Applying Philosophy To Natural Horsemanship

“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not.” ~ (Epictetus). 

 We are about to begin the training and retraining of nearly a dozen horses and donkeys. It is a very exciting time for our program. It has been several years since I have introduced so many program participants to their first experience of training a horse from being completely unrideable to being a safe trail horse.

 This time we are truly going to begin at the beginning. Before ever stepping into the round pen program participants will be urged to deeply understand Epictetus' principal contribution to the understanding of human endeavors. We will learn to divide the challenges that we face with each horse into those things that are in our control and those things that are not in our control. Things in which we have no control over (e.g. whether a horse has a naturally calm temperament or is super reactive) are things that we will waste absolutely no mental energy over. Things that we have control over (e.g. how we can best calm and train a super reactive horse) will be the entire focus of our work.

 And here is the part that is hard for many people to understand. We will take responsibility for correctly doing the things over which we have control. We will not allow fear to get in the way of doing our job. We will not seek out excuses for dangerous behavior on the part of young horses. We will not seek to find some past event to blame for the horse' difficulty. Such blame leads to an excuse to not train the horse.

 We will learn to not apologize for giving the horse direction and correction. We will learn that whether we choose to be the leader that our horse needs us to be is entirely in our control. We will not pretend that allowing a horse to kick, bite, or run over us, is somehow a virtue. We will not pretend that we are unable to teach a horse that which it must learn because the horse has experienced some imagined abuse in the past.

  We will not allow cowardice to masquerade as compassion. 

We will learn that it is always in our control whether we express anger or frustration. We will learn that we control our actions. We will not seek to find ways to justify ineffective, abusive behavior. 

 We will learn philosophy as we learn natural horsemanship. We will learn the incredibly hard lesson that when it comes to building solid relationships with horses what we can learn from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, is just as important as what we can learn from Brannaman, Anderson, and Dorrence.

The Slow, Steady Work of Promoting Colonial Spanish Horses

After nearly twenty years of working to prevent the extinction of the rarest strains of distinctly American horses one can notice that a pattern of promotional ideas are floated on social media and tend to show back up in a few years as new preservationists become involved in the effort. I am not going to list these ideas because I do not want to create the impression that I am critical of those who make a well meaning effort to preserve and promote these extraordinary horses. 

 Many of the efforts share one thing in common. They look to modern breed horse owners as not only the market, but the only hope for the salvation of the first great horses of America. It is hard to "convert" members of the established horse world and expect them to walk away from that which they have been taught since the first time they purchased boots. They have learned too much fiction for me to be able to replace it with fact. 

 I believe that the hope of these horses is not the current horse owner, but instead is the novice. A novice who dedicates himself hard to learning natural horsemanship for six months will have a much better understanding of the horse's mind than  a  causal horse owner can pick up in six years. 

Tim sits astride Manny, a complicated Choctaw horse who was not comfortable with a rider trying to mount up. Tim turned Manny into a great trail horse and rode over a thousand miles in a year.

Not just any year, He rode over 1000 miles his first year of being a rider. He and his wife Samantha have now acquired land and Choctaw horses for their own conservation program.  

At the close of the day yesterday we had a youth church group come out for an introduction to riding. How many such young people might end up owning a Colonial Spanish horse at some point in their life because they had the opportunity to be one of only a handful of people in this world who have had the privilege of riding a Colonial Spanish horse? Who knows!

But I do know this. Every child that I put on a Colonial Spanish horse has a chance to be this generation's next Bryant Rickman, Vickie Ives, or Stephanie Hayes.  I also know that whatever potential a child might have to grow up and become a significant preservationist will not happen unless someone teaches that child to ride a Colonial Spanish horse. 

Riding For Your Life

It is a two-sided question with but one answer. How can one best insure one's ability to ride deep into our life span? How can we make riding part of something that extends that life span? The answer is to do everything that we can to take care of our health span. 

Riding can be a very important part of extending one's health span. It builds strength, power, endurance and balance. Equally important is the understanding that activities that build strength, power, endurance, and balance make riding easier, more comfortable and much more enjoyable.

 Of course, it is much easier for a horse to carry a fit rider than one whose body is but the wreckage of a sedentary lifestyle. And I am not talking about weight. Regardless of the amount of weight on the horse's back, the ease in which the horse carries the rider depends on the rider's skill, endurance, power, strength and balance.

 Over the past year we have conducted a wide range of free educational programs that are open to the public. In October we will host a session on exercise programs for horse and human designed to extend the years of riding together for both horse and rider. Keep your eyes open for the date.

A Fall And Winter Of Teaching, Learning , and Practicing Natural Horsemanship

There has never been a more exciting time to join our program. We will be training several spectacular horses to saddle, including the stunning Corolla stallion, The Black Drink and Quannah Parker, the son of Croatoan, and a modern Appaloosa mare. Bow season starts in three weeks and during hunting season we will spend a great deal of time learning riding basics and learning to gently and humanely train horses to saddle.

We have room for several more riding students. Our rate is only $160.00 per month per family. There are few experiences more meaningful than learning to communicate with a horse on the horse's terms. Some of these horses will be more challenging to teach than will the others. I hope to have our you tube channel filled with video of people and horses learning together.

We will also be training a donkey to help us remove trees from the woods and we will be expanding our livestock for 2022-2023. We will be teaching and practicing soil and water conservation and will be working on wildlife habitat development. Our music program will be performing more now that the virus is breaking. We have just completed a very successful summer of endurance riding conditioning and conducted an in house endurance event in which many of our riders rode over forty miles and two of our riders came in for the 50th mile. One of those horses was a nearly extinct Caspian and his rider, Kate Patterson, rode him exquisitely.

There are very few educational opportunities like this available to young people.  And we have been doing this for over 15 years. And we have been doing this with no paid staff. Everything that we do is done by volunteers.We are a non-profit breed conservation program located outside Smithfield, Virginia. 

If you would like to join us please send me an email at msindianhorses@aol.com
 

Tweaking Your Riding Experience By Closely Monitoring Speed

When hunting season is not in several of us condition horses with five mile trot rides two mornings a week and we recently added in a 10 mile trot/canter ride on Wednesday mornings .My Garmin watch is worth more to me than are my boots for these training sessions. 

As the horse and rider become better conditioned both should become more relaxed and comfortable with the sessions. I find that the horses that I ride generally begin to move slightly faster at any gait. The Garmin tells me the slight changes that are occurring. the changes are often so subtle that, without an objective measure I would not be able to pick them up. The most significant difference that I found was that while cantering on Janie, a wonderful Colonial Spanish horse of Grand Canyon lineage, at a speed of 9.9 miles per hour my lower abdominals were barely engaged and certainly were not becoming fatigued. However, at a speed of 10.1 miles per hour my lower abdominal muscles were strongly engaged and that gait at that speed was significantly more taxing on my body than when the speed was ever so slightly reduced

. Of course, the watch lets you know exactly how far you have been and at exactly what speeds. These things matter to me not because I regularly complete in endurance events, but because I want to maximize my fitness levels and those of my horses. Few people despise technology as do I, but this is a piece of technology that can actually improve your riding experience.