More importantly, the swing from hot to cold and back again is what messes us up, and particularly messes up the horses. One day they’re running and bucking out in the pasture, free of blankets and other encumbrances. The next day, they’re not only blanketed, but trying to figure out how to navigate in icy mud.

Horses adapt really well to change, but not to rapid change. So this is the time of year that we have to be on the lookout to be sure that they drink enough water, so they don’t get into a colic situation. We have to bring them in before they get all excited and roughhouse around the gate, which would mean they’d get sweaty just as the day gets colder. And we have to watch our tempers, that we don’t end up scolding them just for being frisky.

People adapt well to change, too, but rapid change that’s out of our control throws us for a loop. On the other hand, when we think we have control, we often change what we shouldn’t. I’m reminded of the quote that says, “Change for the sake of change is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Change is not another word for improvement, and I have to remember that when I’m unhappy with the status quo.

I try to remind myself of the “serenity prayer” when I get frustrated with myself, my situation or my horse.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Where do you begin? Obviously the person didn’t understand that spooking on the trail wasn’t the place she had to start with the training. John explained the answer and I wrote it, telling her in a straightforward way that the horse might be spooking because he needed better training in the basics, and here was the sequence of training to work on. When I read it back to John, he said our information was right, but we really have to be careful that the reader doesn’t think that we’re scolding her.

There’s no way that you or I would have read the answer and felt scolded. It was matter-of-fact and informative, even encouraging. But if you were the person with the horse problem, you might be worried that you had done something wrong in the horse’s training. You’d be extra sensitive, and maybe even be afraid that you weren’t going to be able to get the horse safely trained. Our good information could sound like, “You messed up. Now you have to go back to school.” Of course, the letter we finally sent was very supportive, telling the lady that she had done the right thing in asking for help, and so forth.

I was reminded of an important lesson that day. People asking for help have put themselves in a vulnerable position. If I’m going to help them, I  have to go the extra mile to show them respect. I have to add some carrots to any advice I give. Mary Poppins was right when she said, “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

There’s a lot of wisdom in that line of thinking. In fact, if we’re honest, plenty of us have crunched a carrot, hoping the horse we were trying to catch would become interested and mosey over to us.

Carrots figure prominently as we think about horsemanship. It’s not just that they are loaded with vitamin A. It’s that when we use them wisely — or at least the positive training they symbolize — our horses get a A on performance, and we do, too.

One of the major challenges in life is to operate as if we had only a carrot, and not a stick. So, as we ride through life and horsemanship in this blog, we'll be sure to keep plenty of carrots in our back pocket. And from time to time, we’ll stop and munch on one ...just to enjoy the moment, to make sure we're on the right track, or to encourage ourselves and others to keep thinking in a carrot-worthy mode.