Kumbaya Is Not A Song For a Revolution

People new to our program are often struck by the beauty of our horses, how much happier and healthier they are for being given the opportunity to live as close to a natural state as possible, and how easy it is to train gentle, happy horses. They are often shocked to see children riding extraordinary distances while learning to safely control their horses. (During the first 10 months of 2019 the cumulative recorded miles that horses in our program were ridden is further than from Norfolk to San Francisco).

As they learn more about the program and see how the weekly sessions for veterans with PTSD are changing lives they begin to truly understand what we are doing. When they understand how hard we work to preserve, breed and promote some of the nations rarest strains of historic American horses they start to realize that they have stumbled into something special. Learning about our programing with Teen Challenge helps them understand what even limited exposure to the horses can do to help put young people on an entirely new path.

Perhaps the third biggest surprise that they find is when they watch children learning to work together on major soil and water conservation projects and listen as kids as young as ten years old explain regenerative farming.

The second biggest surprise is when they come to understand that all of this work is done by volunteers and that no one is paid to lead this program.

And for many the biggest surprise comes when they first hear attacks made against our program by adherents to the edicts of the established horse world. Some of these attacks come from simple misinformation. The more deeply rooted invectives come not from those who misunderstand the purpose of our program, but instead from those who understand it very well.

They understand that the values and principles that drive our program are antithetical to an established order in which horses are simply items of commerce. They understand, and deeply resent, our lack of willingness to seek their approval and permission to work to promote a new model of  horse/human relationships.

The best hope for horses (and people) lies not in the edicts of the commercial horse world. It lies in the potential for those with no experience in that world to be given a chance to enter the horse's natural world.

And that is a revolutionary idea.

First You Learn To Not Fear It. Then You learn to Love it. Then You Learn To Do It.

I got my first pony when I was two and he was one. When I was three I rode him in the Christmas parade. Emily Marble once told me that I do not teach kids to ride. What I do is to inspire them to ride.

Daddy put it differently, but was equally correct. He once said that I do not teach kids to ride because everyone is born knowing how to ride. He said that what I do is to give them the confidence to go ahead and do it.

That is why kids at the horse lot begin their exposure to horses when they are very young. That is why kids in our music program begin their exposure to being on stage when they are very young.

This is a picture taken between sets of a performance last night.. One little girl that she "wanted to be in the show." In short order I had a collection of little ones around me learning the chorus to "Will You Miss Me?" and "I'll Fly Away."

And that is how we begin to learn to play music. And that is how we begin to learn to ride horses. And that is how we begin to learn how to clear land. And that is how we begin to learn how to sow pastures.

And that is how we begin to learn to work together.

And that is how we do things at Mill Swamp Indian Horses.

The Importance of The Very Strong Lecture

Success deserves more recognition than does failure.

Too often we only become serious with kids when they exhibit negative behavior. Positive behavior is too often rewarded with insincere, childish sounding praise.

It need not be that way.

Which is the most memorable for a seven year old--"Your leg cues are getting better!!" or "Come over here girl. I watched every time you turned that horse. You focused on where you wanted the horse to go and then you used your leg to push 700 pounds of horse before you ever pulled on the rein and the horse loved that! Your leg spoke and his body listened! You rode that horse like he deserves to be ridden! Every ride you are getting better and one  day you will be teaching other kids to ride with the same kind of confidence that you are showing."?

Gruff, effusive, sincere praise is a tool that is too often left in the tool box. Pull it out and use it and watch how much better kids respond.

Learn From My Mistakes

I did a foolish thing at a recent session with a large audience of young people. The topic was emotional and intense. I used by body and my voice to give the topic the emphasis that it deserved. I dropped from a boom to a whisper. I moved suddenly, froze and changed from a moving cadence to an eerie monotone.

In short, I did everything that I do to draw an audience into becoming participants instead of mere observers.

I was talking about weakness, power, intimidation, and strength ...and ultimately pain. As I scanned the audience I noticed that several of the young people did not seem to be listening. Instinctively, I turned up the force of what I was saying.

