My journey with horses

I wasn’t scared of my grandfather’s horse. I was fascinated, and awed by its presence. In a flash, I was swept up in strong arms and thrown onto the back of the liver chestnut thoroughbred named Gay Lad. As that four year old, I remember looking down and seeing my beaming smile reflected in the faces of both my father and grandfather. So began my journey with horses.

In the ensuing years, the journey became a period of strengthening bursts, like my time at university learning from a very accomplished young rider, to periods of drought when my links to horses felt like a gossamer thread of past memories and my career in education and agriculture took hold.

 My horse journey was to take a positive turn when my children went to Pony Club. I watched as they were exposed to different instructors. It was frustrating for the children (and me) as the training and education seemed to lack consistency. The instruction was leading to confusion not only for my children but also the horses.

I knew there must be a better way. As an educator I wanted something different…then I saw Pat Parelli. I watched a DVD with Pat training and jumping a horse bare back and bridleless.  I had found something different and I wanted to try it. Parelli had clear steps for education and training, and he seemed to work cooperatively with his horse. Something I really wanted to achieve. I was eventing at the time so began to implement some of Pat’s ideas and they worked.

Not everybody was as enthusiastic about this as me. I remember that it caused quite a fuss when as President of the local Pony Club I was sanctioned by the committee for setting a poor example at rallies because I was riding my event horse bareback and in a rope halter.

Everybody has a period of realignment in life, I had mine in my forties and horses left my life. Over that period of reflection clarity came and so did the horses. In 2010 I bought ‘Ticket’ a 16 hands, 6 year old, Off the Track Thoroughbred. I wanted to deeply explore the intimacy of the “Horse-Human” connection. I read veraciously, and went to clinics in both Australia and New Zealand. Ticket was my teacher and we had so much fun. We did a lot of ground work and a lot of walking beside in the native reserve close to where I lived. For exercise, he often ran free but always returned to find me and then he would side pass up to a dirt mound or log, I would scramble on and we would walk home with one rein on his halter. Two years into our journey he was killed in a road accident.

On the journey I found limitations with some trainers in that they ended up boring their horses to death with repeated drills or they believed everything could be solved by training. This mind set meant they were not open to the fact that a horse may not respond because it has a medical issue or a poor fitting saddle that pinches and drives it to distraction.

As my journey continues there is one thing that I am certain of, and that is, that good horsemanship is about good communication and not about control.