Driving Lessons

[Sanhestar]

From reading about your experience with anxiety attacks and anxious ponies, Sabine, I can't help but think that your own nerves are the biggest reason your ponies are not comfortable leaving home. I have never had an anxiety attack myself. I was raised with a great deal of self-confidence and taught from a young age that I don't need to be afraid of things but to figure them out instead. I do my best to train our animals to be the same way. Our emotions translate enormously to our animals, and if we are timid when we train, our animals will be timid as well. In my years of training horses and riders, I've come to learn that anxious people nearly always assume their animals are anxious too and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Also, if we're constantly afraid of traumatizing our animals, we're going to be hesitant and ineffective in our training methods. Training takes confidence, and sometimes it even takes being brave for our animals when we ourselves are tempted to be frightened too--like when me and my horse encountered our first bear. 

I did not have anxiety issues earlier in life. This crept up on me in the last years after several accidents around horses (trailer flipping over, almost being trampled in a very stupid situation) and generally being burned-out.

I could no longer be truthfull in my body language, my mind would tell me "nothing to fear" but my body would do its own thing. This has nothing to do with being afraid of traumatizing my animals - I really, really resent that interpretation of my attempts to talk about a way of training that is not based on the threat of punishment.

Believe me, it is no, no, no fun and also out of conscience control when your own body betrays you while your mind knows what to do.