Underlying message? Your horse is NEVER WRONG.
^This was mainly for my own benefit, but I loved the quote and thought other people might get something out of it as well. 
Got Pat Parelli’s book Natural Horse-man-ship from the library for my research paper for psychology and stumbled across the niffty little “Parelli-isms”. Thought I’d share
- “It’s traditional for tradition to change.”
- “Fear, frustration, feeling like a failure, lack of fun and lack of funds cause people to get out of horses.”
- “There are six things a horse can do: go backward, forward, right, left, up and down.”
- “Horses are perceptive to danger, people, places, changes and things.”
- “Horses have six natural talents: running, jumping, bucking, herding, playing and pulling.”
- “There are others [horses] who weren’t bred for a certain activity, yet they fool their owners and become great.”(<- of all quotes to stumble across, lol)
- “A snaffle bit gives you all need to put a foundation on the horse.”
- “Don’t encourage a horse who’s already trying.”
- “Horsemanship is nothing more than a series of good habits.”
- “The only constant thing in life is change and things can change rapidly when you’re dealing with horses.”
- “Understand whatever spirit a horse has is what you’ve got to deal with and leave it alone.”
- “Vertical flexion is more than just getting a horse’s nose in and down.”
- “Work on yourself but play with your horse.”
- “Allow your horse some freedom to have horseplay, to express himself.”
- “Get your kicks on Route 66, not on your horse’s sides.” (<- I am totally going to start using this is lessons now)
- “Sending a horse to a horse trainer to learn to put up with your inadequacies is going to last at best a week.”
- “There are torture devices and communication devices.”
- “Don’t look at his ears, they won’t fall off.” (<- Using this one to)
- “If he’s licking his lips, he digesting a thought or he just tasted humble pie.”
- “Trotting is the best way to get your horse physically fit.”
- “Never say never, don’t always say always, usually say usually.”
Oh, and uh. . .46 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!
Found this while doing some research for school this afternoon. From: http://www.robertmmiller.com/reinhocoso.html.
Chapter 20
The Real Importance of the RevolutionNo one gets into horses to become a better human being or to find greater meaning in life or to make the world a better place, but sometimes that’s exactly what happens.
In the beginning, you play with horses because it’s fun. It’s a pleasant diversion. Then you find that it feels good in a deeper and more lasting way than many other recreational past-times. You may love riding motorcycles, but your Harley doesn’t nicker at you in the morning. There is something very special about a horse that makes you want to do better with and for them.
But just wanting it isn’t enough because this is something very different and very unnatural for us humans. It takes time and effort to learn to communicate effectively with a horse. You have to be willing to go back to school, to learn and to change the way you behave. You have to set your ego on the shelf and leave it there while you reinvent yourself as a horseman and, often, as a human being.
This new person observes, remembers and compares. He listens more and talks less. He takes responsibility rather than assigning blame. He controls his emotions. He becomes aware of his body language. He tries to improve himself. He commits himself to acting justly. He cultivates patience. He forgives. He lives in the moment rather than stewing over the past or waiting for the future. And of course, he places the wants and needs of another living creature ahead of his own.
He does it all, at least in the beginning, because it will make him a better horseman.
It isn’t easy. We cannot wave a magic wand or drink a magic potion and change the nature of our species anymore than a leopard can change its spots. It takes work and lots of it. It takes willpower and persistence, focus and thought. In an age of mindless entertainment and instant gratification of our every physical and emotional craving, those don’t always come easy to us. But if we persist, the payoff makes it all worthwhile.
Taking it to the Street
The revolution in horsemanship has given us the motivation and means for meaningful self-improvement, and the world outside of the horse industry has taken notice. Major corporations, for example, are finding that they can inspire a different and better form of leadership, build stronger, more effective teams and foster a more enjoyable workplace by incorporating the principles of the revolution.
Some of these corporations are coming to Monty Roberts for help. Roberts has crafted a message of trust-based management, using Join-Up® as a metaphor, and has delivered it to companies such as American Express, Johnson & Johnson, Dean Witter, Disney, Hallmark, Chevron, Pfizer, Volkswagen and John Deere. Educators, psychologists, children with autism, at-risk teens, victims and victimizers have also benefited from Roberts’ work.
Clinician Frank Bell offers an all day, hands-on horsemanship course for corporate employees and clients as a means of developing concentration and focus to better prepare them for the challenges of the workplace. Interestingly, it was the work of legendary sales trainer Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People) that taught Bell the importance of making a good first impression and inspired his 7-step Safety System for preparing a horse to be ridden. Now he is using horsemanship to help people reach their full potential, bringing him full circle.
