I remember being a young boy and spending time with my great-grandfather, Grandpa Pitts. Every time I would visit, he would occupy me by challenging me to solve all kinds of puzzles. He had two horseshoes with a chain where the puzzle was figuring out how to get them apart and put them back together, and he had a multitude of little wooden puzzles of different variations. They were mostly hand-eye coordination and lateral thinking puzzles. As I think back on them now, I realize that he was trying to prepare me to be a puzzle solver because every horse is a puzzle that needs to be figured out and put together. Some are hundred piece puzzles, some are thousand piece puzzles, and some are 10,000 piece puzzles. So, in the end, being a great puzzle solver is what it takes to be great with horses.
In almost every seminar I've ever put on, I say, “Raise your hand if you'd like to be really good with horses.” Of course, everybody raises their hand. I say, “It's easy. All you have to do is watch what everybody else is doing and do the opposite. That's easier said than done. Most people are very chauvinistic, autocratic, anthropomorphic, and addicted to linear thinking. In other words, they want their process to look like their product. So that's why we have to do the opposite. We have to truly be partners with our horses instead of being autocratic or chauvinistic; we're not better than them. To me, anthropomorphism means being unrealistic. Unrealistic means not dealing with the true nature of our horses while also putting human thoughts and values into animals' actions. And of course, the opposite of linear thinking is lateral thinking.
Empowering people to become great puzzle solvers and lateral thinkers is one of the reasons I created the Levels program. I wanted to give people a track to run on, a program to follow where they would naturally encounter puzzles to solve along the way.
One of the things to remember when you’re looking to improve your puzzle-solving skills is Principle #8: Principles, Purpose, and Time are the Tools of Teaching. Ambition is a great thing as long as it's tempered by principles, patience, and sequence. The combination of those concepts is the key to becoming a great puzzle solver. When you think about Principle #8, being committed to staying principled is one thing, but adding purpose and then still taking the time that it takes is the true challenge. These keys unlock the puzzle-solving parts of your brain and allow you to learn and teach.
Purpose is the catalyst to becoming a great puzzle solver. If you have nothing to do other than practice your Yo-Yo Game, your Circles, your Sideways, and your Squeeze in principle but you never have to apply them, you're probably not going to run into very many rough seas; you’re always sailing on a smooth lake. But as soon as you have a challenge ahead of yourself, as soon as you have a job to do with a horse or a competition to prepare for, now you've got a puzzle to solve because now you have to figure out how to prepare your horse and yourself. At the same time, you have to remember that when you're doing a job, the job's important, but not as important as the principle. The principle's important, but you’ve still got to get the job done.
You can practice this process by starting off with little things like opening gates, which can actually be quite a challenge. I remember when I was first apprenticing with Mr. Henry, and he had several gates on his property that would often scare the young horses when the gate moved toward them when first starting out. And of course, at that time, I tried to hang on, and then it would scare the horse more. Mr. Henry finally said, “Why don't you go make friends with that gate first instead of trying to open it?” When I asked what he meant by that, he said, “Just ride along about 10 feet away from the gate, stop, go sideways, and just sit there and put your hand on the gate and just pretend like it's a good old friend who you just met up with. Put your hand on “his shoulder,” relax for a while, and then ride off. Don't try to open the gate.”
Pretty soon, the horses would see that each one of the gates was an opportunity to get some relaxation and some relief. Pretty soon the horses were like, I love gates! Instead of, let's open the gate, let's get scared, and then I'm struggling with the gate and the horse and the horse is going, I hate gates. Pat must hate 'em too 'cause look at how he's fighting with that gate. Can you see the difference? It’s a principled difference, but it comes to life with purpose and taking the time it takes.
Little things like this are a good starting point for adding purpose. To take it to the next level, you can start to use your horse to play with other horses, and you might be surprised how quickly your horse sees the purpose. I like to ride my horses and play with other horses On-Line and at Liberty, and it doesn't take very long before my riding horse starts to see that he has to read my mind and think about what I’m thinking. When he starts to see how what he’s doing in harmony with me relates to the other horse as well, the horses all start putting more energy, more enthusiasm, and more exuberance into the project.
That's why cutting horses are so exciting because they understand that they have to hold the cow away from the other cows. They have to hold a certain line so they start to understand how that game is played. What’s so exciting to watch is the bonding, the obedience, and the exuberance that develops with that kind of purpose.
There are many other things we can do, like jumping obstacles or preparing for a competition, to add purpose. Just remember, purpose is a really great catalyst to cause us to become great puzzle solvers. But again, oftentimes, the ambition to win causes us to be linear thinkers and try to make our process look like our product.
For example, someone who wants to be good at barrel racing puts three barrels in their arena, and they practice that barrel pattern over and over again. They often end up accidentally practicing/programming the horse to get away from the barrels and find rest back at the end of the arena. That's why the Five Barrel Pattern is a great lateral thinking program to help horses understand that they're going to go in an infinity pattern that is never-ending unless the rider wants it to end. In other words, they’re not going to do three barrels and come back and stop at the end of the arena. They're going to do three barrels, come back, and canter around one of the bottom barrels until they're relaxed, and then they’re going to do the pattern again. The practicing perfectly part happens naturally as they end up doing three barrels to the right and three barrels to the left, so it evens them out mentally, emotionally, and physically.
I could talk for hours about how becoming a great puzzle solver is one of the secrets to having a great horse life, but I'm going to make it short and sweet. Learn to think outside the proverbial box; I call it learning to think “outside the barn.” Learn to adjust to fit different situations. And remember that ambition is a great thing as long as it’s tempered by principles, patience, and sequence.
