The good boy horse is one who continually does what is asked. For some trainers and owners, this is exactly what they want, a horse that does not offer any challenges. For some good boy or girl horses, life is good enough that there is no need to question too much. For others, they have had their wishes trained out of them.
One day some years ago I was riding my gelding Khami at a fast trot along some side trails, then dropping into a sweet arroyo, then swooping back out of the sand to head up a rocky hillside. The light and shadows created by low hung branches played across the canyon, the sun kissed the tips of my horse’s flying black mane as we moved along together, feeling as one, like we had done for so many miles before.
My gelding Khami inspired me to write this blog. But he’s not the only one: there are others I have worked with over the past years who are like him in one way or another.
In the pasture, the horses usually gallop off to one particular favorite place, up over the ridge to where some colts are stabled. Then I hike up there and my mare Zuzka rounds everyone up when I ask the horses to come back with me. This time, my gelding Khami took over, and he got everyone going.
2014 saw the birth of the Independent Liberty Trainers Network (ILTN), a loose knit group of seven trainers from three different countries, who spearheaded a new paradigm for the horse.
I talk a lot about “being in the moment” with horses, but I have not said much about something I’ve been noticing with my own horses over the years – precognition.
It’s 2015! I started to write a bunch of resolutions for working with horses – “horse-olutions” I call them, and then realized: I don’t like New Year’s resolutions!
We all want something from the horse. Otherwise most of us wouldn’t have one or work with one.
Most people who have been around horses for a long while have suffered injuries. These injuries –unless treated deeply, and I mean with bodywork after the stitches or surgeries have healed, may continue to cause restrictions both in the physical body and the emotional and psychic bodies.
It’s debatable whether horses love people or not. But they definitely feel very big emotion for them and about them. It’s easy to be flattered when a horse pays special attention to you and depends upon just you – even more so than when your dog licks your face!
