When I first started watching different trainers , mostly via videos, I was hooked and amazed at the ‘natural horsemanship’ activities. How you could make them turn and run, or stop, or back up without even touching them. It was amazing. I then sort of fell into learning from a different trainer, face to face, and I was confused.
At a clinic, another student was having trouble following the teacher’s instructions in the round pen. The student wanted to show us how she normally did things, as far as using the round pen and having her horse run one way, then the other, with some darn snappy turns and take offs.
Teacher said she didn’t really like how Clinton Anderson horses were trained, and didn’t advocate it. She did not ‘dis’ the man, just said that there was something missing in it, as an approach to horses. That thing is the horse’s ‘thought’.
The approach she is using is all about seeking, earning, drawing, and sending the horse’s thought, because where goes his thought, go his feet. In nature, a horse’s thought and his feet are always united. However, when we ride them, we are often moving their feet literally counter to where their thought is focused. We are often oblivious to this because we ARE moving the horse. We don’t even notice where his thought is. That disunity causes discomfort to the horse. He is being PUSHED around against his own intention. That is often expressed in him bracing his body, leaning on a bit, running through a bit, dragging his feet, etc.
When the horse was charging around the round pen in an impressive display of activity, the horse was not really THINKING so much as he was reacting; anticipating, and worrying about fleeing the human. He was not listening so much as assuming and obeying. He is not waiting to hear you, if you chose to ‘whisper’ something different from “RUN, CHANGE, Run”. People say, ‘but look how immediately he turns. Look how he comes running toward me if I back up, look how he immediately disengages and faces me when I point the stick at his haunches.” Pretty impressive, no?’
Yes, in a way. But, can that horse turn slowly if you want him to, or is it him just snapping around and running up? Can you send him out to the edge of corral and ask him to just stand there and wait? or will he assume that as soon as you send him away, he is supposed to run his hind end out of there and get busy, or else!
You see, this sort of work is all about driving a horse. pushing on his hind end. Even getting him to face up to you you are told to push on his hind end, to force it away from you so that his head ends up pointing at you. (you bend over, ‘look’ at his hind end, or point the stick at it. ) But, I ask you, do you know where the horse’s thought is when you do that? Not on you, but on the pressure you just placed on his hind end, and how to get away from that pressure. He is in ‘fleeing’ mode and he feels like he’s in ‘trouble’. But, he stopped and squared up to face you, right?
You can get a better turn, softer, more balanced, less abrupt by drawing his thought TOWARD you. When he does this, he will be focused ON you, and will set up his own body to follow that draw, not fleeing his hind end away. His thought comes first toward you, then his feet follow up on that. His feet and his thought are united. The result is quite different in the horse’s mind. He will want to connect WITH you, rather than want to avoid trouble.
Once you start to watch a horse and see his thought, openly expressed in his eyes and ears and body, you start to see where it is going, when it’s not with you, even if his feet are moving along. When his thought comes to where you are asking his feet to go, he becomes very light and soft. But, the thought comes first.
If you look at so many problems we have with horses it boils down to us trying to move their feet somewhere, when their thought is somewhere else.
There is even a difference between ‘pushing’ and ‘sending’. Pushing is pressure on the hind end, or sometimes shoulders. The horse moves away from it, but will often stay mentally focused on the source of the push, either in resentment or fear.
‘Sending’ is more about getting the horse to move his thought ‘out there’ somewhere, and then encouraging that intention so much that the horse decides he wants to go there. He is focused on his destination, not on the driving force making him go away. He is focused toward something, rather than away from it. To the horse, it is a big difference.
I hope I'm not going to regret posting this long, verbose bit of yammering. I am so NOT an expert on horse training, I hesitate to post anything about this, since I don't understand it fully. But, I do know there's a whole different feel to my trainer's way, and CA's way.