Grown Ups Mount Up Too

Originally I did not plan to teach kids to ride and I certainly never intended to teach riding to adults. It has been said that I do not teach kids to ride, I simply teach them to have the confidence to ride and I do not disagree. Perhaps more importantly, I teach kids to have the confidence to fall off and get back on. Motivating kids is one of the easiest tasks that I ever taken on. I knew that the same methods that I used to motivate my little riders could never work with adults.

The only thing that has saved me in this regard is that many adults do not need to be given motivation to ride as much as they need to simply be given an opportunity to ride. My first adult rider was barely an adult. At age 21, Rebbecca looked younger than some of my teen riders. She had ridden a bit as a kid, but more importantly, she had years of experience as a gymnast. She was fearless and resolute about learning natural horsemanship. At first she only rode on the regular schedule, but soon began to take a strong interest in training colts and wild horses. Within a few months this young newly wed was coming out to the horse lot before sunrise to break colts before I had to head into the office. As her understanding of horses increased, so did her riding skills. She now is an integral part of every thing we do and has been described as my right hand. I cannot disagree.

One Saturday afternoon I was working a colt in the round pen when a a lady about my age pulled up and asked about riding. Debbie was a soft spoken women who exuded kindness. She began riding with a group of intermediate riders who were all children and pretty quickly moved into the group of more experienced "Hard Riders" who take much more challenging rides on Sunday afternoons. She was working toward a goal that fascinated me. She was planning to take a fall vacation on a working ranch out west where she would really be doing some hard riding. She achieved that goal and continues to impress me with her soft touch with the horses.

Terry was a pleasant surprise. She also is about my age. Terry is a serious athlete and has remained in top physical condition. During her very first session she demonstrated as much skill in the saddle as I expect to find after a rider has been with us for a few months. Terry was my first adult rider to purchase one of my colts. Quien Es? was a bit of a nervous BLM/Chincoteague filly. My little riders and I got her started and Terry quickly put so many miles on the little mare that she became a reliable trail horse. After Terry had been riding for many months her young son became a rider and has done a great job of putting miles on Trade Wind. Her friend Theresa has recently began riding and, like Terry, she is picking it up as if she had been around horses all of her life.

Wendy had an unusual goal when she came to our horse lot. She did not want to ride but she wanted to understand horses. She and I worked with colts and wild horses for several months. Though she had made it clear that she would never want to mount up, within a short while she took her first ride on Nick, our incredibly athletic BLM stock donkey. She now serves on the county equine advisory board which works to promote our local horse industry, owns two donkeys, a haflinger, a Gypsy mare and foal, and a beautiful little mare that she got from me. She has taken to driving more than riding and horses are now a major part of her life.

My adult riders each love horses every bit as much as do my little riders. Nearly all of them have had some exposure to horses at some point in their lives and most had a childhood love of horses, whether or not they owned a horse. JK is unique in that regard. I doubt if she had ever given horses a second thought in all of her young life. JK comes from a different world than I have ever known. She is poised, elegant, and well, glamorous. Her sun glasses cost more than some of my horses did. She is an athlete and had the same wide eyed look that many of the little girls show when they approach my horses. She was drawn to horses from the first time she mounted up. She actually gets giddy on the days we are able to ride. She owns an amazing young Corolla named Sampson. She loves her horse the same way that a ten year old girl loves her horse. A few nights ago we rode even though we were experiencing our first rain in quite a while in this drought stricken area. She has about an hour and a half drive to get home from the horse lot. Still, after the ride she sat in the lot watching the foals eat as darkness fell. JK travels around the world, often spends weekends socializing in New York, yet finds supreme beauty in a dusty pasture filled with mustangs. How can anyone believe that there is not something magical about how horses give our lives meaning?

