We started with horses fifteen years ago. My daughter, then a pre-teenager, was crazy about them. All I knew about horses was they had a leg at each corner, a head in front, and a tail in back. Oh, I had received a graduate degree in science and was a successful computer programmer. But horses? You have to be kidding! My only "ride" was on a rental horse, in a state park, back in Indiana, many years before. It was NOT a fun ride. When the horse was up, I was down. When the horse was down, I was up. Not at all like it looked in the Movies. It was literally a painful experience.
During our move to the Southwest, we read about Peruvian Paso Horses in a Colorado magazine. We read about their smooth ride and cooperative temperament. They sounded like a perfect horse. A few years later when we started looking for a horse for our daughter, it was our luck that a yearling Peruvian Paso colt was advertised for sale. We went, we saw, and we were conquered. We brought the colt home.
The next few years were spent learning how to live with a horse. The horse did his best to teach us every thing he knew about being a horse. He did succeeded in teaching me several very important things about horses. While attempting to "teach" him to lead and lunge, he often mis-behaved (He did not do what I wanted him to do). After much frustration, I discovered that he was doing exactly what I was telling him to do. I just did not know what I was saying. From then on, I paid close attention to what I was doing and to his response to what I did. I was beginning to learn to speak Horse. I had discovered that horses were not stupid, they just could not speak Human. They simply behaved very much like a one thousand pound two year old child.
In the intervening years, we purchased, foaled, raised, and showed horses. We read everything that we could find about horses. We had horses trained. We had ourselves trained. We rode and rode and rode. We got dumped. We got hurt. We went to seminars. We watched horses being trained. We trained horses. We learned and were successful. My daughter rode her gelding Volar to two times National Champion of Champions and received over sixty trophies and awards at regional and national shows.
We have developed a natural and gentle style of working with horses. Its objective is to establish a working relationship between a horse and rider based upon understanding and communication. A free, easy, and willing response to command is achieved. It provides a foundation upon which horse and rider can maintain a good working relationship and improve performance quality and capability. We find that faster and better results are achieved by such methods than can be achieved by the use of fear, pain, and harsh mechanics.
Our methods are based upon the following understanding.
Man and dogs have much in common. Both are pack animals who are excited by the hunt, the chase, and the kill. Because of that commonalty, Man has an immediate and almost instinctive affinity for the way dogs think and work. It is therefore natural to look upon a horse as simply a big dog.
However, horses are not just big dogs. Both man and dogs can quickly eat a high energy meal -- the flesh of the kill. Horses must graze for prolonged periods on low energy grasses. The survival of both man and dogs depends upon the success of the hunt, the chase, and the kill. The survival of horses depends upon sufficient time and safety to consume enough grass and the ability to detect a hunter in time to escape. In other words, man and dogs are looking for lunch while horses are intent upon not becoming lunch. Man and dogs are rewarded by food -- the flesh of the kill. Horses are rewarded by quiet, safety, and freedom from the hunter.
Further, both man and dogs hunt in packs. They hide themselves from their prey. Coordination of the hunt requires verbal communication -- speaking or barking. Horses graze in view of each other. They focus upon body language for communication. They must be quiet so as to not attract hunters. If one detects a hunter, he signals the herd and dashes to safety. The herd follows.
Typically, it is a dominant member or leader of the herd who selects the grazing site and who watches for the hunter. The remainder of the herd quietly grazes and watches the herd leader. The herd moves when the leader moves.
A successful relationship with a horse depends upon the man thinking and acting more like a horse. Quiet gentle movements. Communication by body language rather than voice. Refraining from an aggressive chase-like forward approach. Acting and communicating as a dominant herd leader.
Dominance is accomplished by the handler achieving clarity of goal, intensity of intent, focus upon task, consistency of command, and clarity, crispness, and timing of communication. The handler must require response as if to a dominant herd mate by establishing attention first, respect next, and trust last.
Attention can be established by such signals as a flick of a lead rope, checking of reins, and stamping of feet. Respect can be established by requiring backing on command; moving on command; moving away from your advance; attentive matching of your pace while leading; yielding of head and neck while lunging; quiet standing while tacking, mounting and dismounting; and responsiveness to commands. Trust can be established by moving quietly, making flowing motions, speaking softly, relaxing in saddle, and making the basic trust signals. The basic trust signals are made by holding out a soft rounded hand as an invitation; by touching the horses nose when its extended; stroking the horses face and neck; and massaging the horses lips and chin.
