The Soul of a Horse

by Joe Camp

  But how do you do that if you have a crazy, high-spirited horse?

  The simple answer is: Don’t have a crazy, high-spirited horse if you’re a beginner.

  I’ve watched dozens of clinician DVDs and a few live clinics, and I’m continually amazed at the horses many of these scared-out-of-their-minds beginners (and not-so-beginners) show up with. You only lose your fear through mileage—time and experience—and you’re not going to get much mileage if you’re afraid your horse is going to kill you. Making matters worse, when you’re afraid, your adrenaline is up and your horse can read that, and his adrenaline will rise as well. Monty Roberts says, “Adrenaline up, learning down. Adrenaline down, learning up.”

  Pat Parelli tells about one of his clinics in Australia where he asked everyone to demonstrate their horses so he could get some sense of what he would be dealing with. After seeing each student ride, he told the group that he wouldn’t think of riding any of the horses he had just seen.

  Pat would school them first. Create relationships and safety. And even for a beginner, that can mean progress. But some horses, even with relationship, are too much for some beginners to cope with. Too spirited. Too excitable. It depends so much on the horse, and the human, and the human’s fear threshold. Pat Parelli has decades of experience reading horses and communicating with them. For the beginner or early intermediate, there’s a much simpler answer to pushing through fears and gaining confidence. Don’t let your eye get caught by that young, feisty, wild and crazy horse just because he looks so cool.

  It’s true.

  Kathleen is proof.

  She learned nothing when she was garbled with fear about falling off. She learned very quickly after finding Skeeter.

  “But I can only afford one horse,” comes the usual response.

  “Perfect,” I say. “Get a Skeeter.”

  “No. I want a horse that will be good for me when I become an expert.”

  “If you start with that horse, you might never become an expert. And if you do, it’ll surely take much, much longer.”

  Everybody, of course, doesn’t need a Skeeter. People are different, and have different thresholds. And horses are different. The point is to find the right relationship for what you’re doing at the time. My fear threshold was higher than Kathleen’s. It only kicked in when it came time for me to canter, to go fast. I put off doing that forever. Cash loves to go fast. I didn’t, in the beginning. My adrenaline would soar at the very thought of it. Then, of course, so would Cash’s.

  So finally what I did was drop down to Mariah.

  Literally.

  Sweet, tiny, sensitive—did I say small?—obedient Mariah. If I was to fall off, the ground was only half the distance of a launch from Cash, or so it seemed. Her speed was much more manageable than Cash’s. And because her legs were shorter, her gait was shorter. Never mind that none of that should matter; it did. Emotionally. Pushing through my fear would be a lot safer on Mariah.

  Perception.

  When it comes to fear, perception is the key ingredient. Just ask a horse.

  I knew that the only way I could ever effectively work on Cash’s speed was to be able to focus on the speed, not my fears. Develop confidence in the saddle at a canter. “Get my seat,” as the clinicians say. My balance point.

  Lose the fear.

  And lo and behold, when I went back to Cash and asked for that first canter, because my adrenaline wasn’t up, neither was his, and he loped away at a very calm, leisurely pace, thank you very much, and stopped when I asked him to. It continues to amaze me how that works.

  If you can only have one horse, then make it one horse at a time. The right horse for each time. Then you can push right through your fears and concentrate on learning, and teaching, and becoming confident. Both you and your horse. You can actually build a relationship, instead of just going through the motions out of fear.

  Don’t fall into that instant gratification bucket. Here, Mr. Trainer, make Flicka the perfect horse that will love and respect me and do everything I say. Immediately.

  Pat Parelli says that’s like sending your spouse to a trainer.

