What Success Looks Like

Staying in one's comfort zone leads to being imprisoned in one's comfort zone. Gram is a bourbon red turkey of significant age. He has no affection for Audrey. Over the years Audrey has avoided him with the greatest of vigor. Audrey has worked hard to find her limits and to push beyond those limits.

 Last month she swam in the James River with me although the water temperature was forty-two degrees. How can holding a turkey or swimming in frigid water make one a better rider? A horse's sense of security depends on several factors and one of the most important factors is the confidence of the rider. Everything that increases one's sense of confidence without promoting fool hardiness makes one a better rider.

And Audrey has become a very good rider.

How Much Is That Horse Worth?

He is worth a lot more to me and Lydia than he is to the established horse world. His father is a formerly wild Banker horse from Shackleford Island and his mother is a formerly wild Banker horse from Corolla. His ancestors came to this part of the planet around 1520, eighty-seven years before John Smith came to Jamestown. 

Had one come to our horse lot in 1635 when my family first came here, one would have found no other horses but these elegantly moving Spanish horses. In the 1920's over five thousand of these horses roamed the Outer Banks of North Carolina. 

Now there are a couple of hundred of these horses left on the Outer Banks.

Only a few dozen Banker horses are trained to ride. It is likely that everyone alive today who has ridden a Banker horse even a thousand miles would fit in my living room. It is likely that everyone alive today who has ridden Banker horses five-thousand miles would fit on my sofa. 

Lydia and I are among the handful of people alive today who have had the privilege of taming, training, and riding these extraordinary horses for hours on end. 

We understand how important it is to preserve these horses for future generations.

 That kid deserves the best that horses have to offer.

The First Step: The Connection

Or maybe not. Perhaps the first step is to understand the mind and motivations of the horse. Perhaps the first step is to truly understand that the horse is not a person and that treating it as if it were human does the horse a tremendous disservice.

Tam understands. Tam builds real connections with horses.

You can too.

Quite Simply The Most Important Program That I Have Ever Developed

Beginning Friday March 18, from 6-7 pm, at the round pen at Mill Swamp Indian Horses, located at 9299 Moonlight Road, Smithfield Va 23430 we will begin another set of our sessions, targeting young people, on how to apply the lessons learned from the horses to life in this world. Psychiatric hospitalizations for young people have skyrocketed in recent years. Anxiety and depression are at higher rates for young people than have ever been measured. Metabolic disorder, diabetes, and a range of other lifestyle related health problems are at all time highs for young people in our nation. 

Young people deserve better. We can do better for them. 

For over twenty years I have prosecuted crimes against children, child molestation and sexual assault crimes. For nearly the same length of time I have been teaching young people to ride, tame and train wild horses and young domestic horses. I have studied the effects of trauma, adverse child hood experiences, and the crippling effect of avoidance behaviors in formal setting and on my own for two decades. For seven years (before the virus) I worked on a weekly basis, (weather permitting) with those who were in the in patient PTSD program at the Hampton VA. 

To put it in its simplest terms, we will learn to become better people. The weekly sessions will focus on increasing confidence, building communication skills, dealing with anxiety, becoming more generous and caring, learning to build a sense of community, and perhaps most importantly, learning to understand ourselves. Eventually we will learn to apply lessons of healthy nutrition and exercise to ourselves as we seek to do with the horses.

 Of course, there is no charge to participate in this program. I hope to see it grow into quite a large group. As we have stressed for years, we practice natural horsemanship not only to make better horses, but to make better people. Everyone in the program from age eight on into young adult is invited to join us.

And those outside of our program are urges to join us. Again, there is no charge to participate. To register please send an email to msindianhorses@aol.com

Come Out And Learn Natural Horsemanship From Our Training Team

Beginning this Wednesday, March 16, 2022 at 6:00 pm Chris Cavin, Animal Welfare Coordinator for Mill Swamp Indian Horses, will begin our first session of the spring program "Our Training Team: Applying Natural Horsemanship to Make Better Horses and Better People." Sessions will continue at this time on Wednesdays, weather permitting though the spring.

The sessions are free and open to the public. Chris and some helpers will be working with different horses in  different stages of their training with an eye toward training using safe, humane methods of communication. Whether one is new to natural horsemanship or has years of experience under one's belt, these sessions will provide a chance to network with other practitioners of natural horsemanship and will even have opportunities for hands on participation in training at times.

Chris has been riding with us and training since he was a young child . His patience and calm, confident demeanor are at the core of his training style. Chris embodies the Mill Swamp Indian Horse philosophy of respect for the horse as a horse.

This is a spectacular opportunity for those who want to learn to understand the mind of the horse.  

...and its free.

Mill Swamp Indian Horses is located at 9299 Moonlight Road, Smithfield, Va 23430. In order to register please send an email to msindianhorses@aol.com