Natural horsemanship forum?

[moonlitoaksranch]

I have always wondered about the plethora of NH trainers that are men. Women dominate the world of horses, so why are the most successful natural horsemanship gurus men?

I think I know the answer but no one is going to like it…

Sex appeal. Decent looking men strutting around in tight Wranglers going for that cowboy look. Ask their followers and they will tell you that they are the “real thing” (what ‘thing’ precisely?). Add an Aussie accent and there is even more hype.

I feel bad for the excellent women NH trainers out there who don’t have that cowboy mystique and the tight Wranglers to bring in the clients.

When I look for a NH trainer, I look for a woman trainer. She has to work harder to pay the bills. From my experience, women trainers have an easier touch with horses. I find that I can emulate their techniques more readily. For example, I think Buck has some great skills with a horse, but I can’t throw a rope like he does. Not to say a woman can’t throw a rope, but Buck grew up doing it. I didn’t. The last trainer I worked with didn’t use a lariat either. I adapted her techniques to keep things familiar for the horse. She worked hard for us and helped me out quite a bit. Plus, I didn’t have to buy some super special rope, bridle or bit from her.

[candyappy]

@DawgLady

This is a discussion I really didn’t mean to start. I’m not defending George Morris’ actions AT ALL, but he played a pivotal role in the development of the hunter division as we know it today. That’s all I meant.

If this post is just going to incite people, then let’s just all move on. I’ll go elsewhere on this request. Thanks all for reading this far.

Despite GM’s personal flaws you can’t debate the fact that he is a talented and knowledgable horseman. I don’t know much about any NH trainer except John Lyons. I have used his methods for years and have never been disappointed .

[AndyTheCornbread]

Warwick Schiller is probably the trainer I reference the most when training a horse. Ross Jacobs is another one I use some of his ideas and methods. Pat Puckett for really good advice on working ranch horse related stuff like roping desensitization etc. I like some of Stephen Halfpenny’s stuff. Dan Steers is also somebody I use ideas and methods from. I even use some of Nuno Oliveira’s ideas when working with horses. Depends on the horse and truth be told I had never heard the term “Natural Horsemanship” until maybe two years ago. We always just called it training a horse, or good horsemanship etc. When I see any type of advice that strays into the “sounds like a bunch of new age oobly googly” or “that is rougher on a horse than I care to be” area I simply ignore it. Same goes for blatant commercialism, only when I see that I pretty much tune that person out completely. My philosophy for training horses is that of Bruce Lee when he said “Research your own experience. Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own.”.

[Equkelly]

@Moonlitoaks

I have always wondered about the plethora of NH trainers that are men. Women dominate the world of horses, so why are the most successful natural horsemanship gurus men?

I think I know the answer but no one is going to like it…

Sex appeal. Decent looking men strutting around in tight Wranglers going for that cowboy look. Ask their followers and they will tell you that they are the “real thing” (what ‘thing’ precisely?). Add an Aussie accent and there is even more hype.

I feel bad for the excellent women NH trainers out there who don’t have that cowboy mystique and the tight Wranglers to bring in the clients.

When I look for a NH trainer, I look for a woman trainer. She has to work harder to pay the bills. From my experience, women trainers have an easier touch with horses. I find that I can emulate their techniques more readily. For example, I think Buck has some great skills with a horse, but I can’t throw a rope like he does. Not to say a woman can’t throw a rope, but Buck grew up doing it. I didn’t. The last trainer I worked with didn’t use a lariat either. I adapted her techniques to keep things familiar for the horse. She worked hard for us and helped me out quite a bit. Plus, I didn’t have to buy some super special rope, bridle or bit from her.

I get what you’re saying but in my experience some of the nastiest and abusive natural horsemanship trainers I’ve met have been women. Like I’ve seen things that would make most horse people call animal control immediately. I don’t think one sex is more cruel than the other. Shitty trainers are shitty trainers. The trend I do notice amongst the really really awful trainers (not just NH), is the narcissistic personality. It’s the ones with overblown egos. People like that don’t think or care about how the horse feels about what they’re asking or how they’re asking because narcissists can’t empathize with others… people or horses. They’re always right and anyone who says otherwise is an idiot.

