The herd grazes on the high desert plains, snatching mouthfuls of grasses if there are any. When they are thirsty, they are generally thirsty as a group, because the water hole may be some distance from where they are grazing.
Continue reading Feel invisible threads of connection with your horse
This is a refrain that I heard recently from an owner who was startled by the news. It’s not new; I’ve heard it many times before, spoken to owners with horses who have some behavioral issue. What is going on here?
The little things mean a lot with horses.
In Liberty Foundation Horsemanship, we talk a lot about “leadership,” which is also talked about in other forms of horsemanship. Basically, what that means is that a person must earn the “respect” of the horse, which begins with forming “trust,” or some sort of healthy “bond.”
Horses are fearful by nature; they are flight animals. How we address fear in the horse has to be a very fluid and dynamic thing because not all horses will respond to the same approach. A frightened horse is potentially dangerous because they are hard wired to flee or react suddenly when frightened.
For a number of years now, I’ve been doing distance bodywork on horses and people. Honestly, it doesn’t matter how far away those horses are, they can still greatly benefit from this help both anatomically and physiologically.
“At any kind of transition point in our lives we all need the certainty of knowing at some level that we are securely held. This is the ground from which we leap, however near or far, and to which we can return and be welcomed back.” – Wisdom of the Body Moving, by Linda Hartley.
Horses and their honesty, which sometimes translates to their inability to be polite, is energetically one of the things that differentiates horses from people and also from dogs. With horses, mostly what you see is what you get. But it takes time to know what you are looking at.
I have ridden many miles of trail in my life. Years ago, I had the thought that the trail really is a metaphor for life, because we choose the trail according to the same basic criteria as we choose to embark on activities in life, except that no one is paying us to do it, usually!
