On Selecting a Mentor II

Those who embrace 45% of natural horsemanship are 100% responsible for the bad name that natural horsemanship sometimes receives. For some, natural horsemanship means that a horse should only do that which it desires and that discipline has no place in horse training. They adhere most strongly to one buzz word--"nonviolence." The problem with their philosophy is that horses are naturally violent. Indeed, much of their interaction and social system is based on power, control, and dominance.

Avoid mentors who place nonviolence ahead of all other teaching concepts. Does she consider a wide range of training aides cruel in every case? Does she believe that a crop, quirt, lounge whip, or spurs are always cruel to use for every single horse?

Just as one must avoid a potential mentor whose answer to every problem is coercion, on must avoid with equal vigor those who believe that coercion is never the answer to any problem. The only violence that is appropriate in training is violence that is not generated by the trainer's anger and is in a form that has meaning to the horse.

In my pasture if a lead horse is bitten by another the lead horse does not go to the barn looking for a stud chain. He does not quickly run off to get a whip. He kicks back, or bites, or charges the offender. I do the same if bitten or kicked at. It takes a tremendous amount of experience to know when it is safe to employ these techniques. It takes no experience at all to insure that the biting and kicking will continue. All the peace loving trainer has to do is step back and explain that what the horse did was natural and therefore should not be responded to.

Such trainers create dangerous horses. While Gandhi and Martin Luther King are perfect roles models for how we should interact with each other, Malcolm X is a more appropriate role model for understanding leadership in the horse world. As he would have put it, sometimes responsible training requires that a dangerous horse be controlled "by any means necessary."

The test is simple. I use no more violence with my herd than my lead horse Comet uses with them. As a result of Comet's consistent insistence on obedience, he rarely uses actual violence. Nor do I.