This is the new world. Nobody has time, and almost everybody is reading things in very small, narrow windows. We have condensed our world. Faster, smaller… better?

I was in an electronics store a short time ago and for the first time took a look at our blog and website on a smartphone screen. I’m a latecomer to the world of these devices, as I haven’t needed one, until now. Since we also have to travel lighter the power of the small screen decidedly trumps the necessity of packing a computer. In the world of condensed everything, even these two paragraphs are too long for most people. If you’ve been able to get this far – good for you!

When you squeeze text into a narrower window, obviously it makes the content appear much longer than it does on a wide-screen. So I’ve decided to try to make these posts shorter and sweeter so that everyone can get back to their busy-ness and other activities in due course.

What does this have to do with horses? Compassion?

I have seen the tiny electronic devices cause a considerable deflection from the intense focus that’s required to school a horse correctly. I’m old enough to have comparative values of the pre-cellphone and post-cellphone worlds. When my teenage students first started showing up at the barns sporting their new e-toys, I could sense  trouble was brewing. I knew what was coming down the high-tech pipelines too as I actually lived in a computer lab that was full of engineers and programmers developing this stuff. Nobody figured teenagers would be the first demographic addicted to tiny phones.

I will never forget the sight of one of the younger girls who was on her new 17.2 h.h. off-track thoroughbred for the first time. I was waiting in the arena for her to start her lesson and couldn’t figure out why the horse was drifting well away from the in-gate. Then I noticed the reins were on the buckle. No, wait. Not even on the buckle, they were dropped on the big gelding’s neck. The young rider had her head down, both hands on her phone, texting. The horse had no idea where he was supposed to go.

It wasn’t long before the lure of the e-device became far more important than the horse, who soon after began to act out on all the issues that come with an ex-racehorse. He ended up standing in his paddock for the next two years while the girl’s grandmother did her best to care for the high-energy thoroughbred, as none of the other kids had the patience for him either.

Everybody had to get back to their phone calls and texts.

It’s not going to get any better, I’m afraid. Not unless more people decide that it simply isn’t being mindful or compassionate to our horses as distracted humans carry on in this faster, smaller, (better?) world of narrow windows, too much to do, too much traffic, rising costs of everything, complex data plans, endless passwords, typing, typing and more typing (with thumbs, no less), and having to get information across in smaller and smaller chunks. How does anybody learn anything this way? How in the world did we all end up with so much to do and no time to do it? The mind is just too packed with fragmented bits of information to be focused…

…and riding a horse really well requires focus. Otherwise, somebody gets hurt, or somebody (usually the horse) IS hurting, and it goes unnoticed – because the mind is elsewhere – or the rider is in such a rush to get in and out of the barn that something else in the horse’s training goes amiss.

Obviously, I haven’t done a very good job of condensing this post either! So if you’ve also had the time to read this far – good for you again!

The only answer I can see – and Dr. Schoen has spoken about this many times and puts it into practice daily – is that we have to take control of our mind-space and consciously retrain, or re-wire, our thinking to where we can be more mindful. Being mindful means being more compassionate as with that clearer, calmer focus, it’s much easier to notice if somebody, especially our silent horse, is actually suffering in some way.

If you have patiently scrolled all the way through this post, thank you! Apparently I still have a lot to say about things – maybe too much – but in a very condensed conclusion, all I have to say is, when I finally get my first smartphone next week, I hope I’ll remember to put it down when necessary, look up and around and acknowledge everybody and everything that needs some attention and real human contact.