Canadian clinician Chris Irwin teaches Equine Assisted Personal Development. E.A.P.D. is an innovative form of “experiential” therapy for people with a broad range of needs, from troubled teens, to families in crisis, to corporate teams seeking empowerment. Working with the horse is the experience from which the insights flow. Irwin sees the task before the human as learning to communicate and lead in terms the horse, or another person for that matter, understands. He calls it becoming the better horse. He explains, “If we trainers, coaches and therapists can facilitate people in learning how to become ‘better horses’ then we are assisting them in developing and balancing essential life skills such as awareness, focus, patience, empathy, assertiveness, boundaries, consistency, clarity, compassion, calm, courage and multi-tasking.”
The horse is truly a vehicle for not only transporting but also elevating the human species, for taking us closer to that elusive goal of realizing human potential.
The Horse as Therapy
That potential is different for each of us. Some are born with every advantage. They have healthy bodies and minds, healthy home environments in which to grow and go through life without many real setbacks. For such people, the possibilities are practically endless.
Other people are burdened with tremendous disadvantages from birth, spiral out of control through poor life choices or suffer debilitating injuries. What the horse can mean for them is perhaps even more astounding.
For example, two decades ago, one of the authors met an intelligent and articulate young woman – we’ll call her Terri – who had very little function below her neck. A rare neurological disease had robbed her of control of most of her body. Although she had partial use of one hand, she was, for all intents and purposes, a quadriplegic.
Terri was the founder of an Oregon therapeutic riding organization. She loved horses and refused to let her condition stand in the way of her own riding. With perseverance, Terri acquired a special saddle with extra back support and a harness system to hold her in place. She found a horse that was gentle and would take care of her. And she started riding, first in an arena, then outside.
Over time, Terri’s rides became more adventurous, and eventually she was taking solo trail rides into the Cascade Wilderness. When asked why she would do something that was risky for any rider, but unthinkable for something with her condition, her answer was filled with emotion. “How can I make you understand what it means to me,” she said, “a completely dependent person, to ride alone on a forest trail, to hear the sound of a distant waterfall, and then to find it by myself? Alone. Just my horse and me and the waterfall.”
At five months of age, Bridget McGrath was diagnosed with infantile spasms, a seizure disorder. The condition was stabilized with medication and a program of physical therapy was started in the hope that she would someday be able to walk. By the age of two, still unable to stand, Bridgette seemed to stop trying. Equine-Assisted Therapy at the Somerset Hills Handicapped Riding Center in New Jersey made the difference.
Within six months, Bridget could sit straight up in the saddle, with the help of volunteers, and grab a Hula-Hoop while trotting. Then speech therapy began. At three, she spoke her first words and today, at seven, she runs to the stables, calling her horse’s name.
The value of horses and riding for disabled individuals has been recognized for centuries. The ancient Greeks used horseback rides to cheer the spirits of those considered untreatable or incurable. An 1875 study in Paris concluded that riding could lead to improvements in posture, balance, joint movement, muscle control and morale. Today we understand why. When riding, the human’s pelvis moves back and forth similar to the way it does when crawling or walking. Riding helps develop the muscles needed for walking. Riding provides physical therapy and motivation that is unmatched in preparing a disabled child to someday walk.
The horse has also been helpful in breaking through the mysterious veil of autism. Children who have been completely uncommunicative with the world around them for years have responded to the experience of being placed on the back of a gentle therapy horse.
Worldwide, organized therapeutic riding got its start after Denmark’s Liz Hartel won a silver medal for dressage in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. Although afflicted with polio, Hartel had rehabilitated herself from wheelchair to horseback and gone on to riding excellence. By 1969, an organization known as the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association, or NARHA, had been formed. There is no more respected and beloved organization in America’s horse industry today than NARHA and its hundreds of local chapters. Corporations, clinicians and the general public support them generously.
It would not be fair to claim that the revolution in horsemanship is responsible for the rise of modern therapeutic riding. They have developed on parallel tracks over the past three decades, yet they are highly compatible and complimentary pursuits. The primary difference is one of emphasis. With therapeutic riding, improving the human is the end goal. With natural horsemanship, developing a partnership between horse and human is the end goal, and improving the human is a means of reaching that goal.
