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It’s not about Leadership, it’s about Relationship.

It’s about Relationship

This past weekend I participated in a horse training clinic with two other horse trainers.  Both the other trainers are well known in this area and both are very competent at training an unbroken horse.  However, both preached long and loud about the importance of being your horse’s leader.  When it came my turn to work with a horse, I caused quite the controversy by stating that it is not about leadership, it’s about relationship.  One of the other trainers took great offense to that statement and tried to convince me that leadership is a very crucial part of training a horse.  I agreed that leadership is extremely important.  The horse has to learn how to appropriately lead himself and I have to appropriately lead myself.  I appropriately control myself so that the horse can appropriately control himself.  That is what relationship is all about. This is a very hard concept for a lot of horse trainers to grasp.

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