This message is from: " Dave McWethy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I think I know what Robin means about the 15 Minutes of Grace.
The idea is that each horse has a certain willingness to look at new things, and will tolerate an experiment. Whatever you ask, and let's say it is hitching to a cart, they will go along with to a point. That "point" may be a big or little window of opportunity. In that window, you get the chance to prove something to the horse, the essence of which is that what you are doing won't scare the horse, isn't painful, or too stupid to be believed, from the horse's point of view. Robin has quantified it: 15 minutes. Of course, you or someone else might already have used up some of this time by mishandling the horse beforehand. You may only still have 1/2 a minute of grace left. So, the clock is ticking. If you haven't gone through the necessary steps, and the horse can't accept what you are asking it to do, and it has given you the subtle signals, or maybe not, and you run out of time, the horse decides to take charge himself, and then the trouble begins. I expect we all know this intuitively, and know that it applies equally with teenagers or other wild animals. Robin is good at presenting these things as concepts. I collect quotes from her. One of my favorites (have I already mentioned it here?), after watching someone finally get a horse to do something right, and perhaps a little overpleased with her accomplishment, said, "You have to do it more than once to make it a tradition."
