After lurking on Facebook trying to track down as much information on saddle fitting, Sarah came across much helpful advice but in particular, she came across Tina.
Tina not only freely gave Sarah pointers on the different saddles to try on Bree, the indicators of a good or poor fit etc. But Tina also introduced Sarah to the world of natural horsemanship.
Up to now, Sarah was the product of the traditional style of horsemanship. Break the horse until it did what you wanted. This normally involved equipment and pushing the horse for perfection. Sarah was still trying to figure out what Bree's natural tendency was; show jumping, dressage, eventing etc.?
So Sarah started out to try and find, through trial and error, what was Bree's particular bag.
I remember when Sarah returned home with her latest purchase on TradeMe. She was excited as she opened up the bag, exclaiming to me that this is incredibly exciting and she could not wait until she showed me how it worked.
Out fell from the bag a jumbled collection of ropes, pulleys and straps. My interest was piqued. Was this a new adventurous and open minded attitude of my beloved that I had not seen before? As she untangled it all and started to lay it out, I too was becoming both excitedly interested.
Trying to figure out how it all fitted together and with a professional eye calculating the load bearing of the ceiling joists, the realisation dawned on me. It was for a horse. Feeling a bit deflated, I re-joined the real world from the slightly kinky corners of my mind.
It was a device for ensuring the "correct" posture of a horse when lunging; to guide the horse in maintaining a correct bearing. Something which had employed on the European equestrian training circuits that Sarah had worked in. I personally was a bit dubious as to Princess Bree's reaction when approached with this rope / strap and pulleys contraption.
However, before we could see if Bree could be wired up for sound, Tina mentioned that she was assisting on a Bert Elstrob Natural Horsemanship clinic being held at the Silverstream covered arena in Mosgiel. Sarah should come along and see an alternative way to horse training.
I was invited along to the two day event at a reduced fee to "audit" or in other words, watch.
I had heard about horse whisperers in the past and could see that by examining the behavioural aspects of how a horse interacts with other horses, identify common methods for getting a horse to connect with you and hopefully do what you wanted. I did feel that with Bree's obfuscate nature, that she would probably benefit more from a Horse Shouter than a Whisperer
Anyway, with my interest once again piqued for an entirely different reason, I found myself sitting in the cold morning air, on hard benches watching a gathering of horses and their owners. I had a thermos of coffee, multiple muesli bars, video camera and notepad and more importantly, a cantankerous Bree. This could be quite an entertaining day and well worth the course fee.
The horses had been put into stalls on the far side of the arena, looking out onto the arena itself, while the owners stood in the arena itself listening to the instruction from Bert Elstrob on the principles of pressure and release.
As Bert talked, I noticed Bree on the far side, deftly picking at her lead rope that had been tied to the wall of the stall until she loosened it off enough to untie the knot. She then backed out of the stall and started to wander down the corridor, stopping every now and then to peer into a stall, practically give a smirk to the horse contained within, before walking to the next stall to repeat the process.
I quietly lay my cup of coffee and notebook down onto the bench and tried to ninja like, leave the bleachers and frog crawl out the side door, run around outside until I got to the sliding door that opened into the stall area, running face to face into Bree as she made her break for freedom. Without trying to make it obvious to all those gathered in the arena, I returned the unhappy Bree back to her stall and retied her. Then it was a case of stealthily doing the reverse journey back to my coffee and notebook.
Settling back in I started to record pertinent points being made by Bert as to the importance of a consistent approach to training. “If you do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got" was dutifully jotted down in my notebook.
Looking back up, just in time to see Bree raising and dropping her head repeatedly. Yup, she was untying her lead rope again. Once again, without trying to alert the instructor or other course participants to the undisciplined behaviour of the unruly mare right behind them, I started out on my commando course recapture the determined Bree. The look on her face as she pulled up short in front of me as I darted out in front of her was once of intense annoyance. Could I just please stop interfering!
I returned Bree back to her stall and tied up with even more knots this time. I cat like managed to get back to my seat without broadcasting to everyone.
The rest of the two days was spent seeing a different approach to how to get a horse to do what you wanted. Though this is actually wrong. As was constantly stated, the horse knows everything. How to trot, canter, stop, reverse, lie down, stand up etc. as it already does this normally. What we need to learn is how to ask the horse to do this when we want it to. There is also a need to build trust in the horse that you actually are there for its wellbeing, that you are not going to put into a situation where it is in danger.
Of course, with a horse being a flight animal, most things it encounters in its day to day life is more often than not going to be interpreted as a danger. Those blades of grass, the rubbish bin, sign on the side of the road. a sheep that is giving it a funny look, all things that if a horse does not take notice of, will at some stage rear up and eat the horse whole.
The horse needs to trust you more than its own instincts. Think about that one when you find yourself in a situation where you have suddenly been given a fright. You need to instead of running away or follow you instincts, you instead turn around to someone standing nearby and patiently wait for them to give you instructions. This is what we are asking of our horses.
I for one know that if I am in a darken alleyway and a large, imposing figure suddenly steps out of the shadows in a menacing way, if you want me to just stand there, turn to a person who I only see once a day for 30 mins and ask calmly what do they want me to do? I am going have to have a long history of trust built up with that person prior.
As the activities became more complex, there were occasions when riders had to break what was being asked of their horse into smaller chunks, get those right with consistency and then add another piece, and then another until the whole picture, or in this case activity, was consistently implemented correctly.
Even without a horse I was picking up invaluable instruction. I couldn’t wait to get my own horse to start implementing all this new knowledge.
A few months later we hosted a clinic at our newly purchased rural lifestyle block which was facilitated by Tina. We had a group of horse owners at it being taken through the building blocks of natural horsemanship. For one of the activities Tina had us pair up and sans horse, one person wore the rope head collar with eyes closed, while the second person lead them around the arena. The purpose of the exercise was to feel the pressure exerted by the rope halter on the horse.
Tina was standing there using some particularly colourful language as to why we must always be soft with the horse as the halter does cause pressure even at the lightest touch on the reins.
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| The High Priestess holding court |
I was playing the role of the "horse" being lead around by Sarah with my eyes closed. I happened to open them to be staring directly at the previous owners of the property, the Goatleys, who had chosen that particular moment to return for an unannounced visit and who were now standing by the post and rail fence of the arena.
As I stumbled my way over to them, wearing a rope head collar and trailing a lead rope behind me, I sort of stammered a welcome to the two very devout members of the Brethren Church. I could see the thoughts running through their heads as they took in the sight of a group of heathens practicing some arcane ritual in their previous home, lead by the High Priestess, spouting profanity from the centre of the field.
In reply to my welcome and not very coherent explanation that we were not actually trying to summon the devil incarnate, but rather trying to have a better understanding of pressure and release.
Mrs Goatley returned my welcome with "hello Paul, this seems *pause* interesting...."
There was probably a lot of scripture reading occurring in the Goatley's new house, that night as our two souls were tried to be saved.
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