“What did you notice about that exercise? What did you notice about yourself?” White Rock Stables instructor Julie Wilson asks 11-year-old Evie.
The exercise in question takes place in a riding ring toward the back of the 14-acre property neighboring Flag Pole Hill Park. Standing a few feet away, Wilson watches on as Evie leads two-year-old Balou, an Irish sport horse standing nearly 16 hands (five feet) tall, across the sand.
Following a few turns around the ring, she asks the student if she’s comfortable letting the horse off its lead for “liberty work.” While both student and horse eventually get on the same footing, at first, there’s some trepidation — it’s a 1,000-pound animal, after all.
“Really a lot of it is directed towards having her look at herself, like when she said, ‘Well, I don’t think he’s going to follow me,’” Wilson says. “That’s self doubt, and we all walk around that. And with practice, (horses) can teach you to notice that more readily, and then we can change that, or alter that, or show up in a different way.”…