Great Training Success At Mill Swamp Indian Horses

Over the weekend Michelle rode her Colonial Spanish mare, Whisper, of Choctaw and Grand Canyon lineage for her first ride in the woods. Michelle and her father have done all of the training of this horse and their wonderful Corolla mare, Rosie. This came a day after Ariyanna rode Andrew's Marsh Tacky colt, Pagan, for the first time. (I have video of that great ride but I cannot get it on this page)

On day 87 of having Aristotle a wild BLM mustang with us, Curie took him on his first ride in the woods.

Tim has done a spectacular job of teaching Manny to slow down and relax with a rider.

Mandy has her 11 year old Galiceno under saddle and will be ready for the woods when hunting season is over.

Chris has been doing a great job retraining some of the older Choctaw mares to get them ready to head back into the woods.

All the while this has been going on we have been halter training yearlings, learning to trim hooves, clearing land, working on fencing and conducting an amazing number of educational programs. 

In short, we are up and running, and all of this is done with no paid staff.

The Best Thing That Our Program Has to Offer to Many People: Fear

Or perhaps to state it better, the opportunity to over come fear.  Anxiety disorders are at an all time high among young people. Avoidance behaviors are the norm for a large segment of our population.  Fear permeates every news cast, the morning's array of social media posts, and even tv commercials.

Too few people have been given the opportunity to achieve success by over coming fear and too many people have been given every opportunity to avoid the challenges that they face. We expect, actually expect, things to go our way in every case. In the winter we expect to wake up in a warm house, dress in warm clothes, go to a warm office, and unlike all of our ancestors in the past, spend nearly all of each winter  exposed only to warm temperatures. 

Summers are even worse, with air conditioning 24/7 and nearly no opportunity for our bodies to sweat. We refrain from going outside, primarily "because of the weather" , whether that weather be too hot, too cold, or too wet,  In the past 75 years we have created a culture that expects physical comfort day in, day out, year around. 

My brother Lido had cerebral palsy. He never moved with ease. He was the first person to get on most of my wild horses before we had a riding program. When he was thrown he got back on. 

He had no anxiety. He had no avoidance behaviors. He had accumulated a record of achievements that taught him that he could achieve. 

As serious as his disability was, it did not hamper him as much as anxiety disorders and depression hamper such a large proportion of teenagers today. 

Every day that people  spend at the horse lot provides opportunities to grow by doing things that they did not think they could do--riding a horse that was not the one that they felt safest on, moving herds from one pasture to another, learning to train horses, learning to trim hooves, and learning to work harder then they ever imagined that they could.

And adults have a chance to meet their fears head on too. They have a chance to learn to deal with the problem that actually worries them instead of creating distractionary problems upon which they can focus their worry. 

We work hard to understand the fears of horses. That helps us understand the impact of trauma on people and that makes it possible for us all to lead happier lives by confronting our fears

And that is the goal--not to create Spartan warriors, but to create happier, more compassionate, kinder people.  

Nothing makes us unhappier, more selfish, and more prone to hate, than fear. 

Reaching the 1000th Mile

It was not all that long ago that Curie was a novice. Now she is a first rate rider, a solid horse trainer, and a talented young farrier. Long Knife is her Corolla mare that she took the lead in training. 

In the past week she reached her 1000th mile on the trails on Long Knife. That is an extraordinary accomplishment. It really matters to the horse.

One of the most important facets of training is consistency. It can take a lot of miles before the horse fully understands its rider. It can take even more miles before a rider can understand the horse. 

She has broadened the horse's exposure with a recent trip out to a horse show in Suffolk, from whence comes this picture.

Long Knife is doing her part for the conservation and promotion of the nearly extinct horses of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Next summer she will be having a foal from Cracker jack, a beautiful Shackleford stallion. 

And a spectacular little Colonial Spanish horse that will be.

Getting Back On Track: The Worst Form Of Memory Loss

There are very few people that can fully appreciate how difficult it is to keep this program relevant and meaningful. Sometimes I come dangerously close to taking the path of least resistance. Our program would be much easier to administer if I stopped breeding endangered horses and if we reduced all of our livestock down to only keeping the horses and donkeys. 

I decided that was what I was going to do.  The idea was my own. No one had forced me into considering radical downsizing.

Doing so had strong appeal to me. yet at the same time I knew that doing so would be something that I would be deeply ashamed of...but it would be so much easier. Perhaps my life would have a bit of normalcy by scaling back.

Then I thought about what the limits of our program should be. The limits should only be two fold--my capacity to imagine and my capacity to work. 

I have reached neither limit.  Sunday Ashley came down to help me decide what the future of our program should be. She reminded me of what we do, and have done, over the years. Most of all, she reminded me who I am. 

I had forgotten that part. 

Our discussion that was intended (on my part) to consider how to roll back programming resulted (as it should have) with a decision to increase our programs over the next two years.

In addition to what we do now, we will be working towards the following:

development of an endurance riding team 

initiation of a pod cast 

renewed efforts at soil and water conservation projects

creation of paddocks for goats and sheep on the New Land

development of a drama program culminating with living history educational programs

focus on doing more offsite clinics

formalizing and renewing efforts to teach training and taming of horses

expansion of our series on using the lessons learned from natural horsemanship to become better people

finding ways to encourage program participants to learn more about human health, nutrition and exercise

getting the stage constructed for the music program

buying or building a storage shed for our vast library of books to make them accessible to program participants

The virus has restricted participation  for so long that restricted participation seemed normal. The virus will not last forever and when we step out of its shadow we will be ready to grow with the same sense of of purpose that I once had. Our volunteers continue to put extraordinary hours into making the program work and as we expand we will attract more volunteers. 

We will be bigger and we will be better.

Playing Past One's Prime: When One is Through Talking One Should Shut Up

It has been over twenty years but I once kept lot of deer hounds. Some of you might member when George Allen left from coaching the Rams and took over with the Red Skins. He traded for banged up veterans who had once been stars, but whom he felt still had a few good games left in them.

I used a similar practice with my hounds. I raised a lot of young dogs but also took on many formerly great hounds whose age put them past their best hunts. But they were great teachers for the young hounds and often their experience allowed them to bring a deer out of a thick, tangled  swamp that the young dogs would have never found.

But even Molly, even Fox, even Cajun reached a point that they could not pull it off any more. They stopped running deer. They simply shut up.

It is not age that has brought me to that same point. It is experience. Experience has taught me what I can bring out in people and what I can't. Sometime it has lead to a very unpleasant surprise. Gordon Lightfoot really put his finger on the worst difference between winning and loosing (Sometimes I think it is a sin when I feel like I'm winnin' when I'm loosin' again.")

And with that this blog ends. it has been around for along time and it has a search button on it. So if one, for whatever reason, would want to know what I think about an issue you look back at what I once thought, because what I once thought can generally be counted on as what I still think.

It occurs to me that if I don't have anything left to say for the blog then I don't have anything left for Facebook  and will be leaving that platform. If one must contact me I can be reached by email at msindianhorses@aol.com