Horsemanship and rehabilitation intersect most dramatically in the mustang-gentling programs implemented by numerous prisons in America. The Comstock Wild Horse Program mentioned earlier is one example. The Hutchinson Correctional Facility Wild Horse Program in Hutchinson, Kansas is another. This program’s motto, “Saving Horses – Changing Men,” says it all. To participate in this program of gentling and preparing wild horses for auction, an inmate must put pride and ego aside. He must learn to control his emotions and his behavior. He must work towards a long-term goal and delay his gratification.
For an inmate, the horse may represent the first totally honest relationship in his life. The horse does not lie. There is no ulterior motive in the horse’s behavior. To be successful, the inmate must be observant, look for the smallest change and reward it. He must prepare in advance, think ahead, and he must provide rest and reward. Most of all he must develop empathy, the ability to see the world through another individual’s eyes, an ability many in the correctional system have never developed. As the inmate learns how to develop the trust of a wild horse, he also comes to trust that there is a better path for his own life.
The revolution in horsemanship is a revolution in relationships. Between horses and people and the world in which they live.
Time
Impatience is a very common human trait today. In our busy lives, we are accustomed to looking for fast-acting medications, timesaving products and quick-start solutions. There is an insidious, unspoken assumption in most of what we do that this moment is not worth savoring, that we should rush through it to get to some more worthy moment that we can and should savor. The problem for many of us is that we never get to those truly worthwhile moments.
Life is what happens to us while we are waiting for it to begin.
The horse responds best to us when we slow down and live in the moment with senses and minds fully engaged. How long something takes means nothing to a horse. Teachers of horsemanship today often suggest that we leave our wristwatches at home when we work with our horses, and we are reminded with an expression worthy of the great Yogi Berra, to “take the time it takes and it will take less time.”
Precious few of us can ever completely dismiss the element of time from our lives. But we can certainly reduce our fixation on it. In doing so, maybe we stop rushing quite so much. Maybe we think about what we are doing right now instead of what we need to do next. Maybe we find joy in the living of life instead of just getting to the finish line. Maybe we learn how to enjoy the journey. If so, we have the horse to thank for that.
Why the Revolution?
So there you have it: a revolution in horsemanship.
This revolution has certainly made it easier and safer and more enjoyable for humans to interact with horses for recreational purposes. In our busy, stressful lives, that would be enough to make it a significant historical event. But we’ve seen that there is something much more profound going on. More than just the quality of our recreation, this revolution has improved the quality of our lives.
It has shown us that the human being – every human being – has so much farther he can go in his growth. It has challenged us to try harder, to think more clearly and to be more fully realized human beings, more of what was clearly intended for this species.
But why the horse?
The horse is the antithesis of the human being. It is the ultimate prey to our ultimate predator. There could be no more incompatible pairing of species on the planet. And yet, we have found that, when given the chance, the horse completes us. It is the day to our night, the hot to our cold, the light to our dark. In terms our eastern brethren understand better than we do, the horse is the yin to our yang.
Perhaps this is the reason that this revolution occurred. To hand us a powerful tool for developing the rest of our humanity, the part that wasn’t genetically endowed, the part that, in fact, goes against our genetically endowed, predatorial instincts. The part we have to work to obtain and is therefore most valuable to us.
Who among us would not agree that the world would be a better place if our leadership was benevolent, our purposes clear, our intentions honorable, our behavior consistent and our relationships empathetic? This has been the message of countless religious and social leaders throughout history, and now it comes to us again carried by an equine messenger, a former beast of burden that is otherwise irrelevant to modern life. It would not be the first time that important truths were delivered by an inauspicious messenger.
The horse was on its way to becoming an historical curiosity, something we read about in history books or saw only in zoos. But it came back in a wholly different way than ever before. Maybe it came back to save us.
We all know that there is something different and special about horses. But perhaps it is really that there is something different and special about us when we’re with them. We recognize in the horse a means to reach our highest calling as humans. Perhaps that is the real importance of this revolution in horsemanship.
WOW!!! That is the best description I have for him. Fantastic! We were so privileged to have Kerry Thomas, the founder of THT-Thomas Herding Technique, at Winterhawk. It was amazing to watch him in the field with the horses. I couldn’t believe how engaged and entertained they were by his simple gadgets and ways of interacting with them. It was also a huge compliment for Kerry to ask, “Now what am I doing here? This herd is fine.” I knew we were all doing a great job, but it is nice to hear a professional’s take on it. Especially someone who could give us so many insights into that mysterious herd dynamic. I think Hannah’s blog about Kerry’s visit gives great specifics into what was covered, so I will leave it to her for the details. For myself, I will try the peripheral exercises he gave me for giving Tai more confidence with his visual stimuli. Fascinating how simple and elegant these techniques are.
