Every rider, beginner to expert, can benefit from instruction. Learn how to choose an instructor that will best help you achieve your riding goals.
Every aspiring horseman needs a mentor. Beginners need a riding instructor, intermediate riders can always use an expert eye to spot riding errors, and expert riders still need coaches. The needs of the rider will change and grow. How does one select an instructor? What does one look for?
Like the match of horse and rider, the rider and instructor must “fit”. If you don’t personally like or respect the instructor it will be difficult to accept much of what they say. Trust first impressions.
Then, check around with the instructor’s other students. What do they say? Get permission to watch a lesson. How do things go? Then trust your gut. Imagine how you might feel taking a lesson from this person. How would you feel? If the answer is negative, then look elsewhere.
Now you’ve already had your first lesson. Learn to trust yourself. If your heart tells you that what you are being told to do is wrong or abusive towards the animal or fails to take the animal’s feelings into consideration, follow your heart. Tell the instructor you cannot do that and why. Your second lesson is to always work at learning what to keep and what to discard. Even the so-called “experts” can be wrong, and often are. They are only human after all and no one human gets all the answers.
Finally, in choosing an instructor, observe the instructor’s own horses. Are they quiet and respectful, easygoing, yet full of life? Or are they pushy and disobedient, disrespectful and explosive – or somewhere in between? The instructor’s horses will tell you the most about the instructor. In learning from that person your horses will invariably end up the same.
Listen to the horses.
And choose wisely.
