Horses Show Us Who We Are

Chapter 4

Even though I was living in New York City and working at my day job in the film and television business, it seemed like all I was reading were books about horses, their history, training, care, biology and behavior. About this time “Natural Horsemanship” was becoming popular due to an 83 old former California rancher named Tom Dorrance. I learned that Natural Horsemanship simply meant horse training that’s based on what’s natural for horses as opposed to “Traditional Horsemanship”, which was based on what’s natural for humans. Tom had written a book in 1987 describing this method called: True Unity: Willing Communication Between Horse and Human.

Natural Horsemanship, is a methodology that looks at the horse-human relationship from the horse’s point of view. Books and movies have called it Horse Whispering. A human communicates with a horse by using the same body language that horses use to communicate with other horses. It is conducted on the ground, and referred to as Groundwork, which is more natural for a horse as opposed to sitting on his back. It creates a more harmonious relationship with a horse by using psychology, understanding and compassion to communicate, as opposed to the methods of Traditional Horsemanship, which usually rely on the use of force, intimidation and sometimes pain – “You kick’m to go, you pull’m to stop.”

Natural Horsemanship taught me that to have a successful relationship with a horse required three mandatory elements in order to work and be successful: love, trust and respect. This is also true for humans. You can love and respect your husband but if you don’t completely trust him, your marriage will not work. You can love and trust your horse but if he does not respect your leadership and instead, sees himself as the leader by deciding the direction or speed of your ride, riding him and your relationship will most likely not be fun or safe.

I also discovered that having an interactive relationship with a horse could reveal a lot about a person’s thoughts, feelings and psychology, including mine. Humans obviously have more sophisticated cognitive abilities than horses. However even with our superior intelligence I wondered if horses could help us learn how to create more successful and enduring relationships with our own species.