Herd living provides horses with all they need for
their physical and emotional survival. It is easy to supply solutions for the
former but far more difficult to serve the latter. From the moment we take a
horse away from his social circle, he feels an inner need to return. It is up
to us to find ways to replicate those feelings of comfort and safety in our
company, or within the confines of our areas of containment, that he can
experience as a natural extension to his daily routine free from anxiety and
worry.
It only requires a small leap of faith to believe
that removing horses from their natural environment isn’t that unnatural
depending on what our motives are and how we approach the great responsibility
of delivering information so that the horse understands what we want him to do
for us. To do this successfully in harmony with horse nature involves
horsemanship which, on a deeper level, is really horse..man..relationship; horse
and man working together to build a relationship, a meaning which may not be
recognised from a purely mechanical perspective.
The foundation for the most authentic horse-human
relationship is built on trust, mutual respect, listening and communication. An
absence of these basic qualities, which are everywhere in nature, will lack
depth because a training program on its own it isn’t natural whereas building a
relationship is. The term Natural Horsemanship makes us feel we are doing the
best by the horse but if we simply go through the motions they tend to have a
mechanical quality. In working with horses naturally, we must get in touch our
true nature. Horses know when we have an agenda contrary to our original
(natural) self, and are unable to completely trust us. One of the most
important factors in the natural horsemanship armoury is our sense of feel. When
we ask something of the horse, as in giving an aid, he may well do it, but it
won’t be executed as freely as if we were to ask him from a place of true
feeling. Horses really can relate to requests based on integrity of feeling, allowing
them to respond in a much softer manner.
Although we sometimes forget we are part of the
cycle of nature, we have an inner longing to feel and rediscover it and there
is no better place to start than by simply watching horses who are truly at
home in the great outdoors. Natural Horsemanship is not so much a method, it is
more a way of thinking, based on developing a sense of feel free from the
pressures of linear time that can lead to a completely new outlook and way of
being. There are indeed lessons to be learned through relationship building
with horses that go beyond horsemanship.