  Kathleen jokes that we have six horses: mine, and the five she went through trying to dispel her fears. For various reasons, each horse came up too much for her, or so she thought. Until Skeeter. He had pretty much seen it all in his eighteen years; a seasoned veteran who had been around the block, not much bothered him. His roping career had taken him all over the place, in and out of trailers, arenas, and stalls, all furnished with noise, strange goings-on, and raised adrenalines. He was a good home for Kathleen and, after Join-Up, gave her plenty of calm and quiet to practice her training and riding skills. To build her confidence. He taught her well, and now she rides and works with everyone in our herd, except Cash. And I don’t think she’s far from taking a turn with him.

  If she had continued to work with a young, feisty, easily excitable horse—even with Join-Up and extensive work on the ground building relationship, leadership, and control—I don’t believe she would’ve ever effectively been that horse’s leader, be what he needed to respect her. There was too much fear and worry blocking her concentration. It was the wrong horse for her to be riding at that stage of her development.

  But with Skeeter, she was able to focus, and teach, and learn. And her fears were all but vanquished when we headed off to Texas for the three-day trail ride.

  The ride would put us in the saddle for six to seven hours a day for three days, maybe as many as twenty hours, which probably equaled the total number of hours Kathleen had spent in the saddle during the entire past year. Her rides at home usually averaged fifteen to twenty minutes each.

  She needed mileage.

  The ride was a benefit to restore Fort Griffin, a Civil War village and compound, put on by our dear friend country-western singer-songwriter Red Steagall. I had dreamed of nights around the campfire listening to Red sing and recite cowboy poetry. My Boot Barn boots were now well broken in and ready for the real thing.

  We flew into Dallas–Fort Worth then drove out to the campsite with Red and his wife. The horse I would ride, Sonny Boy, was in the trailer, but Painto, Kathleen’s mount, was coming with another rider and would be staying at a different, remote campsite. This was a shame. But, as it turned out, it provided a fascinating study.

  Red and I put up the temporary corral, and as we walked the horses down to the watering bucket, Sonny Boy and I stopped, backed up, went forward again, and made several U-turns. I asked him to move his hindquarters, and he swung them left and right, catching on to my cues quickly. He seemed to think it was a game, and enjoyed getting a rub for a job well done. I backed him away with the lead line, rubbed him again, and otherwise began to pry myself into the thinking side of Sonny Boy’s gray matter.

  “Scor…pi…on,” Kathleen chortled, walking along beside me.

  I didn’t even attempt an excuse. She was right. She knew it, and I knew it. I had to connect, or at least try.

  I had Sonny Boy trot circles on the lead line, and change direction, and I ultimately stopped and turned away to see if he would walk up to me. A poor boy’s Join-Up. He did. I spent some time just hanging out with him, with no agenda. Just being there. After a bit, he was following me around the pen.

  And Kathleen had yet to even meet Painto.

  Had Sonny Boy and I actually joined up? Probably not. He had been on a line, not free to roam. Was it better than just walking up and climbing on? Absolutely. We were getting to know each other, and he was learning that I was an interesting, reasonably capable human, not just someone who crawled on for a ride. He was learning that I would give him choices, and could engage his brain, and cause him to move. In short, I was establishing myself in the role of a benevolent leader. Someone Sonny Boy would listen to. Someone he could trust. And someone he would not fear.

  We had never met. Didn’t know each other. But we both knew that one of the criteria of leadership is determined by who moves who a
round. Who can walk up with a simple pinning of the ears and move the other horse away from a pile of hay or a watering hole. Sometimes it might require a nip on the butt, or just the threat of a nip. The criterion is the same with the human-horse relationship. I’ve never bitten a horse on the butt, but when I can—with a mere shake of the lead line, a pointing of a finger, or a touch to the hindquarters—move the horse from here to there, and control his various body parts, it generates respect that translates into trust. I become the leader. This is one of those equine concepts that is difficult for humans to grasp because we attach emotion to the action, when, to the horse, there is none. It’s just the way they are, and is as much a part of their nature as eating.

