A Little Breather From History: Lloyd's Swampavarious

We have people in our program that can dream. We have people that can create. We have people that can facilitate. And we have a few people who can do all three. Lloyd is one of those people.

Over the weekend Lloyd made a wash tub bass from a metal trash can. The sound quality is shocking. Even more shocking was how quickly Chris figured out how to play it.

It is not an instrument designed for comedic affect. It sounds great and adds a lot to the the music get togethers. Very soon Chris will be joining us on stage.

Saving the Sand Horses: Part 8 The Early Clinics

"You cannot allow children to get in a pen with a wild horse--ever!" That was the advice that I was given by a person a generation older than me who had spent his life around horses.

I did not just want to teach people how to tame and train wild horses. I wanted to teach children how to tame and train wild horses.  I knew it could be done. The simple reality is that throughout history kids had been the colt starters of horses. Sending a horse off to a trainer to be trained  would make no more sense to the people from whom I descended than it would make to send an ear of corn off to be trained to grow.

Over the millennia training horses truly was child's play. Of course, horses had not changed, but over the last thirty years American children, as a result of a crisis in parenting skills, had changed. The modern parenting model defines good parenting as providing every material possession that the child might have a whim for, making sure that your child is never "forced" into doing any work or chore he does not want to do, and most of all, making sure that he stays far from any risk of physical harm.

This model has produced an epidemic of anxiety disorder, depression, and type II diabetes. When a city kid first comes to my horse lot the odds are (though not in every case) that that child is handicapped. They are not in leg braces or wheel chairs but they are trapped by their upbringing that has denied them the exposure to the kind of challenges that result in failures from which lessons are learned or successes from which pride and self esteem are earned.

The irony is that these kids of well to do families are so often what we used to call "underprivileged". They have never been given the privilege of pushing themselves to the limit. They have no idea what their limits are.  I am not surprised that young suburban mothers fall prey to this parenting model. After all, they were raised to define success as rigid adherence to the social whims dictated to them by the People Magazine society in which they were raised. The modern parenting model is expensive.

It serves Corporate America well.

But I am surprised that so many young, educated suburban mothers continue to accept the definitions of good parenting that come out in TV commercial after TV commercial. If more of them would simply stop and ask themselves a few simple questions things could change. If they asked themselves things like, "Am I happier than my grand parents were?".  "Is my husband less of a man than my grandfather was?" " Am I raising a son to be even less of a man than my husband is?"

No, I am not talking about raising little Rambo's--not at all. I am talking about raising kids who will grow up to be kind, gentle, resilient, generous and courageous. And, yes, being courageous matters because in this life it takes guts to be an ethical person. We should not be surprised that our skill in producing cowards leads inevitably towards the production of unethical adults.

Physical courage generally predates moral courage. Those who do not understand that the reason we practice natural horsemanship is not merely to produce better horses, but primarily to produce better people cannot grasp what we do.

But I knew that I could teach little kids, even modern little kids, to tame, train and ride wild horses. I knew because my first and most important partner in the horse lot was my little 9 year old brother Lido.

He was born with cerebral palsy. His right arm was of no use to him and his right leg was short and weak.

He was the first person to mount all of the early wild horses that we trained.

 And as he told so many others over the years "I can do it. you can too."

(This is Lido on Sand Creek, a mustang colt at one of our earlier clinics.)

Saving The Sand Horses Part 7

It struck me this morning that I do not believe that I have ever used the oft spoken phrase "Uh..Uh..it's hard for me to explain..." Things have never been hard for me explain. My explanation might be incorrect but I have always found communication to be both simple and fascinating. All the way thorough college I worked at Jamestown as a costumed historical interpreter, occasionally in the fort, but generally in the Indian village. For years I used the opportunity as a laboratory, constantly observing how tourists responded to different inflections, body language, and themes. Although I am a total failure at small talk,(especially with strangers), I have always found the stage or the podium to be a comfortable place. Public speaking is much less stressful for me than discussing the weather with a stranger at a party.