But I agree that the general public, especially some less experienced women, gravitate towards the male natural horsemanship trainers and I think it does have a bit to do with internalized sexism. I don’t think that’s exactly an equestrian specific problem though. I mean we could get into a whole conversation on the psychology of insecure people and why they’re attracted to narcissists. That happens in relationships, in the professional world, politics, you name it.

You are right though that some women trainers have more to overcome. I’m not a trainer but I have a lot of colt starting experience and when I started my 3YO everyone and there mother was wining about how I wouldn’t just send my baby to a cowboy so he could start her correctly for me… One acquaintance I had insisted that I send her to an 18 YO male teenage cowboy. Like why do people automatically assume a teenage boy has more experience than me at colt starting? Because he has a Y chromosome and a cowboy hat? No freaking thank you. My 3YO warmblood that I started myself turned out to be a saint and this acquaintance got her mustang screwed up by that 18 YO “trainer” she scolded me for not hiring. You better believe I’m real smug about it.

[moonlitoaksranch]

Lol! I’m glad you started your colt right. I hope the naysayers give a woman a chance next time.

[Scribbler]

I don’t even use the NH word.

I do groundwork, I do inhand work from my dressage practice, and I do clicker training tricks. It’s important all of this supports the larger goal of riding and that it contributes to a horse that is safe and relaxed to handle on the ground. And also a horse that is intently focused on the handler.

There are some NH things like “disengaging the hind end” and over training a one rein stop and turning to face the handler when the horse halts on a longe that I avoid because they are reinforcing a horse falling on the forehand which is not good for riding.

I don’t see that groundwork as being any more or less natural than the riding unless working a horse at liberty is more natural by definition.

[mvp]

@Equkelly

Just because I’m being critical doesn’t mean I’m being mean. OP clearly didn’t want to have the NH discussion. I was all for it and I have discussed NH in this thread. It sounds like OP just wanted an NH fan club. In my experience on COTH (long time lurker but new account) people come here because we want honest views and different experiences because that’s a lot more educational than a fan club. If you read my posts earlier you’d see that one of my beefs with the NH crowd is how if you’re not a devout follower they don’t want to hear any of it. You either follow NH or you’re an idiot. The irony of OP wanting out of this thread the second the conversation got going proves my point exactly. Nobody here was mean. Nobody called her names. A lot of people came up with honest and fair criticism which of course just doesn’t fly in the NH world. That’s my whole issue. That’s not mean it’s pretty fair if you ask me.

The OP did not do in this thread what you have accused her of doing. That’s all.

[AndyTheCornbread]

@Scribbler

I don’t even use the NH word.

I do groundwork, I do inhand work from my dressage practice, and I do clicker training tricks. It’s important all of this supports the larger goal of riding and that it contributes to a horse that is safe and relaxed to handle on the ground. And also a horse that is intently focused on the handler.

There are some NH things like “disengaging the hind end” and over training a one rein stop and turning to face the handler when the horse halts on a longe that I avoid because they are reinforcing a horse falling on the forehand which is not good for riding.

I don’t see that groundwork as being any more or less natural than the riding unless working a horse at liberty is more natural by definition.

Agreed, I don’t use it either and I feel the same way. Training is for the end goal of riding. When I hear fluffy, fairy, cloud bunny type stuff like “I don’t ever actually ride my horse I just teach it tricks and communicate with it via my own special warm, fuzzy, anthropomorphic, fantasy language” I tune out.

[Equkelly]

@AndyTheCornbread

Agreed, I don’t use it either and I feel the same way. Training is for the end goal of riding. When I hear fluffy, fairy, cloud bunny type stuff like “I don’t ever actually ride my horse I just teach it tricks and communicate with it via my own special warm, fuzzy, anthropomorphic, fantasy language” I tune out.