Several of my riders' parents have become either regular riders or participants on many rides. Liz, Ann, Bill,and Kaye regularly ride with their kids and have each become a vital part of what we do. Soon Lisa will join her children on the trails and I suspect that Judy will be doing the same. The adults in our program are more than just riders. Each understands that we are trying to do something important, both for the kids and for the horses. There is no way that I could hold this operation together without their help. It is a wonderful thing to know that I can count on each of them for assistance any time that it is needed. My coat and tie world is not a pretty world. There is nothing pretty about prosecuting violent criminals, drug dealers and child molesters. Without a doubt, it is a world of pain.
Fortunately, it is not my only world. My adult riders help make the horse lot the place of special refuge that it has become.

To Become Better People

We do not use natural horsemanship only because it gives us better horses. We use natural horsemanship because it makes us better people. Natural horsemanship teaches patience. It teaches gentleness. It teaches lightness. Most importantly, it teaches empathy. The basic principle of natural horsemanship is to simply communicate with the horse in a manner that the horse can understand. We focus on understanding the horse's body language, psychology, and social organization. In short, we seek to understand how the horse feels. They learn something that so few horse people ever learn: that a horse should never be punished for acting like a horse.

It works. Everywhere we go my little riders are complimented not only for their first rate horsemanship, but also for their maturity and compassion. Their parents are the first to notice the improvements in the rider's degree of responsibility in every aspect of their lives. They notice the increase in confidence.

My riders learn the importance of remaining in control of their emotions. They quickly see that demonstrating fear creates fear in the horse. They learn the pointlessness of anger and the destructive nature of retaliation.

These lessons are not learned in conventional "riding lessons" that focus on teaching children how to win ribbons in horse shows. That is one more way that the "established horse world" fails to serve kids and horses.

Manteo

Manteo is in his third year. He was captured because he had to have a stifle release. His leg had been locked out straight for about months before he could be captured. He came to our horse lot December 19, 2006 and was our first Corolla. He was shaggy and only 12.2 hands. Since then he has grown nearly three inches.

He is ridden several hours every weekend and behaves remarkably well on the trial, even when riding with mares who are in heat. This spring and summer several of his foals were born from various non-Corolla mares. His father is one of the more well known wild Corollas, Cyclops,a tall, one eyed stallion.

Yesterday we did a 19 mile ride. Most of the ride was a a trot with a bit of cantering and limited walking. When he took the lead his ears were forward, eyes open and head up. He looked like a horse in a painting of a Conquistador.

Best of all, he looked and acted the same at mile one and mile fifteen. Equally important, his gaits are so smooth that his rider looked no more exhausted than did he.

HOA Annual meeting

The Horse of the Americas Annual Meeting will be held at Rainbows End Farm in Suffolk, Virginia October 10,11. and 12. On Saturday October 11 my little riders and I will be doing a clinic demonstrating how we gentle wild horses and start colts. We also plan to have several Corolla Spanish Mustangs present at the meeting. The meeting is open to the public and there is not charge to attend. One need not own a Colonial Spanish Horse nor be a member of the HOA to attend.

We hope to have several different strains of Spanish Colonials present including the extremely rare Cracker Horses and Marsh Tackies. This will be a great opportunity to meet America's most historic horses along with some of the most dedicated horseman in the nation. For more information see the web site of the Horse of the America's registry.

Too Few Riders

Today's poor horse market has lead many to the conclusion that there simply are too many horses available. Some otherwise decent, though misguided, breeders even call for fewer restriction on horse slaughter. The horse industry cannot bleed itself into a better market. The problem is not that we have too many horses, but instead that we have too few riders. Anyone who really cares about horses, or kids, should support efforts to put more kids on horses.
We need to look at the financial obstacles that reduce horse ownership. Natural horse care not only radically reduces the cost of maintaining horses, it gives us healthier, happier horses. Natural horse care will one day be America's next revolution in horsemanship.
A very small percentage of horse owners are regularly involved in any aspect of the competitive horse world and we should not shape our instructional goals to simply produce ribbon winners. Instead, we need to teach real horsemanship to young riders. They need to understand how to start colts and every other aspect of natural horsemanship. Much effort is put into the futile search for the perfectly safe, bomb proof horse, yet we put no effort into producing bomb proof kids.