Of course, my curiosity about communication caused me to drink everything that I could read about natural horsemanship as deeply as I could drink it. My handful of BLM mustangs were the first horses upon which I applied what I was learning . My success was hit or miss. It was so very different from everything that I had learned about horses through 4-H and in my experience training horses as a young teenager.

Eventually breakthroughs occurred. People started coming out to watch as I worked with the horses. Early on I learned the first important lesson of wild horse preservation. The only hope that the wild horse, or the Spanish Mustang, has lies in novices. People who always wanted a horse but never had one were fascinated with my wild horses. To my surprise, people with lifelong horse experience would watch a successful round pen session only to note that the horse lacked balance over all and that its head was too big.

These casual sessions lead to my first clinic on horse taming. That session lead to more clinics. Those clinics lead to parents asking me if I could teach their kids to ride.

And that lead to the development of our program, which now likely has the most diverse group of rare and nearly extinct strains of Colonial Spanish horses in the world.

Before I had Corollas I had little riders, at first only a handful, but a very enthusiastic handful of young kids who wanted to become horses. It was those kids who caused me to obtain our first Corolla.

But we need to talk about those early clinics before I get ahead of myself.

(The picture above is of my Corolla Red Feather, the most athletic and most violent horse with whom I have ever shared a round pen. He is still an athlete but now he is sweet---a bionic Teddy Bear.)

Saving The Sand Horses :Part 6

(Although this is a recycled post it fits in perfectly for the discussion of communication as the core of natural horsemanship. The filly pictured above was produced by our off site breeding program and is now one of the mares at Boys Home in Covington, Virginia.)


In the great documentary "Buck" it is pointed out that those who are able to communicate best with horses are often "tortured souls." Many of the best trainers suffered horrific childhoods of abuse and incessant trauma. It is no mystery why this is true.

The body language of humans is that of the predator. That does not mean that humans move like blood thirsty beasts. It simply means that all predatory species use many of the same signals, even when not engaged in hunting. The body language of a high school cheer leader and a Jack Russel terrier is indistinguishable.

But when a person lives in a state in which terror is the norm, he reverts to using the prey animal body language that was natural for him as a toddler. When he is a helpless child he actually is a prey animal. If he continues to be the subject of terror throughout his childhood he will continue to respond positively to prey animal body language and negatively to predator body language. (Ever met an abused child that enjoyed shaking hands? Of course not, and this is why.)

For such a person, a round pen is a place of peace, a refuge from a world that still constantly signals to his subconscious that it wants to do him harm. In the round pen he can find comfort by providing peace to a terrified colt. It may be the only place on earth where he finds such peace.

I did not suffer an abusive life, but my parents had over 100 foster children while I was at home. The vast majority of them had been abused and lived lives that were waking nightmares. I was always the oldest child. Often one or both of my parents worked night shifts. I had a much larger role in caring for the little ones than occurred in the average family. Without having any idea that it was happening,or even knowing what it was, I began to become fluent in prey animal body language.

For over a decade I have prosecuted all of the molestation cases and crimes against children and mentally retarded adults in the localities in which I have prosecuted. I have given formal training to other prosecutors on how to use correct body language to gain the trust and respect of a terrified child. (Yes, it is exactly what I use in the round pen with a terrified horse--advance and retreat, avoid eye contact, standing shoulder to shoulder, slow breathing, never walking in a straight line, etc)

I am constantly amazed that my riders are so often surprised by what their horses do. How could you not know that he was going to turn to the left and go around that tree? He had been telling you with his body that that was what he wanted to do for at least four steps and asking if it would be ok to do so for another two steps. Even very experienced riders seem to have deaf eyes. My eyes hear everything that the horse tells me.

It flows both ways. I have come to realize that I incorporate much of a horse's world view in my own. I get nervous and a bit edgy when the wind is blowing, even a fairly gentle breeze. I much prefer boredom to excitement. I even find myself chewing softly when I find the perfect word to put in a sentence. Few things make me mad as quickly as having people not get out of my way when I am walking into a crowd. The only thing worse for me than being alone is to be in a herd of strangers.

I have not sought to adopt these characteristics. I have simply recognized their existence. The ironic truth is that, although I am a prosecutor and try many cases every week, I actually spend more time each week communicating with horses than I do communicating with people.