I don’t think that’s what NH is. Nothing about it seems “warm and fuzzy” to me. I actually think it’s quite harsh and abrasive. That’s why I think the name sucks so much. People just assume because something is “natural” that it’s automatically better. Kind of like people who buy a ton of junk food just because it says “organic” on it. Like just because your Oreos say “organic” doesn’t make it healthy.

Natural horsemanship is about using the horse’s natural instincts to communicate with them like how horses communicate with each other. But horses don’t communicate with each other in a warm and fuzzy way. They pin their ears, the kick each other, they bite each other, they chase each other. They communicate by applying pressure to get the less dominant horse to move away from it and when they don’t get the response they want they apply more pressure.

This is why it’s not my favorite training method. I want my horse to want to do what I ask because they also want that, not because if they don’t there’s going to be all this pressure and kicking and “moving their feet.” The relationship I have with my horse I want to be built off a mutual respect and trust. But with natural horsemanship the relationship you seek is similar to the relationship your horse has with a bossier and more dominant horse. Will that relationship get you what you want? Probably, I’m just not interested in that sort of partnership with my horse.

[PaddockWood]

@DawgLady - Well for sure, horse people have strong opinions about, most EVERYTHING. So expect that in a thread like this.

My question to you is what does NH mean to you? What does it mean you believe in the methods? I’m genuinely curious.

What methods? What have you learned and how would you explain it to someone new to it? Why are you drawn to it? How would you use it with a horse?

My take on it after reading the the Dorrance brothers, Ray Hunt, Buck, Mark Rashid, Warwick and others is it’s about pressure and release and working towards perfecting timing and the release. The greatest gift from Rashid has been the idea of softness and I’ve enjoyed working on that and seeing the response in my horses.

Making the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard. Also the idea of never having anger/violence which I don’t think can be said for many NH trainers.

I spent a week with Frederic Pignon and let me tell you now there’s time spent in horsemanship. He’s a master that holds up to anyone on this planet. And his focus is having the horse be happy and WANT to work with you so it involves play. That really speaks to me.

Then there’s my recent discovery of Mustang Maddy and being introduced to using positive reinforcement as much as possible. A whole new exploration. She’s got it going on in SPADES.

[Equkelly]

@Momateur

Okay, but OP literally said s/he was new to NH and asked for a place to share “successes, challenges, ideas, resources, etc.”. I don’t see why that warrants criticism. I personally like to apply the “THINK” model to feedback (is it True, is it Helpful, is it Inspiring, is it Necessary, is it Kind). My two cents.

She said she thought it would be fun for “those that believe in the methods” to share “successes, challenges, ideas, resources, etc”. I don’t believe in the methods so I’m not going to share any of that. I am going to give my opinion and caution OP because I have a lot of NH experience and I wish I had been more of a skeptic when I was younger and a NH follower. She can take it or leave it. (Spoiler alert: she left it.)

[Chall]

Silly, but what makes me continue to like Warwick is the way he interacts with his cats, hens and dogs just as much as his horses.
Everyone that comes up to him, he stops what he is doing, says hi, complements them and picks up or pets them.
Gives me faith.

My Mom was like that, she always acted like pets in the house were going to be a burden and then I’d hear
a conversation going on in the other room, yup talking to the cat, rabbit, dog.
All animals (and kids)liked her, even the garden skunk, who once tried to walk into the house when the door was open, just checking it out.
Kool skunk, very large white stripe so must have been older.

[mvp]

@Equkelly

She said she thought it would be fun for “those that believe in the methods” to share “successes, challenges, ideas, resources, etc”. I don’t believe in the methods so I’m not going to share any of that. I am going to give my opinion and caution OP because I have a lot of NH experience and I wish I had been more of a skeptic when I was younger and a NH follower. She can take it or leave it. (Spoiler alert: she left it.)

If you think NH categorically sucks and you have no good experiences to share, why not just Scroll On By?

I think many peoples’ synopsis of Natural Horsemanship here are somewhere between incomplete and wrong. And my NH experience (at least the part I did take and which I mentioned here; the bad stuff I saw was not) does not match yours.

