The First Rule of Horsemanship

[WashoeKat]

As a very green beginner I was kinda hoping one of the experienced hands would have something to say about this. Maybe I can get the ball rolling -- or maybe this is a non-issue for you all.

I have a fear of heights and back in high school a gym teacher decided to "cure" this defect using the "sink or swim" method. I was going to get up on the high bar or fail the class. I got up there, briefly, but the experience only increased my fear and my stomach still ties up in knots when I think of gym class or that teacher. 40 years later -- I still loath Miss Connors.

The old hands around here have been very diligent in teaching this beginner THE FIRST RULE. I went along with it because well -- I was beginner and these folks had been around horses their whole life. And I found myself saying the same things to other newbies. "you started it, you gotta finish" "don't let her get away with that". But I kept thinking about Miss Connors, and being bullied into doing something that scared me half to death.

Anyway, a while back I stopped riding with other people and said the heck with THE FIRST RULE, along with a lot of other stuff. Ever since I have been feeling my way along: when to push on, when to find another way, when to just walk away. I am the first to admit I have a lot to learn about finding that perfect "middle way", but for us this sure has been a better way to go.

And well, it is nice to know that an experienced horseman thought THE FIRST RULE was important enough to write about and the the good folks at EH thought it worthy of publishing.

So what say you, the old hands of the EH BB? How often do you tell your students -- or yourself -- not to back off and "let the horse win"?

[reata]

Great topic Kat..
I still haven't read my March/April EH from cover to cover and hadn't got to this one yet.. But of course being me I HAVE to comment!!! :-)
I think that MAKING the horse is something we all are guilty of at some stage.. and it can be real hard not to MAKE!! and still get our point across to the horse..
I remember at my very first Ray Hunt Clinic, Ray had a real bronky T/B mare. She had been to a few breakers and they had all given up on her.. Ray started to work his "Magic".. One of the things he wanted her to be ok with was a rope on her hind foot.. He made a loop and she stepped in it and he took up the slack. Well she kicked and bucked and ran and tried everything she knew to get that rope off. Finally off it flew and the 200 plus crowd all sighed. Ray said that it was no big deal.. In getting the rope off she now knew she could if she really had too ..he just started over again and soon had it back on ..This time the mare was hardly bothered by it..and Ray soon had her yielding by the back foot!!!
That is something that really stuck in my mind.. and I'm so glad that Kats post reminded me of it ..
Now I think I will read the article... :rolleyes:

[Mares Tales]

Kat said,
"I have a fear of heights and back in high school a gym teacher decided to "cure" this defect using the "sink or swim" method. I was going to get up on the high bar or fail the class. I got up there, briefly, but the experience only increased my fear and my stomach still ties up in knots when I think of gym class or that teacher. 40 years later -- I still loath Miss Connors. "

What a great analogy Kat! How many humans are Miss Connors to their horses! You did not exactly think of her as someone who had your best in mind. It didn`t sound like you had much of a choice........."Do as I say or FAIL" was her choice, "Do as I say or I`ll hurt you" is something people say to their horses. Not much of a choice there either. You never forgot it, and neither would a horse in a similar situation, then we wonder why so many horses have "issues" and resistances.

"The old hands around here have been very diligent in teaching this beginner THE FIRST RULE. I went along with it because well -- I was beginner and these folks had been around horses their whole life. And I found myself saying the same things to other newbies. "you started it, you gotta finish" "don't let her get away with that". But I kept thinking about Miss Connors, and being bullied into doing something that scared me half to death."

Personally, I try to set things up so the horse can always find an EASY answer....."the right things EASY" (RH). It may not be the WHOLE thing I want but it might be a little step leading to what I would like. I may have to forget about the task at hand to just find a place where the horse can find some confidence.........in me and in himself, I may have to "miss my lunch" as Tom used to say by setting things up and waiting until the the horse finds it. If the horse finds it on his own because I have set it up like that, and gets his release, then he is going to feel good about himself and ME for not getting after him and having to put pressure on him, not getting him in over his head.......like Miss Connors did to YOU. The horse is going to feel as if he has a choice, that he can think about it and he won`t have to go to flight or fight mode. You have no fond memories of Miss Connors because she didn`t give you much of a choice, NO choice really and she FORCED you into something you were afraid of. To this day I bet your adrenaline goes up when you think of Miss Connors and her squeesing you into an uncomfortable spot where you thought you could die. Who would blame you? Yet we do this to our horses ALL the time and then expect them to end up confident in us and ok in their lives. Who could think of TASKMASTERCONNERS as a partner? Not ME. I`d be missing quite a few days of school. Now think of our horses, they can`t decide to miss class so they try to get away in other ways, they check out physically and worse..... mentally.... or end up defending themselves against the tormentor.