  There’s no substitute for allowing the horse to make a choice, to choose you to be part of the herd, or choose to do what you’re asking rather than being forced to do it. There’s responsibility attached to these decisions. Join-Up is the ultimate choice, but not the only one. And good leadership only begins with Join-Up. The leadership must continue. To be able to engage the horse’s curiosity, his thinking side, while knowing when to back off when he does something correctly speaks volumes to him.

  A request, instead of a demand, allows him to make a choice. And when he makes choices to do what you request, you become his trusted and respected leader.

  Unlike the human fraternity, every equine herd has a detailed pecking order, from top to bottom. If there are twenty members of the herd, there are twenty places on the ladder, and everybody knows their place. If the leadership is not good, that place is often in question. One horse will move up a notch. This behavior has nothing to do with whether the horse moving up likes the other horse or not. It’s just the way it is.

  Their way of life.

  It’s difficult for humans to realize that a horse attempting to wrestle away the leadership role isn’t forsaking the relationship. But he’s not. He’s just rearranging it. Responding to genetic programming. We don’t have to understand the emotional dilemma humans would like to attach to such a conundrum. But to deal appropriately, compassionately, with horses we must know that it exists. And we must understand how to use this unique portion of the equine lifestyle and language to enhance our relationship and leadership role. We must be a horse.

  To every horse, so completely concerned with safety and security, his leader is everything. With a good leader, he feels safe. With an ineffective leader, his genetics leave him but one choice. To become the leader. This is true when he’s dealing with another horse, or with a human in a herd of two. The minute the quality of leadership takes a turn for the worse, the horse is going to attempt to step into that role.

  Always testing.

  Checking on our leadership qualities.

  Are some horses easier to lead than others?

  You betcha. Just like people.

  If, however, we have begun properly with the horse, if we’re at the top of the ladder, with the trust and respect that goes with the position, the horse will make little more than token efforts to test us, just to confirm that he still has a good leader. But if we allow the horse to take over, he will. From his point of view, he has no choice.

  At home, Kathleen and I have spent an enormous amount of time working with our horses on the ground, teaching them to move one body part or another, ultimately with little more than a look or a nudge. This not only enhances our position as their leader, it enhances their desire to please and makes them safer, less apt to be challenging our leadership.

  That’s what I was working on with Sonny Boy.

  And what Kathleen was unable to work on with Painto. When we arrived at the trailhead the next morning, she was presented with a saddled, bridled horse, meeting him for the first time. A sniff of the hand and a couple of rubs on the face were about all she had time for before the troops were headed off down the trail.

  Even with so little introduction, her first two days were terrific. Painto was very well trained, calm and responsive to the lightest touch. Kathleen was very happy with him and her confidence was soaring. Not just at the walk. There were many long trots.

  “What’s a long trot?” I had to ask Red. “Is that referring to the length of stride, or the length of the ride?”

  “Yes,” he grinned through his sagebrush beard. “Both.”

  What neither Kathleen nor I was told was that both Sonny Boy and Painto had really strong ties to their pasture mates, both of whom were on the ride. One was being ridden by Red, and the other by Jimbo, Painto’s owner. But because we all spent most of the time in close proximity, chatting and enjoying one another’s company, there were no clues as to what might happen if Jimbo or Red were to vanish into the woods.

  Until the third day.

  Kathleen’s morning began a little differently from the previous two. Jimbo was convinced that Kathleen was in control and doing well, so he had taken off in the lead on Painto’s pasture mate while Kathleen was still saddling Painto. He became a different horse in a blink. Nervous. Concerned about his safety. Reactive rather than thinking. His only leader had disappeared up the trail, and it wasn’t Kathleen.

  She fought him for two hours, afraid to let him go fast enough to catch up for fear she would not be able to stop him. Visions of her teenage experiences with Jack danced in her head. Then the trail boss rode by.

  “Kathleen, you ready for the cattle drive?” he said.

  “Absolutely,” she responded. “Bring ’em on.”