A good, or aspiring-to-be-good horseman can sort the wheat from the chaff of any horse training approach. Most horseman, sooner or later, are going to meet a trainer that tells them that they need to put more pressure on a horse. That’s not a problem. What are problems, IMO, are

1. When the human “consumer” of the training philosophy cannot tell just what behavior a horse could make is the magic “open sesame” move that gets the pressure to stop. In other words, if I can’t see how a horse can figure out the puzzle that will earn him peace, then the horse surely can’t figure that out, either. And no one should be pressuring a horse without a very clear philosophy behind htat.

2. If the teacher of the training pedagogy can’t teach well. Riding well, training well and teaching others to either ride or train are three, maybe four, distinctly different things. Not all horse trainers, and not the NH guys who are primarily teaching people to train horses, are equally good teachers.

But their flaws tend to show up precisely because they are trying to teach people who already communicate with horses in some sort of “good enough” way to be better. They want to do something hard where there is no official, widely-held standard of “good horse training,” and they are teaching that to people who already think they know how to think well enough to train a horse. If these folks were Olympic riders and all we ever saw were their performances there, we’d be holding them to an easier standard. (BTW, if the public knew about every horse these elite athletes had hurt along their way to greatness, they might have a different reputation.)

And then, of course, you have the compounded problems of their business model that has the folks trying to offer “distance learning”-- DVDs, books, infrequent weekend clinics-- for a kind of skill and perception, IMO, that can’t be taught very well this way. I think if you took any top flight H/J trainer and asked her to train her MacClay students via video, you would see similar train wrecks. So do NH trainers suck or does their method of delivery suck?

To top if off, you have the people who consume this kind of horse training and then become the representatives of what it does. There’s no cure for that but one: Go watch the students of these guys whose performance or horsemanship you admire. You’d never think that all of jumping, for example, was what you saw in a cross-rail lesson given at a lesson mill barn. Why do that with a different form of horsemanship?

I have lived in a couple of places where you could find NH guys who made up bridle horses. Watching those horses go, I think, gives one a fairer sense of what all this is for and what you can do with NH, or at least the California/Great Basin branch of it. I haven’t gotten to see what NH that comes from ranch riding in Texas or Australia looks like.

But I think most of these unhelpful, dismissive discussions of NH really do amount to better horseman sitting on the rail ragging on a riding lesson full of beginning riders.

[Equkelly]

I’m happy so many people are bringing up Warwick Schiller because he really is great. But he’s not a natural horsemanship trainer. He may ride western and wear a cowboy hat and have an Australian accent but he’s said himself he doesn’t consider himself to be a natural horsemanship trainer. If you’ve studied NH and you’ve studied Warwick’s stuff, especially his new stuff, they are very VERY different approaches. There many be some overlap in certain techniques but if you’re going by the actual definition of “natural horsemanship”, the he doesn’t fit the bill. Which for the record, is a good thing IMO

Same with Mark Rashid. He has a chapter in one of his books… I think “Horses never Lie” where he talks about natural horsemanship and why he doesn’t agree with that mindset. He tells a story about watching a natural horsemanship clinic when he was younger and why he was not impressed with the clinician.

I’m learning a lot by reading these comments about people’s perceptions of what NH actually is.

[Equkelly]

@mvp

If you think NH categorically sucks and you have no good experiences to share, why not just Scroll On By?

I think many peoples’ synopsis of Natural Horsemanship here are somewhere between incomplete and wrong. And my NH experience (at least the part I did take and which I mentioned here; the bad stuff I saw was not) does not match yours.

A good, or aspiring-to-be-good horseman can sort the wheat from the chaff of any horse training approach. Most horseman, sooner or later, are going to meet a trainer that tells them that they need to put more pressure on a horse. That’s not a problem. What are problems, IMO, are

1. When the human “consumer” of the training philosophy cannot tell just what behavior a horse could make is the magic “open sesame” move that gets the pressure to stop. In other words, if I can’t see how a horse can figure out the puzzle that will earn him peace, then the horse surely can’t figure that out, either. And no one should be pressuring a horse without a very clear philosophy behind htat.

