When we make it about how a horse feels and how we best prepare their thoughts and emotions for the barrels, canter half-pass, or six-bar, we know we have evolved into a person worthy of the title “horse person”.
There are as many ways to train a horse as there are human languages. Put a horse in an arena and ask two hundred trainers how to work it, and you’ll get two hundred varied responses.
"If you lower their head, you will switch off the flow of adrenalin that causes all this fight or flight behaviour and you'll turn on the flow of endorphins that creates a calmness in the horse."
A few years ago somebody was telling me they were adopting a more spiritual path in their horsemanship and they felt it was helping them. More recently, I heard a criticism directed at me and my work for not being on a spiritual journey.
Why do most show jumpers have to haul on the reins to get their horse to check a stride when approaching a jump? Why do most team-roping horses fidget so much when waiting for the cow to be released?