"Anyway, a while back I stopped riding with other people and said the heck with THE FIRST RULE, along with a lot of other stuff. Ever since I have been feeling my way along: when to push on, when to find another way, when to just walk away. I am the first to admit I have a lot to learn about finding that perfect "middle way", but for us this sure has been a better way to go."

You are developing your FEEL and in my opinion in order to do that we have to get quiet within ourselves to be able to get to the place where we can raise our awareness. It`s not easy, in our modern lives with multitudes of distactions to get quiet within ourselves so that we can concentrate on what we are doing. Other people may want to talk, or do something else; they compete for your attention. Later on when you have worked out your feel and timing in private, it will become of way of BEING and then you can go ahead and be with friends and still operate from the place inside yourself where you have learned to be. Timing is a skill. Your horse will also be more confident and look to you when the atmosphere gets lively, she`ll know you have her BEST in mind. Now getting back to when to "push on" and "when to walk away"; those things especially need to be done at the right moment, you`d want to look for the spot where you could release to softeness, that takes some concentration, awareness and practice.

"And well, it is nice to know that an experienced horseman thought THE FIRST RULE was important enough to write about and the the good folks at EH thought it worthy of publishing.
So what say you, the old hands of the EH BB? How often do you tell your students -- or yourself -- not to back off and "let the horse win"?

LOL Who you callin an OLD hand lol?

I ALWAYS try to let the horse feel like he`s a winner within himself!!!! by letting him find the anwser I set him up for him to find....setting it up so that he found the right thing EASY, THERE IS ALWAYS AN OPEN DOOR. We BOTH win that way, because it never became a contest. He gets to tell himself EVERYTIME that he finds the release that he`s a smart boy and has a choice in his life. NO highbars and knots in the stomach for any of my horses if I can help it because they are never FORCED.

As a side note.....
Just a couple of weeks ago I was showing my yearling colt that it is ok to be out alone without being in site of another horse. It is important that he learn that he can survive alone for many reasons that he will need later on in his life with me. At first he was a little scared and ran around neighing but I waited until I saw he was quieting down to turn out the others.....I waited UNTIL he got to a place where he was feeling ok first, because confidence is what I was trying to build. The next day he stayed quiet longer and the next day longer and now he goes out alone without seeing another horse for as long as I choose. (I take into consideration that he may get a little bothered again sometime but I`m not going to let that bother me because I know that as long as I understand how he feels about it and don`t throw him into the deep end, I will keep helping him build confidence) The first day I turned him out by himself I didn`t leave him be until he got so frantic that he jumped the fence and hurt himself, what would THAT have taught him? that would have made no sense. I just left him be until he started to get ok with being by himself.

Ditto what Reata said, great topic Kat. Now I have to go and read the article too......... just too many things to do when the weather finally breaks.

Kat,
Washoe Valley, NV

[Mulie]

Boy, that Miss Connors brings back some memories for me too. Sometimes I might be worried to do something and the minute people start pushing I really dig in. If I'm NOT pushed often I'll start thinking hmmmm that looks like fun maybe I'll give it a try. One day when I was pushing, or I should say TRYING to push my mule through something she wasn't feeling confident about I had an epiphany. She's just like me. I started giving her more time. She's getting more confident if I don't push her. She really wants to please but she really needs the time to make sure things are safe for her. Although it seems that the less I push her the more willing she is to trust my judgement.

[Mares Tales]

I was pondering my earlier post and wanted to add that my young mare was just the opposite as my yearling colt and needed a whole nuther approach to get her ok with being alone. She is the kind of gal that when you first turn her out by herself she is fine for about a half an hour, then notices there are no other horses around and no one else is coming out and THEN she would get a bit bothered. What I did with her was to turn her out and watch her and BEFORE she had signs of being concerned from being by herself, I would put out another horse. She got more and more confident as time went by and I could lengthen the time before I would turn out another horse until she could be out alone all day. I guess in my mind this is an example of "coming from where the horse is at", and "adjusting to fit the horse." Two different horses and two different approaches for the same problem. And YES.....I missed my lunch! but it was worth it.

