skills we employ in our everyday lives. In the mornings when we get to the ranch, one of the first things we do is work in pairs to saddle up our horses. This requires communication and teamwork skills as we must work together to ensure that each step is done correctly. Before we get on our horses, rancher Mac always asks us, “What’s the first thing you do when you get on a horse” and we now know we have to check the sinch. If the sinch is too loose when we go to get on our horses, we’d likely just fall right off.
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Teamwork and communication is also really important with our horses. When we’re with the horse, we’re a team. In order to be a good team member, we need to give our horses clear and direct instructions. When we don’t, our horses get confused and then we can get confused. Sometimes, giving the horses clear and direct instructions can be difficult because in order for us to give those clear and direct instructions, we need to know exactly what we are doing. Making quick decisions and following through with them is something we’ve all been working hard on this past week and will continue to work on.
An important part of communication is getting to know the person or in this case, animal, that you’re communicating to. We spent a good amount of time getting to know our horses, their anatomy, and how to tack up last week. This allowed us to form a relationship with our horses, which has helped us work together as a team.
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As we’ve gotten to know our horses, we’ve also gotten to know our fellow campers. Today we talked a lot about trail etiquette. Trail etiquette is a very important component of trail riding. Some things we have been focusing on are to: stop when everyone else stops and leave spaces between our horses.
So far, we’ve had a really fun with at Horsemanship. We’ve learned a lot from each other and especially our horses. Our horses remind us that sometimes we all get grumpy (especially when it’s hot). However, when this happens it’s still important to treat each other with kindness and compassion the same way we should be treating the people in our lives, regardless of how their day is going.