Anna has studied with me for some time and shared this blog with us;

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did

Kind regards Stina

After three lessons with wonderful and spirited Magic I am pretty confident in my assumption that she’s starting to, if not like, than definitely get used to Berry and I. Last week she’s let us brush her coat and she was very calm about it, enjoying our rather hesitant strokes. Probably she’s starting to associate us with the treats she gets after every well-executed excersise. But I guess that’s the point – the treats make her interested in us, while at the same time she gets more and more comfortable.

That became even more obvious after the very last lesson, during which we’d been mostly sitting with the horses. We’d held some treats in our laps and let the horses taste them – no strings attached. This simple excersise had made us more comfortable with the animals, who were towering above us. Magic has even started to respond to verbal commands from us, and not only Stina, as was the case before. That was a powerful experience.

Sitting there at dusk, observing how the horses act and interact with each other, listening to the sounds of nature around us proved to be both calming and learning experience. We’d observed their body language, with Stina explaining what different poses mean.

Apparently, there’s a lot you can learn from horses’ bodies, since movement and gestures are their preferred means of communication. The trick is that they expect the same from humans, who often have no clue about that and behave in ways that can mean the opposite of what they think. I guess there’s a lot to learn for me yet.

– Anna