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It's All About What's In Your Heart and How You Use It"

© Gwenyth Browning Jones Santagate

Around seven or eight years ago I went to a clinic in western PA with a friend of mine. We went to watch Mark Rashid, a renowned "Natural Horse Trainer". Mark is a gentle, quiet man who blends himself in with each horse he's working with. There was nothing outstanding about Mark ... nothing loud or obstreperous. He had nothing to sell; no fancy halters or sticks or other paraphenalia that people come to expect from the "big, "natural" trainers." He had his heart and his mind - the two esssentials when working around horses.

The weekend went by too fast. The first night Mark had supper by the campfire at the host's house where my friend and I were also staying. Mark is just as gentle with humans and he is with horses. I asked him, at one point, how he would deal with a horse that continued to attack on the lunge line. He thought about it for a moment and then said, "Well, with all the thousands of horses that I've worked with I don't think I've ever run across a situation where the horse was that aggressive." That was Mark's answer. I went away from that conversation pretty disappointed as I had a mare who was constantly aggressive when her buttons were pushed. She would turn around quick as a wink and come after me with both hind feet firing. I had wanted a step-by-step answer to fix this behavior. Mark didn't give me that (although he did give me an answer to think about.) You know what? It wasn't the horse that needed to be "fixed"!

It was ME who needed the fixin'! Not my horse.

Let me explain further.

On the long ride back home to Massachusetts I was talking with my friend about this conversation and expressing how disappointed I was. She let me ramble on and on til finally I stopped. She then turned to me and said, "Well, think about this. Maybe Mark REALLY meant with all those thousand of horses that he's worked with he's never run across a sitatuation like that because he's never driven a horse to the point of needing to FEEL aggressive and defensive!"

BINGO! A simple answer that is worth more than all the gold in the world.

I've been remembering that and teaching it to hundreds of students ever since. It's not about the horse ... it's about the human. It's not about the horse needing fixing. It's about the human needing the fixing. The horse doesn't need to be "trained". Horses need to be "taught". The human cannot truly "control" the horse; the horse needs to be understood and respected. It's up to the human to learn how to understand what the horse is saying and work WITH the horse - not "work the horse".