It is common for kind and gentle hearted individuals to attempt to establish Trust before Attention and Respect. If accomplished, the Trust turns to contempt because the horse believes it is dominant. As a consequence, the horse may be gentle but playful, unthreatening but stubborn, and will enter your space without invitation. Considering the horse is a half ton creature, such intrusion can be harmful to you. If Attention and Respect are established before Trust, the horse believes you are dominant and will be gentle and quiet, unthreatening and willing, and will enter your space only if invited.
The Attention--Respect--Trust interaction cycle is done repeatedly with increasing demands until the following behavior is achieved by the horse. Attention is signaled by head up and eyes forward, ears alert and directed backwards, and stance is square. Respect is indicated by not entering your space unless invited, by moving out of your path, by backing with light touch on nose or with quiet hand signal. The respectful horse will lead with a limp lead rope; will stay at arms length; will stop when you stop; will move when you move; will move at your speed; and will stand quietly while being tacked, mounted, or dismounted. Trust is indicated by the horse accepting gentle approach and by not shying away from touch. The trusting horse seeks to be touched; yields his head, legs, and body easily; and his tail can be lifted with light pressure.
To increase sensitivity to commands, present the command in three levels of strength -- Request, Ask, Require. As the horse learns to respond to a lower command strength, lower the strength of the Request, Ask, Require levels. The idea is that the horse will learn to respond at the Ask level to avoid the Require level and the horse will learn to respond to the Request level to avoid the Ask level. By lowering the strength of the Request, Ask, Require levels, the horse will become very sensitive to the command.
Timing is critical. Remove the command as soon as the horse responds correctly to any degree. As the horse responds more correctly, require a slightly more correct response before removing the command. It is the removal of the command that constitutes a reward and reinforcement for learning. The removal is most effective in the first second after the correct response. Beyond three seconds is usually ineffective.
To decreasing sensitivity to stimuli, keep presenting the stimuli at an intensity just below that required to produce a significant reaction. Remove the stimuli as soon as the horse ignores it. Timing is similar to that required to increase sensitivity to commands. Keep increasing the strength of the stimuli slowly. The horse will learn to ignore a quite strong stimuli. This exercise is particularly useful in teaching the horse to accept and ignore anything that frightens him such as weeds, bushes, saddle pads, white plastic bags, etc.
A primary mode of communication between horses is touch. Horses will spend hours grooming each other. The dominant horse will initiate such grooming activity. Thus, grooming your horse produces not only cosmetically pleasing results, it produces reinforcement that you are dominant.
A horse perceives, learns, and reacts. It cannot reason or think as we can. As a consequence, a real or imagined injury can cause a horse to react by shutting down, clamping off, or mentally disconnecting the part of the body perceived as injured. Touch is the way of finding those disconnected areas. Excessive twitching or flinching, tight muscles, or actual knotted muscle will be the primary sign of such an area. Patterned stroking and progressively deep massage are used to relax and reconnect such areas. Thus freeing the full energy and power of the horse for performance.
The negative effect of tight or knotted muscles can be substantial. The mass of muscle involved with the problem must be matched by an equivalent mass of working muscle just to overcome the problem. Then a similar equivalent mass of muscle must be used to real work. Thus freeing the muscle will increase the muscle available for real work by 200 percent.
Clearly, fifteen years of work with horses cannot be exhaustively discussed in a short article. This article is but a brief outline of our experience and methods. However, it is our experience, that the methods we use work and work well. They have been successfully used with Quarter Horses, Morgans, and Arabs, as well as with Paso Finos and Peruvian Pasos.
My daughter Cheryl, her husband Gary Beard, and myself are making our experience and methods available, to the public, at the Windy Hills Ranch Training Center located a few miles east of Lancaster, California. We offer specialized seminars and training classes for children and adult riders. We are especially sensitive to the needs of the anxious rider. While we breed and raise Peruvian Paso Horses and specialize in the Spanish breeds, we do accept, for training, horses of any breed intended for riding.
We can be contacted at (805) 946-1772.
© Copyright 1995 - All Rights Reserved - Lionell K. Griffith