Look to Your Horse for Answers

In my last post I talked about using what works for Gunny to create a solution. To create my list of what works for Gunny, I needed to change my perspective of how I looked at our interactions and training sessions. I needed to take a "big picture" view, instead of just looking at that session and if I got what I wanted. When first starting to look at things this way I found it easier to look at what doesn't work. I needed to look at emotions and attitude in addition to the performance of a certain task. I also looked at the history of our relationship to see what hasn't worked in the past to create lasting results and to see what has been recurring issues. I figured out that recurring issues are a big clue that what I am doing isn't working. Sometimes I was able to get a task done easily, but the only clue that the way that I was going about it wasn't working was that a bad attitude accompanied the performance of the task. Or sometimes I have used a technique repeatedly over a long period of time to get limited results and stuck with it in the name of patience and persistence. Or sometimes I have noticed a trend in behavior as a result of going about things in a certain way.

So the indicators I get from Gunny that something isn't working for him are:

• Results aren't lasting
• Another problem crops up in connection to what I have been doing
• Results are different than what I expected
• He performs the task, but does it unhappily
• A technique has only yielded limited results despite sticking with it a long time

In the next post I will explain how I determined what works for Gunny and the areas that I looked at to provide answers.