Granted the equine communication is of a much simpler nature, e.g. "come here and stand by me" spoken with the eyes and a shoulder only. Ironically, "come here and stand by me" is one of the most rewarding and important things that one will see/hear in a lifetime, be it a tortured lifetime or not.

Saving the Sand Horses: Part 5

After a set back or two I ended up with a pair of wild BLM mustangs and a very violent 3/4 Appaloosa 1/4 Arabian, modern horse, Comet. My book, " And a Little Child Shall Lead Them: Learning From Wild Horses and Little Children", covers my early attempts, successes and failures at applying natural horsemanship to this group of horses. It is also the point where I came to realize one of the most dfficult aspects of teaching , or even discussing natural horsemanship, vocabulary.

What does one mean when one says "natural horsemanship"?  Unfortunately that depends on why one says "natural horsemanship." Properly understood, natural horsemanship is simply a method of teaching and developing relationships with horses using a mode of communication that the horse naturally understands.  Instead of trying to teach a horse to speak English a serious student of natural horsemanship learns to speak horse.

For those who oppose natural horsemanship they use the term to mean a system of non-training in which the horse is completely spoiled, untrained and dangerous. For others it means a passive, whiny, horsemanship in which the horse is allowed to make all of the decisions.  The human's role seems to simply supply hay and to sit around being ashamed that they are humans instead of being horses.For some hucksters it means teaching whatever will sell the next video or book.

It is none of those thing. Natural horsemanship is simply the only way to truly enter the horse's world. Those who think that the horse's world is a world without conflict or violence, a world in which lions and lambs lay down together and watch you tube videos of kittens playing, will shell out big money to those who will "teach" them what they want to hear.

The first step to understanding natural horsemanship is to understand that the horse is not a human and has nearly nothing in common with our most basic wants and needs.  Thinking of the horse as a four legged human is to completely neglect what a horse truly wants and needs. The second step is to understand that the horse is not a dog. That is hard for us. Most people have experience with dogs before they have experience with horses. A dog is a predator, just like we are. A dog shares many of our wants and needs.

People and dogs both look for autonomy, excitement, a warm, cozy nest and near constant sensory stimulation. Hunters depend on those drives. The hunt is exciting for the hunter, but the hunted feel anything but excitement. A predator can be comfortable in a a snug home. A prey animal can feel nothing but trapped in that same environment.

Instead of autonomy a horse's greatest need is for security. A horse prefers calmness to excitement, company to solitariness, and movement to confinement. It will seem heretical to many but the wild horse's dream is not to be able to run through unconfined spaces for eternity. In fact, he would much prefer to not need to flee from anything for eternity. A wild horse that is not able to experience security because of the humans or other stressors in his environment is not happy--regardless of how wild he is. A wild horse that feels completely secure, which essentially means living in a herd or band, without harassment from predators with adequate forage, is happy. 

How can one measure happiness in a horse? By simple observation--is the horse suffering from stress related health problems? Does he exhibit what have come to be known as "vices", or more properly known as stereotypical behavior? Does he exhibit agitation?

My herd includes many formerly wild horses. My horses live in bands and live off of living forage and hay (with the exception of a few who are given a very low sugar feed to supplement their need for extra calories), most drink from water holes, they never enter a confining stable.

All of these things contribute to their feeling of security which translates into natural health and happiness. Our vet bills for our large herd are less than those for most small barns with only a handful of horses.The established horse world and its partners in agribusiness have created a very expensive, unhealthy, and ultimately cruel regimen for horses to suffer under. There is no group out there more threatened by natural horse care than those two greatest enemies of the horse.

And herein lies the reason that our program as stirred the ire of the established horse world. We raise happier, healthier horses for a fraction of the cost that others spend to produce unhealthy, neurotic horses. Anyone who would spend a week with our herd and follow it with a week observing horses in a typical "full stable board" environment would promptly come to the conclusion that the established horse world has failed in every respect except that it has made a lot of money.

Our horses are clothed in shaggy, muddy or dusty, finery.

As for those who live in the model set out by the established world, their Emperor is naked.