Riding to Relax

The weather in Arizona has been rough this year. Either it is raining or the winds are too high. As a result, I've only been able to ride the Wonder Horse about once per week. Today I endeavoured to take him out for a ride to work on his bouts of paranoia. He is fine when I ride him in situations he is familiar with. I typically take him into the dressage training area where we practice horsemanship. He is very comfortable with this and is relatively relaxed. However, the last time I took him out I took him to an area adjacent to the dressage area and worked on pole bending. He didn't like that at all and became very agitated and light on the front end. I have noticed this phenomenon several times in recent months whenever I introduce him to a new environment. He becomes so panicked that he is nearly unrideable. He is a good horse and wants to please but he just becomes so frightened that he can't focus. Conventional wisdom dictates that you take his mind off his fears by asking him to perform some well-trained task to take his mind off his fears but today I decided to take a different approach. I decided to take him out of his comfort zone and then ask him to face his fears without any distractions. I took him over to the jogging path where I like to gallop Duke for his conditioning training. Apache (the Wonder Horse) is not accustomed to riding there so I thought it would be a good "agitator". I was right, as soon as we rode past the dressage area, he became agitated. As we went around the oval the first time he became increasingly nervous and it felt like I was sitting on 1,200 lbs of dynamite ready to go off. I dismounted and spoke to him for a few minutes until he calmed down. I then walked him around the jogging path, stopping every few feet to pick up and remove rocks in the path. A couple times around the path and he was able to do it calmly. I then mounted and rode him around again. He did better but was still nervous. We worked though it though and eventually he was able to go around without increasing his gait or tossing his head. Once he was able to complete the oval calmly we called it a day. It only took about an hour. A small but important victory. The Wonder Horse learned to trust me a little bit.