 Cancer work, something I can tell you is if we can get his life up in his body before I make a change of gait that's the trick to a really nice transition or departure. Prepare to position for the transition and the transition takes care of itself. We arrange the life in the body down to the feet through the mind or through an understanding through the horse understanding what we're asking. We affect their energy level and we take it down one way or another. We're taking it down to their feet. So let's work on that a little bit. I want to prepare to position before I walk off. So I gather up my reins. He feels me sort of get, get ready. I'll sit up to bring my life up and he goes yeah he's doing something. He's getting ready. I sit up. I bring my life up. If he wasn't coming up maybe I bumped my leg just a little bit and say get going. Get your life up and pretty soon he goes Jack I can't walk. You're too active. I'm too I'm too up to walk. He starts thinking right here you can see it. He starts thinking can I trot? And so at this point he's ready so all I have to do to trot is sit up. Trotting is up so I sit up but it was the prep work before we trotted. If I squeeze him into the trot they're gonna it's gonna shock your horse. They're not gonna be ready and they're gonna shove their nose forward. They're probably gonna jump pop the front end up. A lot of people ask me they say why does my horse pop its head up? Well it's because he's got so much weight on the front end and you're just you're not preparing him to change gait. So he's having to throw his weight backwards. So it's all about getting the mind ready. Get the life ready. He's not lively. There he is. More life more life. More life. More energy and then look how easy the transition is. So at the point where we change gait. I don't want to be asking anymore. I want to prepare. I want to fix it up. Let him change. So if I were gonna walk I think about sitting low and slow and I start to think about my tone coming back to more like that jello side and I think about relaxation. So he mentally starts thinking he gets calmer. So he's mentally shifting before the physical change. Right? So now here we go. If I wanted to get I want to get going with more life. Let's make this more interesting. So now I'm gonna bring him forward a time or two and I want even more life than that. I'm gonna get him a little jazzed up. Okay now got the life up. So I've got him sort of up and thinking. Bring that life down. I gather up my reins. I say get ready. We're gonna do this again. I get his life up and there's our canner. It's really easy when you get him ready for it. And it's a it's very much an emotional thing. Lift the sternum. Yeah and he's jazzed up a little bit right? And I heard somebody go who and that's how he feels and that's okay. Get that life up a little more. Bring that life back. How soon can we shut it off? He wants to go by the barrel. But how soon are you still up? But I want to let him settle here on a long rain, long halt. And how soon can he kind of come back now? How little does it take from that place to gather up my reins and walk forward? Pretty little. And I have to be really careful because I used to get horses really excited. I regret doing that. A lot of us probably did things that we look back on and we go man, I wish I didn't do that. But I used to always see how soon could I go? How soon could I hold? How fast can I go? Pretty soon your horse can't handle that. So we balance it out by bringing him back quietly. Ready? How little does it take to trot? How little does it take to halt? The trick is get him ready. Get the mind ready. He's focused. Get the life ready. I'm gonna slow him down. I'm gonna sit relaxed. I'm gonna bring him down more. He's got to feel calm to halt. He's got to feel energetic to go. So you're riding the life of your horse just as much, just as much. We're training the life system just as much if not more at least right now than the body system. And we all talk about the mind. A horse should understand, right? Does your horse understand? Does your horse is your horse confused? More often than not, I notice horses understand but they don't respond to their owners. So as a professional, I see that the most I see a lot of horses that they know what their owners asking, but they're like, do I have to? And the owners like, you're so I like you and they take so much time and the horse goes, you know, if I stand here for a minute or two, they don't mind this. And so I see a lot of horses that they understand the human and the human's intent, but they don't respond. All right, so that that to me is the mind system. Do they understand? Do they not understand? Do they understand that they just don't respond? So I want you to think about where you sit with your horse. The life system of the horse is this, I give it a scale from zero to 100. Zero would be a horse that's asleep. Horses sleeping. It's it doesn't happen as much as you'd think, but a horse that's really, truly asleep, we're going to call that zero emotional thermometer. 