What do you do with your horse?
Written by Hiddenhorse on 25/04/2010 – 12:47 pm -This is inevitably the first question that I always get asked by people when they discover that I own horses. Actually I dread it, not because I don’t ‘do’ stuff with my horses, like riding them (this is what they really mean), – I do, but to be honest, riding them is perhaps the least important aspect of what I do with horses and when someone wants to know the answer to that question I always know I am dealing with a ‘mentality’, and it is usually going to be hard work!
Strangely enough I also own a cat but nobody ever asked me what I do with it!
Let me explain why.
Of course, the root cause of this thinking comes from the ‘utility model’, see loads of other posts on this site if you are not sure what that means, but briefly, this thinking comes from the idea that the horse is defined by it’s function and purpose, in other words how it can be useful to us.
This kind of thinking was of course perfectly reasonable 150 years ago when all domestic horses were defined in this way but since the end of the second-world-war the role of the horse has changed and we no longer keep horses to ‘use’ other than leisure and pleasure, which ironically, – usually means riding them. But the reason I keep horses is so much more than this.
You might be aware of a natural horseman called Pat Parelli, now Pat is a great horseman and teacher and just like me, has a love of words and Pat is never afraid to reject a good phrase or slogan, to the extent that the phrase ‘Parelliism’ has now entered the language, anyway here is one of my favorite parelliisms:
It’s way more than Riding!
This sums up how I look at my relationship with horses, riding is only about 2% of the whole thing. I am really much more interested in things like:
- Understanding how horses behave, their psychology, their emotions, their basic nature
- How they ‘work’, for example how their digestive system works,or how their feet can be allowed to function as nature, rather than humans, intended.
- How to help them live longer, healthier and happier lives!
- To truly understand how and why they interact with humans and the implications for both species.
- To try to discover better ways of caring for them, better management systems
- Better diets
- Environments that allow and encourage them to be horses, rather than ‘things’ or possessions.
- Practical environments that are created around the natural behavior of the horse rather than the demands of human beings
- Better ways of training them on the ground, in the saddle and within their environment.
- Better tools and equipment, bitless bridles, treeless saddles, by which, I suppose I mean better communication,
- and so on…..
Well I guess that quite small list is a beginning and certainly covers the idea of being ‘Way more than Riding’.
Of course, the discovery and gathering of this information leads me to a different personal philosophy about horses, it also leads to a desire to change things in the light of new and better understanding. For example, many of the ‘comfortable’ ideas that people hold about horses based on little more than historical superstition and the relentless fulfilment of human pleasure become more and more disturbing and unacceptable, especially as I come to understand more about the emotional reaction of the horse and the consequent suppression of natural behavior that involves.
This is the effect of true learning, it is the personal change that occurs as knowledge expands. There was a time when I knew all about the things that went on in English riding yards but I didn’t really care because they seemed to work, for instance, I ‘knew’ that horses lived in stables, they always had done, hadn’t they? It was obvious, of course. Yet, I saw on a daily basis, highly disturbed behavior, drooling dribbling, aggression even self-harming and I was able to ignore it because I ‘knew’ I was doing the right thing and on a practical note I could still get my pleasures from the riding thing. But now I know differently, horses live in herds not stables.
So forgive me if we ever meet personally, and you ask me that question that I dread so much, I will not answer you but instead I’ll just remind you of the quote and say:
‘You know, it’s way more than riding’.
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