Natural Horsemanship
Widely held opinions
The fact that an opinion is widely held is no evidence whatsoever that it is not utterly absurd... If there is one field of expertise where the opening quote on my main page is singularly apt, it must be horsemanship! After all, widely held opinion has it that
- You need to show a horse who's boss,
- You need to shoe a horse's feet or else they'll fall apart, and
- You need a bit to control a horse.
All of this is proving to be simply untrue, in fact it's proving to be utterly absurd!
Fooling around
When I was still at school, we had horses at home. To have them shod, we used to ride over to the blacksmith, a twenty minute ride, through a field and some farmtrails so we could avoid motorized traffic. We would ride bareback, on a horse wearing only a simple halter, with no problem whatsoever. Stopping, steering, sidepassing to open a gate, getting off to drag a fallen branch across a path and then jumping it, piece of cake. But that, of course, was just fooling around and not Real Riding. Real Riding meant using a saddle and bridle, and if you made progress in the dressage ring, a double bridle and spurs.
It never occurred to me at the time to question this. Just as I never questioned the fact that it was apparently necessary for the horses to have shoes on their front feet and not on their hind feet.
I no longer have my own horses, but I have spent the past years reading just about everything I could find on natural horsemanship (click on the photo if you want to read some titles), and only now I realize that all this fooling around had much more to do with horsemanship than all that Real Riding we used to do. It was certainly much more fun!
Bossless
It turns out you don't have to show a horse who's boss at all - that is to say, once you yourself know how to behave in a consistant, reliable and understandable way (from the horse's point of view), he will want to do what you "say" anyway. After all, a horse just wants to get along, horses are amazing in that respect. Dr. Robert M. Miller has written a great book on this subject, here is the first chapter. I also particularly enjoy the books by Mark Rashid - his website doesn't give much information about the way he works, but the books are invaluable.
Shoeless
It turns out horses do not need shoes. In fact, shoes do more harm than good. However, if you want your horse to go barefoot, you - the owner - will have to take responsability for his feet, because the way you keep him he can't do that himself. It means you'll have to learn to do a regular quick trim yourself - that's once a week, not every six or more weeks.
Read this article about barefoot police horses if you don't think it's feasible in your case. Visit Marjorie Smith's website, if you want to read up on the subject first.
Bitless
As for bits... if your horse is well trained, you don't need a bit at all. Classical dressage without a bit? Yes, it is entirely possible, as you can see on Alexander Nevzorov's site. The trailer for his film is breathtaking (very slow loader, but worth it), and there are some photos which should put you off bits for life.
Much as I admire Nevzorov and his work, his approach to spreading the word (the natural-horsemanship-word) does not appeal to me. If you've watched the trailer, please take the time to also take a look at Honza Blaha's Remake of the Horse Whisperer (go to Video Gallery, not to the new site). The video quality sucks, and Honza's Gaston looks like a scruffy pony compared to Nevzorov's beautiful black horse, but essentially he does the same stuff. The big difference seems to be that in the Remake, people are having fun!
In Dutch
If you read Dutch, this is an excellent place to find loads of information (and a very lively forum) on all aspects of natural horsemanship.
Wishful thinking
If I ever have the time (and the budget) to keep a horse again, I know exactly what I'll do: take off the shoes (and find an experienced farrier to assist me through the transition fase, while learning to do the regular trim myself), do a Parelli Level 1 course - because I believe that provides an excellent structured programme to get myself and the horse accustomed to another way of communicating - and then take it from there.
In the meantime
Being a bit horsemad doesn't go away just because you lack time and budget to ride the way you'd want to. Although I'll never take traditional dressage lessons ever again, I do love riding, so for a couple of years I went to Sanders Dalenk when I wanted to ride.
This is a stable run strictly according to the traditional widely held opinions, alas, but the focus is not on making the horses perform one way or another. It's all about simply enjoying the lovely Loenermark natural reserve on horseback. Just following the trails, seeing if you can spot deer or wild boars, watching the heath and the woods change with the seasons, and generally enjoying yourself immensely.
So I rode there, concentrated on not getting in the horse's way and experimented with subtle communication - which sometimes works amazingly well, even on these horses who are used to lugging around all sorts of inexperienced riders. I tried not to touch the bit at all during the ride - this actually works 99% of the time.
Sometimes it didn't. For instance when Jasper, a horse I really enjoyed riding because he seemed to give me a lot of feedback on my attempts at natural communication while riding, sweet Jasper suddenly decided that the cattle grid we had to cross to enter the Loenermark has turned into a trap covering a crocodilepit, and flatly refused to cross it. He must have crossed the damn thing a thousand times and the horses in front of him have just walked over it without turning a hair, it makes no difference.
There I was, on one side of the grid on the very worried horse, while on the other side five people are waiting and someone's yelling at me to "show him who's boss!".
I hated it when that happened. Luckily it didn't happen often.
Gradually this traditional way of treating the horses bugged me more and more. Trying to explain there was another way of doing things had no effect, after all the boss there had been doing it this way for fifty years, and it worked fine, didn't it? That, and a nasty fall in the summer of 2006, made me decide to stop going. Although I still miss the rides and the friends I made there.