2. If the teacher of the training pedagogy can’t teach well. Riding well, training well and teaching others to either ride or train are three, maybe four, distinctly different things. Not all horse trainers, and not the NH guys who are primarily teaching people to train horses, are equally good teachers.

But their flaws tend to show up precisely because they are trying to teach people who already communicate with horses in some sort of “good enough” way to be better. They want to do something hard where there is no official, widely-held standard of “good horse training,” and they are teaching that to people who already think they know how to think well enough to train a horse. If these folks were Olympic riders and all we ever saw were their performances there, we’d be holding them to an easier standard. (BTW, if the public knew about every horse these elite athletes had hurt along their way to greatness, they might have a different reputation.)

And then, of course, you have the compounded problems of their business model that has the folks trying to offer “distance learning”-- DVDs, books, infrequent weekend clinics-- for a kind of skill and perception, IMO, that can’t be taught very well this way. I think if you took any top flight H/J trainer and asked her to train her MacClay students via video, you would see similar train wrecks. So do NH trainers suck or does their method of delivery suck?

To top if off, you have the people who consume this kind of horse training and then become the representatives of what it does. There’s no cure for that but one: Go watch the students of these guys whose performance or horsemanship you admire. You’d never think that all of jumping, for example, was what you saw in a cross-rail lesson given at a lesson mill barn. Why do that with a different form of horsemanship?

I have lived in a couple of places where you could find NH guys who made up bridle horses. Watching those horses go, I think, gives one a fairer sense of what all this is for and what you can do with NH, or at least the California/Great Basin branch of it. I haven’t gotten to see what NH that comes from ranch riding in Texas or Australia looks like.

But I think most of these unhelpful, dismissive discussions of NH really do amount to better horseman sitting on the rail ragging on a riding lesson full of beginning riders.

Ive said that there’s parts of natural horsemanship that I still use today in my training. I’ve said that it does work most of the time. How is that being dismissive? I mean you’re acting like we all bullied OP out of here. Since when is it not ok to give fair criticism on a controversial topic if you’re really experienced in that area.

Also if you want to get technical, OP did ask that “followers of NH” to give “experiences, ideas, and obstacles” so I don’t see how it’s so out of line, that myself, a former follower, would talk about my ideas and experiences. I think that’s totally fair. It may not be what OP wanted to hear, but I think it’s still important to say. As a long time lurker here for years, I would often go back and read old threads about subjects I wanted to get people’s opinions and experiences with. If I want information, I’ll obviously go to a reputable source but sometimes I’m genuinely curious to read about what COTH people’s experiences or opinions are about a topic. That’s why I think that just because OP started the thread, and that she personally didn’t find my experiences or opinion super helpful, doesn’t really matter. Maybe someone else might that comes across this thread later on.

If you took a break from your finger pointing and read the rest of the posts, you’d see it actually turned into a pretty decent discussion. I wouldn’t write it off as “bashing NH”.

[mvp]

@Equkelly

Ive said that there’s parts of natural horsemanship that I still use today in my training. I’ve said that it does work most of the time. How is that being dismissive? I mean you’re acting like we all bullied OP out of here. Since when is it not ok to give fair criticism on a controversial topic if you’re really experienced in that area.

Also if you want to get technical, OP did ask that “followers of NH” to give “experiences, ideas, and obstacles” so I don’t see how it’s so out of line, that myself, a former follower, would talk about my ideas and experiences. I think that’s totally fair. It may not be what OP wanted to hear, but I think it’s still important to say. As a long time lurker here for years, I would often go back and read old threads about subjects I wanted to get people’s opinions and experiences with. If I want information, I’ll obviously go to a reputable source but sometimes I’m genuinely curious to read about what COTH people’s experiences or opinions are about a topic. That’s why I think that just because OP started the thread, and that she personally didn’t find my experiences or opinion super helpful, doesn’t really matter. Maybe someone else might that comes across this thread later on.

