I got annoyed with myself after that last essay: ultimately I feel like I am not saying anything that hasn’t already been stated in other natural horsemanship blogs. It sounds too sanitized, too deceptively simple – and we all know that communication with a horse (or any living being) is anything but.
What I could not convey in my last post was how difficult it can be in the beginning to link back what one does in the round yard with a leadrope and a horse, to these concepts. “Changing of the thought” – it sounds so dictatorial – how can it be something that ultimately will make the horse happy? “Putting pressure on” – and there can be quite a lot of pressure put on a horse to change the thought – how does it result in him freely “choosing” the thought that you want him to have?
In the very beginning of studying natural horsemanship, I think it’s a matter of faith in past and present horsemen such as Tom Dorrance and Ray Hunt and Harry and Ross and Marina – that they are on the right track, and that the horses that seem happy and willing to do what they request of them, genuinely are so. Because, in the beginning, it is hard to tell a truly willing horse from one that has learned it’s “job” very, very well. Afterwards, personally, I began to tell when a horse was getting calm after a tough session of full of pressure– and I had to trust that a horse’s nature tells it to look for that calm, and that that calm overrides any resentment at the “pressure”, (if horses even feel such concept)! As a human being, that is something very hard to understand. It’s even harder to understand that that calm is reached because of that pressure and a well-timed release!
Eventually, a long time after hitting my head against these questions, I began to start to feel that line between pressure that annoys and frustrates Becky (because it is applied wrongly or not released), and the pressure that brings Becky’s focus back to me and thereby gives her that “moment of calm” and congruence between what she is thinking and what she is doing and what I am asking of her to do. And I started to see the results – not just in Becky’s behavior with me, but in a change of attitude in her while she was out in the paddock. I know that in the years I’ve been working with her according to these concepts, she became a quieter, calmer, less aggressive, and more confident within herself while out in the paddock with other horses, and while by herself. She also became a lot happier to be around me.
I trust that the concepts I am following are correct. That putting a lot of pressure on to block a very strong and unwanted thought does not necessarily mean putting a horse in a position of an impossible choice - do as I say or else! - but does allow them the space to look for an alternative answer and try it and achieve the calm of finding the release for themselves. But, frankly, it is not something that is easy to understand without feeling it. So, to anyone who is reading this, and who is plagued by those questions, I can say that I understand and I’ve been there, and still sometimes am there. But nowadays, more and more of what Marina tells me to do falls into place within the overall concept, and extends (rather than makes me doubt) my developing feel for what my horse is thinking.
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