A couple, who are dear friends of ours, are coming to the farm for brunch tomorrow. They’re both horse people. The wife is a fantastic cook (and a fantastic rider). They both eat eggs, so I asked how they feel about omelets on the menu. The wife said she had never learned to make a great omelet, so I’m going to teach her.
Which got me thinking about what it takes to make a great omelet…how it’s an art as much as a skill, and requires feel and timing and the right tools. It occurred to me that horse training is a lot like making an omelet.
The right ingredients. In order to make a good omelet and a good horse, you have to have the right ingredients. Let’s start with your eggs. Or in this case, your horse. Horses vary just like eggs (large, small, fresh, stale, etc). Evaluating your horse, like knowing your eggs, will help you move forward in your horse training (and omelet making).
There’s even more variation in horses, being sentient beings, than there are in eggs, so getting a sense of what it’s like working with different kinds of horses, with different temperaments, is well worth the time, even if you’d rather spend every waking moment with the horse that belongs to you.