If you took a break from your finger pointing and read the rest of the posts, you’d see it actually turned into a pretty decent discussion. I wouldn’t write it off as “bashing NH”.

You quote the whole of my post and don’t bother to engage with the substance of my post At All? Too bad.

I’m out and leave you mistress of the field.

The rest of y’all, I hope you are getting good things out of this thread. There are good ideas, and good criticisms, to consider. Just always, always, always consider your source: if someone doesn’t have what you want, it’s not worth asking how they got it.

[Bluey]

People need to understand what NH was initially, decades ago.

NH came to be in a western world of mostly self taught horsemanship, riding by the seat of your pants, mostly jerk and kick, with little to non-existing technical knowledge at all about horse’s more technical performance as we have today.

In that world, those early NH trainers, little they themselves knew, they were trying to show that little they knew and help others do better than just wing it on their horses.

In that context, they were to be lauded, followed, given opportunities to do just that, try to educate for better horse training.
Some of what they taught was rough around the edges, but if you knew more, you would give them a pass because they were still way better than what was going on in the general horse world here.
You were hoping they would learn more, which they did, some, others, not so much.

That was before the real information age, where knowledge took a huge jump, information right out there, not easy to pass for being the master when you really didn’t know much.
Some decided to market themselves as alternatives, rather than become better in the mainstream of more sensible horsemanship as it was advancing with the new knowledge.
Others finally decided, as every really good horseman does, they better never quit learning, it takes a whole life to know a little, there is so, so much more out there than any one can ever know.
No need to give names, I assume?

So, you have now a new crop of trainers, still no one is perfect, but they should be better than any before and keep getting better, if they are really good.

In the end, the really good horsemen have always been with us, if they knew more or less, some just had a way with horses anyone can appreciate.
Those stand out, are not many, but if you are lucky to be around and learn from one, appreciate them, thank them, help them help others and horses out there, no matter what label they work under.

The OP seems to be a beginner, maybe not to horses, but to learning about horses.
Wish her well in her path, that will be her own.

[Guilherme]

@Bluey

People need to understand what NH was initially, decades ago.

NH came to be in a western world of mostly self taught horsemanship, riding by the seat of your pants, mostly jerk and kick, with little to non-existing technical knowledge at all about horse’s more technical performance as we have today.

In that world, those early NH trainers, little they themselves knew, they were trying to show that little they knew and help others do better than just wing it on their horses.

In that context, they were to be lauded, followed, given opportunities to do just that, try to educate for better horse training.
Some of what they taught was rough around the edges, but if you knew more, you would give them a pass because they were still way better than what was going on in the general horse world here.
You were hoping they would learn more, which they did, some, others, not so much.

That was before the real information age, where knowledge took a huge jump, information right out there, not easy to pass for being the master when you really didn’t know much.
Some decided to market themselves as alternatives, rather than become better in the mainstream of more sensible horsemanship as it was advancing with the new knowledge.
Others finally decided, as every really good horseman does, they better never quit learning, it takes a whole life to know a little, there is so, so much more out there than any one can ever know.
No need to give names, I assume?

So, you have now a new crop of trainers, still no one is perfect, but they should be better than any before and keep getting better, if they are really good.

In the end, the really good horsemen have always been with us, if they knew more or less, some just had a way with horses anyone can appreciate.
Those stand out, are not many, but if you are lucky to be around and learn from one, appreciate them, thank them, help them help others and horses out there, no matter what label they work under.

The OP seems to be a beginner, maybe not to horses, but to learning about horses.
Wish her well in her path, that will be her own.

The above is very well said.

It’s not just the Western disciplines that followed this path. It showed up in the gaited world as well.

