Today
was the fourth ride since the First
Resonance Repatterning session.
It started out pretty good! We did wavy lines at
the walk, weaving in and out of a line of trees along the
driveway, navigating under a mimosa and through a gauntlet
of tires, a jeep, a trailer, and a crepe mrytle. Also
a chicken on the road (like, seriously? it's not even
near us.) and a garbage can. also not anywhere
near us.
So you may be wondering, how did these get
included?
Well, I think this is part of the problem with the DEAF
horse. They are on such high alert that what gets
included in *their* universe often exceeds (greatly) what
we, as riders, or even what other horses, would consider
reasonable.
With these horses, I think the mistake comes when they
'spook' at something (on the horizon or in another universe)
and we apply leg, or tap them with the whip, or the saddle
squeaks or you bat your eye or something, and they then
interpret this as the spooky thing magically attacking
them. Somehow the spooky thing that used to be over
there has now magically teleported onto *them* and is
attacking them.
So there's two problems - two flaws in the logic.
One, the spooky thing is *not* on their back and two, they
are not being attacked. And because this happened the
first time in their life, and it was horrible, horrible,
horrible, they encoded it in their brains in capital letters
and have made it their life mantra. And now, you just
never know what horrible, horrible, horrible thing on the
horizon or in the alternate universe or where ever it was
might just land on your back and attack. So you've got
to be very aware of this. On high alert. The
whole time.
Which then morphs into the
next problem - they aren't listening to any
suggestions! Which is, truthfully, a dominance issue.
This got me to thinking of Dan
Korem's profiling schema. One of his scales has to
do with 'Asking vs. Telling.' Mr. Rogers vs.
Margaret Thatcher.
Tell people don't listen. They tell. Tell
people don't learn so fast. They're busy
telling. Tell people take charge. They have
answers. They have strong opinions. They
dominate.
The only way to get a talk person to listen is to shout
them down.
Which is hard for the gentler Ask folks. (If you
ever wonder if you're dealing with a 'tell' person, get
louder and see what happens!) If you want to shout
down a strong tell person, you need to dig in your heels and
get ready, 'cuz it's going to get loud.
And then the weirdest things will happen.
Sometimes.
Usually they'll smile and say something like, 'all right,
tell me about it.'
OR - they might just punch you in the nose. So, get
ready to duck.
So today, on the wavy line, I took the approach of
telling Tammy a LOT. and the more I told her, the
quieter she got.
Oi.
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