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RE: Setbacks? Going Backwards To Go Forwards? Tough Love? A Place For Force In A Loving Relationship?
YAAAYYY I found someone posting about working with horses in a manner I agree with!!! How old is your horse now and when you got her? I'll be checking out the rest of your posts on this with much excitement! This experience you are sharing is valuable. Much appreciation for this post <3
Hi @wisewoof, my apologies for taking so long to reply to your lovely comment. Nayyerah is now 5 and we've had her in our lives for a year now. Scarab, our gelding, is about 22. We didn't know him as a colt unfortunately but we have such a wonderful connection with him and we've known him for more than half his life. I'd be very happy to spread the idea of compassionate (what I call existential) horsemanship.
Really, the rewards are beyond description. Being aware of how the horse thinks and feels means you get much more out of them and they're willing to give it too. It's a win win. Our horses are so keen to be around us that it can sometimes be a hindrance in terms of getting vehicles in and out of the paddock, they want to be around us and block us sometimes! A great problem to have, we wouldn't have it any other way. Sometimes we've been potting plants or working outdoors and one of them will come up silently behind and just gently breath on your neck! They've very intimate animals but people seem to think they must only be treated with force.
I'll give you an advanced tip, I'm going to be posting up a video that my wife @beulinator and I just edited together earlier today. We decided to film Nayyerah on her 2nd lunge ever. It's just a short clip but it shows her doing what it took the force described in this post to achieve. There's a short clip of Scarab lunging at the end of it too. I'll hope to have it up in a few hours.
Thanks ever so much for your interest!
Oh no worries, I appreciate your replies! Sorry it's taken me awhile to respond. I feel like part of why working with horses in this manner as well as 'horse therapy' is rewarding is because you are reminded to maintain a state of calm-assertiveness which is beneficial to both human & horse. Haha that is a great problem to have, how lovely! It makes sense they would want to be around those that understand them. Those people that think they need to be treated with force are likely fearful and don't understand much of themselves either. My pleasure! I'm going to check that out now!! ^_^
calm-assertiveness is a great way to put it. When you don't have size on your size, you're forced to find better ways. Thinking the way they do opens up a whole new world. One thing we did is take a ride in our horse float ourselves to listen for all the rattles. you'd be surprised, it was so rattly it scared even me! I spent aged taping and strapping down everything that made a sound until it became very quite to travel in and, surprise surprise, they're happier getting into the float.