First Things First

Margaret Matray's article in last Sunday's Virginian Pilot has been spread via social media all over the internet. I am delighted that this has happened. She is a first rate writer and she put a tremendous amount of work into the story. Ashley is an amazing young women and nothing makes me happier than to have her in our program.

I hope that the central message that is take from the article is that what we do can be replicated anywhere by people who care about horses and kids. For a program to have meaning it must be based in natural horsemanship. For a program to be affordable and for the horses to reach their potential for health and happiness it must also be based in natural horse care.

I doubt if I will ever do anything in my life more important than to work with others to establish either off site Corolla breeding programs to prevent the extinction of the Corolla horses or to establish riding and training programs like ours to give meaning to the lives of all participants, human or equine, teacher or student, young or old.

If you want advice on how to get a program like ours started contact me.

(Here is Ashley and Red Fox, my niece's 1/2 Corolla colt. Don't you want to be able to have pictures like this taken in your pasture, or the pasture you could rent in your area?)

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Tougher Than A Junkyard Dog

An old post about a good dog--Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Tougher Than A Junkyard Dog: Here is Lydia, the person, with her namesake, Lydia, the dog. A week ago we did our most recent fifty mile in a day ride. Lydia dog is n...

Quick Tip # 81 Know When To Walk And When To Run

When well meaning friends and family try to tell you that your new found love of horses is dangerous and you should go back to yoga class instead, nod politely and walk away.

When self appointed experts from the established horse world who have won slews of ribbons, earned great honors, and know how to pick out worthless horses, (because they have sold scores of horses that "just could not cut it") comes to offer you advice on how to best participate in the equine experience...

Run like your butt is on fire!

"Those Horses Can Never Be Trained..."

I was just standing there at a BLM mustang sale. I was not wearing a shirt that said "Representatives of the Established Horse World Please Come and Engage Me In Conversation!" But the shriveled faced, Ebenezer Scrooge looking old man beside me seemed intent on conversing with me. I did nothing but occasionally grunt and nod. He continued to explain everything that he knew about horses and their "value" and who could be trained. He found all of the mustangs there "worthless" and completely untrainable.

What he lacked in knowledge was greatly exceeded by his firm belief in the infallibility of his doctrine. The women with him felt the need to step in and shore up his credentials.(Maybe she could see that I was not sufficiently impressed with his self reported expertise.)

She said, "You have to understand, he has been raising show horses all of his life." I did not doubt that one bit.

 I continued to nod and grunt planning to wait him out. I have seen many such people and I have always found that if I did not scrape and bow sufficiently to satisfy them they would leave me in my ignorance.

After about the tenth time of hearing him say "You can't train these horses." I let him know that I agreed.

"Your right. You are absolutely right. I have no doubt that you can't train these horses.", I told him as I finally walked off.

He seemed please that I finally agreed with him. He was likely even worse at picking up the subtleties of equine body language as he was in hearing what people were plainly saying to him.

Suppose he were told that we were going to take a fifteen year old stallion who had never been ridden and match him up with a women who had never trained a horse and our plan was for her to train the old stallion and take him out in the woods on his first day of being ridden outside the round pen, (and his second day of ever being ridden)...oh, oh, oh...and lets ride him through deep mud down beside a a long fence line with about fifteen mares, and some of them in heat, inside that fence line...oh, oh,oh...and lets ride him through brush likely to tickle his legs and belly, and lets do it all with a tornado watch on and winds of thirty miles an hour.

Surely the old man would would point out the impossibility of such a course of action.  In fact, he would probably say that this picture of Kelly as she is returning from exactly that ride, on exactly that horse, under exactly those circumstances was faked.

That is why it is so much better to work with people like Kelly than to try to convince the established horse world of anything.

Those people just can't be trained.

(This picture is from yesterday. Kelly returning on El Rosio, a fifteen year old Baca stallion, that she has trained. I am glad that she did not know that this was impossible and could never, ever be done....even by "an experienced, professional  horse trainer with years of experience in the show ring who has earned the respect of the entire established horse world.")

On The Road Again

One of the best things to come from our conversion to a nonprofit is that we are bringing in the insights of others who understand what we do and who can see things from a different perspective than I could. One of those changes is that they want me to make myself available for outside clinics on natural horsemanship.

There is much good in that idea. More people need to understand that kids can learn natural horsemanship at least as well as adults and, in many cases, much better. I do not know of anyone else out there who has been teaching kids to do this as long as I have.

I hate travel. I could be perfectly happy without ever leaving forty miles of the horse lot for the remainder of my life. I do not like vacations. I do not like trips. However, this is important.

My presentations are worth the effort to see. The unvarnished reality is that I know how to make natural horsemanship appear as simple as it actually is and have no desire to impress anyone by making it look more complicated.

And I know how to hold an audience's attention.

O.K., I'll admit it--one on one I can be a bit boring and perhaps eccentric, but when I have an audience in front of me charisma drips off of me like sweat.

So, if you would like to discuss having me come to your area and put on a big session for teachers, 4-H leaders and members, or people who just want to learn how their horse wants to be handled and why the horse feels that way, send us a note. I am not sure how much they plan to charge to ship me around to do clinics, but I strongly suspect that it will be highly affordable. (One proposal involves charging for me by the pound. That could be a great deal because I am training hard right now and dropping pounds pretty quickly) I am making arrangements to have my blood drawn and to get my coggins test done. If I do not have sleeping sickness I will be available after the buds come out on the trees.