One thing not appreciated by the modern horse world is that in era of the '20s through the early 60s (the era frequently cited by NH proponents as a time of great cruelty and ignorance) a large number of Names in the training world came from the various horse cavalries of the world. The military horseman was a very practical rider who had a job to do and horse to do it on. Those folks are all gone today (with maybe a handful of survivors still around). In some places that knowledge is preserved and extended. In some places it’s deeply mis-taught. But the books, videos, and other writings of the like of Littauer, Henry, Caprilli, Podhajsky, and others are there for a riders consideration. So are the various manuals that governed horse care, instruction, etc. Some of this information is dated and over written by new veterinary or other practices. But a HUGE amount is still relevant to the rider who is not committed to a specific discipline but rather is interested in just being and efficient rider who want to be safe in their own person and humane to their horse.

If NH were old wine in new bottles there would not be much to say. But SO much of it is new wine in old bottles and, as such, is just a way to perform a “walletectomy” on the unsuspecting.

G.

[Bluey]

@Guilherme

The above is very well said.

It’s not just the Western disciplines that followed this path. It showed up in the gaited world as well.

One thing not appreciated by the modern horse world is that in era of the '20s through the early 60s (the era frequently cited by NH proponents as a time of great cruelty and ignorance) a large number of Names in the training world came from the various horse cavalries of the world. The military horseman was a very practical rider who had a job to do and horse to do it on. Those folks are all gone today (with maybe a handful of survivors still around). In some places that knowledge is preserved and extended. In some places it’s deeply mis-taught. But the books, videos, and other writings of the like of Littauer, Henry, Caprilli, Podhajsky, and others are there for a riders consideration. So are the various manuals that governed horse care, instruction, etc. Some of this information is dated and over written by new veterinary or other practices. But a HUGE amount is still relevant to the rider who is not committed to a specific discipline but rather is interested in just being and efficient rider who want to be safe in their own person and humane to their horse.

If NH were old wine in new bottles there would not be much to say. But SO much of it is new wine in old bottles and, as such, is just a way to perform a “walletectomy” on the unsuspecting.

G.

You are very right, it seems that living with and taking care of your horses for a living, as cavalry did, all their lives, gives you if you are a good person an intense sense of obligation to do well for your horses first in life.

My first instructor was a retired cavalry officer and he had a fine sense of humor, unless it came to horses and how we relate to them.
Then he became deathly serious about doing the right thing.
Once one of our main kid school horses had the weekend off after a busy week of lessons.
The owner of the riding center was coming to take his family and friends and guests out in one of our trail rides.
He requested, as his kid asked for, that one horse.
The instructor told him no, that horse has a deserved rest this weekend.
Take this other horse, is just as good for your kid.
The owner had a fit, the kid wanted that horse and that was THE one they were taking.
The instructor just stared at him thru it.
The owner finally shut down and said, but the other horse is not grey!
Must have felt a little sheepish after saying that.
He then said the bay horse would be fine.
The owner really was a fine horseman, just had a bad moment there.

I was maybe 13 and that made an impression on naive me.
The instructor, always so polite and accommodating, not budging about the horse’s well earned comfort, as is right in his world to do.

[Guilherme]

@Bluey

You are very right, it seems that living with and taking care of your horses for a living, as cavalry did, all their lives, gives you if you are a good person an intense sense of obligation to do well for your horses first in life.

My first instructor was a retired cavalry officer and he had a fine sense of humor, unless it came to horses and how we relate to them.
Then he became deathly serious about doing the right thing.
Once one of our main kid school horses had the weekend off after a busy week of lessons.
The owner of the riding center was coming to take his family and friends and guests out in one of our trail rides.
He requested, as his kid asked for, that one horse.
The instructor told him no, that horse has a deserved rest this weekend.
Take this other horse, is just as good for your kid.
The owner had a fit, the kid wanted that horse and that was THE one they were taking.
The instructor just stared at him thru it.
The owner finally shut down and said, but the other horse is not grey!
Must have felt a little sheepish after saying that.
He then said the bay horse would be fine.
The owner really was a fine horseman, just had a bad moment there.

I was maybe 13 and that made an impression on naive me.
The instructor, always so polite and accommodating, not budging about the horse’s well earned comfort, as is right in his world to do.

Maybe not “natural horsemanship” but absolutely QUALITY HORSEMANSHIP!!!

G.