  She had no idea he was serious.

  I had no idea she wasn’t.

  To all outward appearances, she was handling Painto just fine. But I learned later it was pure cover-up, an effort to not look wimpy in front of all the real Texas cowboys on the ride. Her fears had been rising all morning. And when fear begins to telegraph uncertainty to a horse, everything escalates.

  It was not going well.

  Then the trail boss brought everyone to a halt.

  “Here’s where we all split up and start rounding up those longhorns. Now listen up for your assignment.”

  “Rounding up what?” Kathleen asked.

  Those words were barely out of her mouth when Jimbo got his assignment and loped off across the prairie. That turned Painto from a nervous, jiggy horse into a loose cannon.

  Kathleen was done. It was all she could do to keep him in the vicinity.

  “I think I should get off and walk back,” she said.

  “He’ll probably be fine as soon as the other horse is out of sight,” one of the riders advised.

  But Kathleen was having none of it.

  No longer was she experiencing the tiny fears about details that she was actually handling quite well. Now she had a truck-load-sized fear about all the things that could happen. Might happen. The kind of fear that, properly stoked, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like on a ski slope when you are certain a particular hill isn’t wide enough for you to make turns. If you believe it, it’ll be true. And it was occurring to Kathleen that she might not be able to control a nervous wreck of a horse in the midst of an angry herd of stampeding longhorns.

  In truth, this was definitely the kindergarten of cattle drives, barely an hour long, driving thirty or forty very calm longhorns from a pasture into Fort Griffin for the evening’s festivities. I think there were at least twenty of us to do it. One rider for every two cows. Not the usual odds.

  But to Kathleen, even one rider per cow wasn’t enough. She had been arguing with Painto all morning, and now the vision of stampeding longhorns, all headed straight for her, was wedging itself into her imagination. She was beginning to lose it.

  I would soon learn that Sonny Boy was also focused on a buddy. When Red and I rode out to take up our positions for the drive, Red and Sonny Boy’s pasture buddy disappeared off into the trees. Sonny Boy wanted to follow. He got nervous and jiggy, and called out to his buddy, his fear and adrenaline rising. But a few quick exercises reminded him that he was okay with me. He’d jig right, and I’d say, Let’s turn a ci
rcle to the left. When he’d try to go forward, I’d say, Let’s back up, And every time he did as I asked, I would rub him on the neck, tell him “good boy,” and put slack in my reins and legs to give him release and comfort. In other words, I gave him the choice. Be relaxed, pay attention, and remember that I’m your leader and you are safe with me, or plan on turning circles and backing up for the next hour. Get out of the reactive side of your brain and move to the thinking side.

  It wasn’t long before he forgot about his buddy and focused on a sprig of grass. He had a good leader right here who understood him, and things were just fine, thank you very much. We stood there, a herd of two, no one else in sight, for maybe ten minutes. When the time came for us to move forward toward the cattle, he was calm, focused, listening, and ready to do his job. Which, parenthetically, he knew way better than I did.

  Kathleen had all these tools, but when fear is on the rise, it tends to take over. She was about to dismount when an older cowboy, a very generous sort, took her reins and said, “You can just pony along with me up the road until he loses sight of his friend, then he’ll be okay. We’ll stay well away from the longhorns and just chat.”

  Later she told me that as they walked down the road, the cowboy had carefully and calmly talked her down off the ledge until her fear was on the run. Interestingly, as generous as the old cowboy was, the thing that prodded Kathleen back to the job at hand was a statement he made about her relationship with the horse.

  “I think you believe you can be buddies with this horse.”

  The old cowboy paused. Of course she believed that.

  “You can’t be buddies with a horse,” he said flatly. “All he wants to do is get back to the herd. He cares nothing about you, nor will he ever. He will tolerate you up on his back because you make him tolerate it. You give him no choice.”

  Quite suddenly Kathleen was back in control.