If you are not born an Alpha style leader, your horse will know it. It can come across to your horse a bit like a lower ranking horse in the herd trying to move up the ranks, but lacking the presence, clarity and sureness to succeed. A less "Alpha" person will quite likely (consciously or unconciously) put off escalating the pressure, perhaps because they don't really feel good about it or just want to delay as much as possible to give the horse a chance, The trouble is, just like the lower herd member seeking to move up a rank, holding off can come across as hesitation, leading directly to the need to deliver greater pressure, which would require even greater sureness to be effective. This is a Catch 22, because the source of sureness in dominance is not hesitation.

If Chase hadn’t made me jump – literally – with a surprise launch 5ft into the air from a standstill over a 15ft span, I might not have woken up from my fog, to get his real point.

For three years I had grappled with a relentless echo on my mind. “What am I missing Chase? …What am I missing?”

Fun had become a faded memory. I’d failed to understand Chase well enough (by quite a margin) for our partnership to take off. I think I’d lost hope I ever would, or could.

I had continued evolving the skills I’d developed over 30 years from top coaches in Europe and the USA. Still I was no closer to the true connection I sought with Chase. And that’s what mattered to me most. It always had.

Was the exquisite ease of connection I had with my beloved event mare in my teens just a special thing with that “one” horse?

It was clear Chase didn’t enjoy our time together much, which slowly chipped away at my soul, is the truth. It felt like he went along with the hand-brake on, in mind and body.

Then that day I asked Chase to walk up a slope. Simple. He looked down to point out (correctly actually) that the gap between the shrubs had narrowed – and that “I don’t do prickly Karen!”

I admit I didn’t fully get that part and suggested “no worries, you can go”.

So… he cleared the shrubs from a complete standstill (as I grabbed his mane to stay with him!).

Think about this. At one time the best “forward” I had was Chase wishing he were somewhere else every step. Yes it was that bad! But now, this time, he knew what I wanted. He didn’t think he could do it and found a way to go anyway – with palpable generosity and wide open heart that flooded every cell in my body as we took off.

Such a joy and so exhilarating, as I blinked wet eyes clear, we went round and jumped three more times! Everything I had dreaded might never be – and much more than I somehow imagined – was right there.

It hadn't been some big, intangible thing I had to change, just smaller things to refine. When I got enough of those smaller things right, enough of the time, for long enough, they combined (rather literally) to launch us from the Abyss. And from there it just got better and better.

The “little things” had changed everything, for good: the gateway to Bliss.

And it’s here for you, too.