After much thought and discussions with others, I am feeling like a problem with the Natural Horsemanship movement is that people see SOOO much stuff out of context. With the wide variety of trainers, methods, clinicians and disciplines around, it is very easy to acquire knowledge and ideas.
For example, a person may watch a clip about 'join up' or 'hooking on' and then go out with the ideas and subject their horses to it. They may do this with no understanding of the horse psychology behind that concept, no concept of the steps that may be involved before that point and what do do at the end- eg was it successful, if not….what next?
As many horsemen say, and I will quote Buck Brannaman, "everything you do with a horse ought to be a dance". There is often nothing elegant about the mosh pit that occurs when people take one idea in isolation and 'do it' to their horse.
Now I by no means exclude myself here. You do not know what you do not know and I am very much a ‘why’ person. I make it my business to learn as much as I can and try to work with my horses in a holistic* way- encompassing what the horse needs at the time, with my practical experience and theoretical knowledge.
So next time you are with your horses consider this idea. Through conversations I have with the people I teach, I often find their reasoning is not grounded in the fact of what the horse needs, rather something they saw (with no background knowledge or understanding) or were told to do. By all means experiment, that is often when the best learning happens, but do not become straight line thinking in your ideas. If something is not working, do not get mad or upset; just simply ask why. Or if you were Linda Parelli or a student of, you would say, “hmmmm, how interesting!”
*Holistic: analysing a whole system of beliefs and/or considering all factors when with a horse.
No comments:
Post a Comment