Those who appeared to not be listening were not talking to each other or playing with phones, they simply were not looking up and focusing on what I was saying.

A few hours afterwards I realized how absurd my fear was that they were not paying attention. The topic at hand was something that very well may have touched some of them, their families or their friends.

And who should know better than me that those who have experienced severe trauma often adopt prey animal body language and cues even without knowing that they were doing so? Many of these young people could have looked at me or they could have listened, but they could not do both.

So when the teaching involves pain--the pain of suicide, sexual abuse, addiction, incarceration, physical abuse, or any other form of human suffering, focus on your message and not on the audience's reaction.

They might not be bored. They may be burning up so much inside that the additional pressure of looking up as they listen is simply too much to bear.

Trauma Informed Horsemanship: The Next Big Leap

Do you know what an ACE score is? You need to know and understand ACE if you care about the people around you.

Check out this important website. Read it deeply and often: https://acestoohigh.com/aces-101/ . I have spent years learning about and experiencing the impact of trauma, vicarious or direct, in my career as a juvenile court prosecutor  who handles primarily cases of crimes against children, family violence and sexual assault.

Every riding instructor should be trauma informed and every riding program should constantly review its practices to insure that their program is trauma informed. A trauma informed riding instructor is constantly on the look out to understand how past experiences shape the behaviour of their students. A trauma informed riding program replaces competitiveness, bullying, cliquishness, and judgemental behavior with inclusion, acceptance and healing.

Few things get in the way of understanding others as much as being judgemental. Nothing gets in the way of that understanding as much as being judgemental without having any understanding  of what shaped the subject of that judgment.

As it has been aptly put, the question must be, "What happened to you?" instead of "What is wrong with you?" Without doing so, one goes through life judging those around them only through the narrow prism of one's own life experiences.

It is all to easy to say, "I would never behave like he does" without recognizing that had you been abused as he was your behavior would likely mirror his. It is all to easy to say "That was years ago. She has to just get over it", while doing nothing to help her "get over it." It is all to easy to avoid contact with a difficult person instead of seeking understanding.

Trauma informed living is merely an exercise in advanced empathy. And one must work to learn how to have advanced empathy.

Some might think that while all of that is fine, their program teaches how to compete in hunter-jumper events and is not a program to deal with complex social problems. That is simply too bad. You have no choice. The problem is there. You can choose to ignore it but you cannot opt out of your responsibility to others.

Ultimately, every single youth group, Scout troop, Little League team, or dance class, is also a suicide prevention program. One might night like hearing that fact, but that makes it no less true. One can not opt out of being a suicide prevention program. One can only decide to work to be a program that makes the suicide of kids in the program more or less likely.

When I was little we had a boy in class who was much bigger than most of us. Aside from being naturally tall and strong, he had also failed a few years and was older than the rest of us. He was a bully and one day three of us were talking about his behavior on the playground. We agreed to discuss that matter with our parents that night so that someone would make him behave better.

The next day my two friends proudly announced that their mothers were going to meet with the principle right away to make sure that he was punished.

I was embarrassed at Momma's reaction. I did not want to tell them what she told me.

She said that maybe the reason "Jimmy" was so mean on that day was because it was a Monday and that Jimmy's daddy drank real bad and got mean and beat his family on a lot of weekends. She said that Jimmy did not have friends that understood how things were and that the best thing would be for me to be his friend and make sure that he had someone to play with at recess.

My friend's mothers could not see the problem through Jimmy's eyes. My Momma could. Although he was a good a person as one would ever find when sober, when her Daddy got drunk he had been violent to the point that my great uncle once had to pull a gun off of him that he was threatening his young daughter with.

So kids in our program sometimes "act out." So adults in our program do too. We could simply expel everyone who does not wear a fake, sunny facade of happiness all the time. We could get rid of "problem" kids and adults. We would then be left with a program of people who smile at each other incessantly.

We could all laugh and play at recess. But a church that works more on excommunication than on evangelizing is an institution on its way to collapse.