Focus Before Feel

Dorrence's great work, "True Horsemanship Through Feel" has all of the answers. Unfortunately, I have a very difficult time understanding some of his concepts and much of his vocabulary. For the longest time I was baffled by his concept of "feel". I have come to believe that "feel" is exhibited when the horse does what the human wants because the human wants it and for no other motivation. Read Dorrence. Try hard to understand him.

In any event, I do not believe that "feel" can come before "focus." Focus is the intense state of concentration that leads to physical relaxation while allowing the mind to block out other distractions. Focus is what causes me to look at my watch after 15 minutes of training a horse one on one only to discover that I have actually been with him over 2 hours. Focus is what allows me to become surprised when I exit the round pen and notice, for the first time, that a small crowd of people had gathered around the pen to watch us training.

The picture above demonstrates focus. This is not a posed picture. Jacob was mounting Harley for the first time. The intensity of my concentration is matched by Jacob's. Focus is the hardest thing for a kid to learn. It helps for a kid to get tossed a few times because of not focusing. Everyone needs incentives and staying out of the hospital is a good incentive.

Time Looks Over Its Shoulder At Us

For a decade now I have looked so forward to spring so I would be able to train horses in sunlight after work. Time will change in about 10 days and I will be able to do so again. This will also be the first spring in about a decade that I will not have Lido to help me train. Saturday there will be several bluegrass bands putting on a lengthy show in Lido's memory. The HOA Rescue fund is growing with donations honoring Lido. Sunday would be two months since he died. I say "would be" because he died on December 29 and there is no February 29.

But there will be another February 29. It will come back every four years, but Lido won't. Time marches on. Time cheats.

On the Horizon

I am really looking forward to getting our next set of interviews out. Keep an eye out for interesting interviews with Joe Camp, author of "Soul of a Horse," Karen McCalpin of the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, and Stephanie Lockhart on the Baca Conservancy, Choctaws and the Trail of Tears.

We Are Always Here to Help

With so many mustang owners participating in English show events tremendous confusion has reigned as members of the English Horse Show World have been working diligently to come up with some easily observable criteria to distinguish 13.2 mustangs from 17 h Warm bloods. How indeed will the average spectator be able to tell the Holsteiner from the Huesteca?

Toward that end, I offer the following key differences between BLM mustangs and European Warm bloods with the hope that these points of comparison will lessen the confusion that currently plagues the show world of those who wear the little brown britches.

Warm bloods listen to Grand Opera.
My mustangs listen to the Grand Ole' Opry.

Warm Bloods vote a straight Republican ticket, though they claim to be independents.
My mustangs are Democrats, but 12% of them forgot to vote in the last election.

Warm Bloods are generally Episcopalians.
My mustangs are back sliding Pentecostals.

My mustangs are, in reality, large ponies.
Warm Bloods are, in reality, small giraffes.

Warm Bloods are often exhibited in the discipline of dressage.
My mustangs often exhibit no discipline at all.

Warm Bloods have been line bred,and closely bred, by sophisticated breeders.
My mustangs have been in bred, by necessity.

If, after closely examining the horse in question based on the specific criteria set out above, one still cannot determine if it is a Warm Blood or a mustang. A final distinguishing line can be drawn using more traditional measures. For example, if the horse is lame, obese, and carries the sweet, calm disposition of a Thoroughbred, coupled with the speed, and gracefulness of a plow horse, that one is not the mustang.

Sure hope this helps.

To Become Better People

We work to expose kids to the wide range of programs designed to improve the quality of the lives of others. Good horsemanship is its own reward but sharing the fruits of the skill, knowledge, and opportunity that our program provides is a very special reward. Della Stokes is a dedicated humanitarian who follows in the footsteps of her mother Otelis Rainey. Otelia was a role model for anyone who wanted to build a program from scratch to help people. She was an amazing women.
Della is developing a program exposing young people with problems to animals, especially horses. The horses available for her programs are big and younger children can be quite intimidated by them.
For some reason, Bird Women stayed remarkably small. She is a saucy little rascal and is too small for all but the smallest kids to ride.
Danielle is responsible for the fact that Bird Women has learned to be lead so well and take a saddle and little rider on her back. Danielle trained Bird Women with very little direction from me. She did a great job. Without the work that Danielle put into Bird Women she would have been little more than a lawn mower. Now, because of the time and effort that Danielle put into teaching Bird Women, she will not only have a good life, but through Della's program will be able to help many other people to have a better life.
I am very proud of Danielle this morning. I am also proud of Rylee. I can depend on her and I expect that over the next few years I will grow to depend on her more and more. When Della picked up Bird Women yesterday, she also picked up a young jenny named Chihuahua. Rylee had done some preliminary training on the donkey, but she was still quite donkeyfied. I asked Rylee to come out very early yesterday to work intensely with Chihuahua in order to get her leading with the lightest of pressure and to freshen her up on her cues.
I did not know it, but Rylee was planning to have a special morning out with a friend that included a movie and all of the other kind of things that make little nine year olds smile and giggle.
She cancelled those plans. As she explained to her father, "Steve needs my help this morning."
I have one more thing that I am proud of this morning. We did not spend yesterday riding. Instead we had an intense day of work. We transplanted trees, moved fences, cut saplings, moved concrete dust, and deepened water hole obstructions in the amusement park. A few adults helped out but, but the bulk of the work was done by my little riders. One rider brought along a friend who mentioned several times how much fun it was to be working so hard.
Hard work makes for good memories for kids. Yesterday we dug about 35 post holes by hand. The kids participated both in the digging and ramming of the posts. Of course the work would have gone much faster had I rented an auger. But in 15 years when my little riders bring their kids out to the horse lot it would not mean much for them to point out to the fence line and say, "See those posts? I was there when Steve rented an auger to put them in." No, it will mean much more for them to be able to tell their kids how they learned to use a post hole digger.
Perhaps the most important thing that happened yesterday was that my little riders/workers took a seat and listened as Della and I told them a little bit about Otelia and the great things that she did with her life. I want my riders to understand how to make impossible things possible. Most of all, I want my riders to grow up to make impossible things possible.
As said before, the goal of our program is not to generate ribbons in the show ring. It is to become better people.

(In the picture above Danielle stands with Comet. Danielle taught Comet to back through an L shaped alley using only voice cues.)