I was writing a note to an instructor across the street who is an R rated judge and a course designer, I think for the hunter Jumper world. My fun has been eventing. I attended fully two Instructor Certification Programs from the United States Eventing Association. One as a rider, auditor one time as in instructor candidate. When I began teaching my jumping demonstration lesson, the rider asked about lead changes. I immediately got distracted to something I has just learned by some Monte Foreman people and tried to see how I could integrate it into the lesson. Silly me. In a sample 15 minute lesson, how can an instructor impart more than a tool to accomplish such a complicated move. Let alone, to impart that tool from a different discipline. I was with Brian Sabo, who was super supportive and basically told me what I just said.
The purpose of the icp was to teach us how to pass the icp certification test.
When I was young, I was a musician/singer songwriter/ band leader. I never had stage fright. I love performing. In this situation, I felt like the odd duck. I have always leaned toward the natural methods since the 80’s when I first saw John Lyons with his stallion Zip in Sunol. Of course, having a degree in Psychology or more importantly, having studied learning theory and experimental design, what I saw was classical conditioning and operatant conditioning and bridge learning theory and associative learning theory. And, he, John Lyons was very, very skilled. Since that time I have always used by background and have continued to study equine learning theory as a science.
Many traditional disciplines do incorporate this, but with different terms or just by usage without really understanding the “why”.
I don’t know why this becomes important tome in the moment other than when we put ourselves up for display, like taking a lesson, like a horse learning something new. We never know how the teacher is going to react to us. It takes a leap of faith, it takes a “try”. And lucky that I am human, when my “try” doesn’t feel good enough, I get to change my path. A horse whose “try” isn’t good enough gets punished.