100 would be a horse in a blind panic. Has anybody ever seen a blind panic? A horse in a blind panic will run through a wall. I've seen it. I've seen I've seen it in rodeo. I've seen horses that are such a blind panic that it's called blind panic. They can't see where they're going. It's an adrenaline state. Well, we don't want to be at a zero and we know we don't want to be at 100. But this is the range. So what I like to do is I evaluate my horse's emotional level with this thermometer. And so I like to think about this. So if I'm riding my horse here walking, I say to myself, where are we at? Eh, maybe a 20, 30. So I think maybe I could get him up a little bit. Could we bring him up to maybe like a 50? Maybe more. That's there. We're gonna canner. Could I bring him up a little hotter without getting too crazy? But could I bring him up a little more? Could I bring him down? Now he's got he got frisky, right? So I'll try that again. I'll say let's bring there we go. Let's bring the life up. I saw how little I could do good. I'm gonna bring that life up a little bit more. Little more. Bring him back. And now could I bring him down and maybe get back down into those 20s again? If I wait here long enough, he's gonna exhale. He's gonna breathe out. He's gonna make a change, settle in. Sometimes rubbing on him can help. Sometimes just waiting a little longer can help. Good. There it is. See, there's a change. There's a change. And then I'll say now I'm gonna walk back to y'all with very little. And I don't want to just I don't want to get him very emotional. I want to keep those emotions cool. See? And now when you watch this horse, you go, I see the life. You can see more life, more life, less life. Right? You're seeing it and you're gonna see it with your horse is now at home. So when you're going down the trail ride, you start to say, man, my horse, he's in the 70s. Be careful. Your horse is hitting the 80s. Oh boy. So what could we do to bring him back? But we train the life of the horse just as much the life system, the energy you could call it energy level if you want. I don't care. But we train that system just as much as the mind and the body. And if you're focused on the body, humans are good at the body. Is my horse fat? Is my horse thin? Is my horse lame? Is my horse the color I like? People are good at like is my horse tucking his nose? Think of all the human things. It's generally go to a horse show and how many times have you seen really kind of excited horses but they're placing okay because their body is doing something. But you can tell their mind. But so it's important that we look and we say emotionally, can I get my horse to relax? I want to add a little bit to this. Confidence is huge. We know that. So if we go through positive experiences, it's all about the experience. If I go through positive experiences, he trusts me more and more. And so a meaningful relationship, it's not about training, it's about you giving him positive experiences just like it is with other people. If you have a friend that gets you into trouble and you get nervous, you don't want to go with that friend, right? You want to go with somebody that you've had good experiences with. So confidence is huge and that perhaps is the most important. But there's something more. When your horse gets excited, they start to get into these cortisol hormone, stress hormone states. When they get really excited, we start to go up another level and we start getting into like adrenaline state. And adrenaline is we don't want to be there with our horse but I want you to think about like race horses. I want you to think about show horses that are very stressed out. And where's their mind? So they get into this high level, this adrenaline state and that's that's a problem, right? Now if we work on bringing their life up, bringing their life up, bringing their life down and we do that and we get really good at it and you get a horse going more excited and less excited. I train like a light switch. I want him on, I want him off, right? Up and down and over time we can get more life and then less life. Over time physiologically they get more efficient at relaxing. It's that simple. Same with people. So there's a confidence component, there's a mental component, but there's also a physiological component where the horse gets efficient at relaxing. Those cortisol sort of hormones do a faster job of just sort of filtering out, right? So working the life of your horse is probably one of the most important things you can do. And if you're nervous about your horse getting them a little excited and we don't want to take it to the extreme because then we're overexposing and he doesn't understand. But what we do want to get is their life coming up a little bit, recognize it, quit while we're ahead, let them come back down, give them time to settle. We get better and better at life up, life down. That's the system of the horse that gets people in the most trouble. That's the system that I don't hear people talking about with training, that life system. But you will get your horse more efficient at relaxing, right? Does that make sense? So I can't think of a time more than trail riding where this would be really important. And if you work your horse on the ground, who does ground school ground work? And I don't care if you do, okay good, so you all do, that's pretty good. Some people don't, some people are like, I don't need to do that. Okay, so then the most excited their horse is going to get is when they're on the horse's back. If the most excited that your horse is going to get in that training session is when you're going down the trail, well you asked for it, right? But if I work my horse on the ground a little bit, maybe I work his emotions. So maybe the most excited my horse would get, I didn't say scared, but it up. The most up I get my horse would be on the ground before I ride him. So then when I get on my horse, it's calmer and easier and calmer and easier the whole way through. And that's gotten me out of a lot of trouble with with a lot of horses throughout the years. So I hope the life system makes sense and I hope I really kind of cleared that up for a lot of you.