Horses are just so darn interesting.

[WashoeKat]

When I looked back the article is "Unlearning the First PRINCIPLE of Horsemanship." Mares & Reata -- lI'l be interested in hearing what you think about the article and I want to make sure you can find it!

The following article "Beginning Where We Want To End Up" covers some of the same ground.

"One of the great contributions that Harry makes to horses is getting humans to ask themselves 'How does the horse feel about things inside?' "

Mares, you should keep copies of your replies, in a year or so you'd have enough for a fine book.

[reata]

Kat I have been telling her for years to do some writing..
"Mares you should write something for EH and see if Em will publish it"..
I even suggested a few topics but NO!! she is too darn stubborn!!!

[Cinch]

There's several different things that could be going on here. If the horse was sucking his thumb you might need to get pretty firm (add quite a lot of yourself into the situation). If he doesn't understand or has some problems that were pretty imbedded you might take a different approach. Like the story in the article about loading the horse, sometimes you have to go with them to get them to go with you. You let them work at several different options (explore) & if you can, you just keep adding a little more of yourself into the situation without causing things to fall apart.

[rodear]

The article talks about knowing when it is ok to not push ahead with a horse, back off, do something different and come back to it later. Like many folks I really believed in the first rule of horsemanship and had a hard time with this, until one day it dawned on me that the horse really didn't know what I had in mind anyway. If we came up to some water and he started to get a little worried and I stopped him and kept him looking at the water, how could he know that wasn't what I had in mind in the first place. So when I turned him and we went away for a bit, neither one of us was letting the other get the best of it.

Now we ended up going through the water as the horse figured out he could do that without harm. It might have been later on that day or the next month. We just didn't argue about it and neither of us got hurt.

[Mulie]

That really helped me alot, too. I told someone once I was worried about making mistakes and he said, the horse doesn't know you made a mistake, just fix it and go on from there. Made a big difference for me. I have heard the phrase "sucking his thumb" but I'm not sure I know what it means could someone explain it for me?

[Cinch]

"Sucking his thumb" is just like a little kid. They know what to do & how to do it, but they are just sucking their thumb & not doing it or even trying.

[Mulie]

Thanks Cinch. At first I thought it meant they were scared, but then someone mentioned you needed to firm up when they did that, so I guessed that wasn't it. Makes sense now.

[Weebonilass]

This is one of the issues I backed ordered waiting for my subscription to start and hadn't had a chance to read it fully. It was an very interesting subject and then reading what others wrote here makes me wonder who the heck my mentor's mentor was. Sally was an Arabian breeder and co-leader of my 4-h group and she was so natural that fortunately a lot of things that people have to unlearn, I never learned.

I learned to find the comfort zone and ask for just one step beyond, but if I couldn't that was enough this time, the next time and maybe the next time. But because she also passed on the believe in a lot of solid groundwork, the relationships I've had with my horses had trust and these moments never lasted very long.

My current gelding had a lot of issues when I started leasing him. When I finally got permission from his current owner (who had never touched him) to talk to his breeder. He told me that the horse was aggressive, very pushy and had a major attitude problem. That he was lazy and great at intimidating people around and would if he could get out of work. And that I had to make him do what I wanted or he'd walk all over me.

The email confused me, because that's not the horse I had... I had a very defensive horse that had already had the t-shirt and wasn't taking another one home.

Took me a couple of years to figure out that we were talking about the same horse, just I was looking at it from the horse's point of view and he was looking at it from the human's.

Well, his old barn name was the "The Omen" (found that out much later) and he apparently earned it honestly. In our dealings, he was always looking for the shoe to drop and was ready to do battle. It confused him when I refused to do so. It was always one of those "what happened before what happened, happened." There were always very, very subtle warnings, but they were there when I thought about it. How could I get after him, if I chose to ignore his whispering??? I learned to listen very carefully to what he was saying to me.

After five years, for the most part he doesn't look too worried about the other shoe dropping, unless I get too big and then old emotions pop up and I have to back off. That's with me.... with strangers, he's still apt to be ready to do battle, so I have to be careful.

He still gets frustrated and bored easily, but I now know that the pawing is sign we need to move on or simply let him move his feet. That's just another challenge to working with this guy :)