I was just standing there at a BLM mustang sale. I was not wearing a shirt that said "Representatives of the Established Horse World Please Come and Engage Me In Conversation!" But the shriveled faced, Ebenezer Scrooge looking old man beside me seemed intent on conversing with me. I did nothing but occasionally grunt and nod. He continued to explain everything that he knew about horses and their "value" and who could be trained. He found all of the mustangs there "worthless" and completely untrainable.
What he lacked in knowledge was greatly exceeded by his firm belief in the infallibility of his doctrine. The women with him felt the need to step in and shore up his credentials.(Maybe she could see that I was not sufficiently impressed with his self reported expertise.)
She said, "You have to understand, he has been raising show horses all of his life." I did not doubt that one bit.
I continued to nod and grunt planning to wait him out. I have seen many such people and I have always found that if I did not scrape and bow sufficiently to satisfy them they would leave me in my ignorance.
After about the tenth time of hearing him say "You can't train these horses." I let him know that I agreed.
"Your right. You are absolutely right. I have no doubt that you can't train these horses.", I told him as I finally walked off.
He seemed please that I finally agreed with him. He was likely even worse at picking up the subtleties of equine body language as he was in hearing what people were plainly saying to him.
Suppose he were told that we were going to take a fifteen year old stallion who had never been ridden and match him up with a women who had never trained a horse and our plan was for her to train the old stallion and take him out in the woods on his first day of being ridden outside the round pen, (and his second day of ever being ridden)...oh, oh, oh...and lets ride him through deep mud down beside a a long fence line with about fifteen mares, and some of them in heat, inside that fence line...oh, oh,oh...and lets ride him through brush likely to tickle his legs and belly, and lets do it all with a tornado watch on and winds of thirty miles an hour.
Surely the old man would would point out the impossibility of such a course of action. In fact, he would probably say that this picture of Kelly as she is returning from exactly that ride, on exactly that horse, under exactly those circumstances was faked.
That is why it is so much better to work with people like Kelly than to try to convince the established horse world of anything.
Those people just can't be trained.
(This picture is from yesterday. Kelly returning on El Rosio, a fifteen year old Baca stallion, that she has trained. I am glad that she did not know that this was impossible and could never, ever be done....even by "an experienced, professional horse trainer with years of experience in the show ring who has earned the respect of the entire established horse world.")
2 comments:
excellent... one of your best ones blogs.
After El Rosio and he had been on the farm for a bit and was first being trained, i was SHOCKED to find out he was 15 years old! with how good he was doing, I honestly thought he was a youngster.
Shows how much LOVE and CARING works! AS you say, only 51% control, the rest is letting the horse know he is trusted and loved. Carrie
I recall a story that Steve told awhile back, about an opposing attorney, and his WWE style smackdown prior to the case..and all I could think was, "Who is he trying to convince, you or himself."
It is said that "A horse is a horse of course," and while there is a certain amount of truth there, They all speak the same language, and they are all shaped similarly, but the wild horse is a different animal..one who has had to fend for himself, understands predator pressure, and hunger in a way that the domestic horse rarely ever does, the domestic horse, by and large is babies outrageously, penned up tight, overfed and taught to do tricks..yeah, they are different animals. Untrainable? I think not. We prove that down here in the Swamp every week...and we don't do it with tough, grizzled old tubercular, chain, smoking cowboys...we do it largely with tough, confident little cowgirls who make those tough old cowboys look pretty pale in a certain light. I think everybody down in the Swamp is awfully proud of that. I know I am..Kelly and El Rosio, Abigail and Rico (Good hard ride on him yesterday..he only got a little sideways once and she snatched him to a halt and collected him like a pro.) Krysta an Katalina (good job relaxing her yesterday Krysta) Hailey and Kiowa (a good example, as Kiowa is one of those high strung BLMs..different, but certainly not untrainable) And Lydia, Jen, Samantha..and every horse they get near..they leave them calmer and better trained..
Yeah.."You can't do that" is one of my favorite phrases...With horses the answer out here is usually "Hush and watch her, yer breaking her concentration."
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