We were so pleased to have several folks as guests from local barns, and not so local Smithfield, in attendance. They were all blown away by Kerry as well. They showed up at 10AM and stayed way past the 2PM session’s end. We all enjoyed getting to walk out into the back field and be regaled about poop patterns and skid marks. Very interesting.
Kerry is now a Winterhawk herd member for life, and we will elevate his herd status quickly any time he may return! Thanks so much Kerry for giving us a peek into the private lives of our horse partners. I know I will have more confidence asking Tai for something extra. I also feel better knowing when to trailer for the long trip to Florida. It was interesting to note that your advice was rather a “do the opposite” of what I had asked others and been told by them. A million Thank Yous!! Give the racing industry hell..O.K., or just more good advice. We are so grateful the Horse world has someone else who is there for the horses. Hope we see you back again soon,
Elise and Tai Chi
So, this doesn’t really pertain to Mocachee, but today I went out and taught my first lesson at another barn. 
I went out to Jan’s place in Pungo and it went really well, she even wants me to come back in September!It was kinda strange going back to a normal barn. I forgot how most people treat their horses and how that enviroment was. The other poor horses are treated like nothing more than machines. We really are lucky at Winter Hawk, it might not be as fancy as some barns, but it has heart. Everyone loves the horses and we can all have fun and enjoy our journies with our equine partners. We’re kind of like a big family, lol, and I love it.
Her mare, Sweetpea, is a LBI with some RBI tendencies. She’s a really sweet horse and she’s super smart, but she is defintely a dominant, snotty lead mare, lol. Apparently she rules her paddock, and I can believe it. Jan asked me to play with her for a bit first and then help her with the figure eight at the trot and sideways. No riding since Sweetpea was just getting over hives. It was really fun getting to play with a different horse and I really liked Sweetpea. She started out super dominante, walking on top of me, shoving on me, nipping at me, ect. Thanks to Mocachee, I knew all about that stuff. She was a barrel racer apparently, so she’s got so forward0aholic stuff going on, but if I just snapped her back and didn’t let her go there, she was fine. Once she figures out what you want and you get her motivated she’s very willing to please. I showed Jan how to do the transitions on the circle with the change of direction and what a “good” lap was. Sweetpea apparently is notorious for trying to drag you out the gate when she circles, so I just got in my power position and held the feel til she quit pulling and talked about never releasing on a brace. Got a “good” lap in each direction and then brought her in. I tried getting her to trot up with me and that was interesting. Got a couple steps and got her to back up with me. I’m going to have Jan doing some of that with Charlie Friday to help her prep for liberty. I went over to where Jan was and let Sweetpea graze while we talked about all the stuff I did with her for a bit. She started yawning about 15 minutes into the conversation and Jan was surprised. I explained how the introverts just need time to think and process stuff and she’s going to start doing more of that with Sweetpea. Sweetpea is a master of “I’ll take two steps and watch you run around trying to get me to move”. Helped Jan with the figure eight and showed her how much better Sweetpea was if she got her out of her space and out on the 22 foot line instead of using it like a 12 foot. I think Jan realized that while she may like up close stuff, it’s time for Sweetpea to start doing far away stuff. We got sideways with a porcupine over and cavellti and I told Jan to keep working on that and trying to get it lighter and the sideways will start to come. Overall a very good day and I can’t wait to go out next month. Jan and Sweetpea are a really good team and I feel like I made a new horsey friend with Sweetpea, even if she wasn’t too sure how she felt about me at first.
I can’t wait to go back and Jan said she was really impressed and she learned a lot. She also brought me the information on the cutting horse clinics and said she’d be happy for me to tag along with her to one if I wanted too, which could be kind of fun. It’s crazy all these opportunites that keep showing up and I feel so blessed to be able to have them and try my hand at doing something I love for the rest of my life. Only God could have lined all this up to fit so perfectly, and I’m so thankful to everyone who’s given me at chance to try this out and helped make this possible for me. My Mom also went with me this morning (she was worried about me driving out to Pungo by myself, but apparently I drove well enough I can go by myself next time, lol) and I think she realized that this is what I want to do and I’m at least halfway decent at it. She seems more . . .at peace about my career choice. I think it may have actually been good for her to watch me. I feel a little more like I can maybe be sucessful at this. I think people are starting to realize they want partners, not machines, and that Parelli is they way to be with horses.
