CONNECTIONS

After watching a horrendous "join-up" session yesterday by a woman with good intentions but lacking common sense, I am compelled to write an expose on gentle "connections" with your horse. Connecting with any horse is not a difficult thing to do. After all, horses need to have a leader within the herd. This is just the way they are wired. If the human handler does not take over the position of the leader, then the horse, out of basic need, will fill that position. Now I know there are many, many horsepeople who deal with horses that "think" that they can be the leader. Well, you know what? They're 100% correct! IF the human allows the situation to be as such, then the horse IS the leader. This has been discussed in a previous article titled, "Don't Tell Me What to Do!". I will not repeat what has already been stated, but please go back and refresh yourself in this topic.

Now, it seems to me that given that horses are animals of prey and we are predators, when we humans approach horses in an aggressive manner, we are going to scare that horse into its flight or fight instinctual behavior. That is common sense. Yesterday, I had the misfortune to watch someone "teaching" someone else how to "join-up". The 'instructor' began by telling the student, "Now I want you to feel every angry feeling you can and direct those feelings towards the back of the horse's shoulder. This is what happens in the wild. I want you to shout, yell, run, wave that flag furiously and make that animal MOVE! I want to see that horse running for its life." Let's stop right now and ask this question ... why, on God's green earth, would a horse want to "join up" with some crazy predator chasing it around and around, threatening to kill it? Well, as I expected, the horse not only tried several times to climb up the arena wall to get away, but then broke through the barrier and did run for its life. Common sense? What are those words? Sense that is common? Unfortunately, I do see alot of this type of thinking when it comes to horses so it *may* be common but it sure isn't "sense". Horses, by nature, are calm, gentle animals that love to do nothing more than graze, sleep and make more horses. They don't like to exert themselves very much. They certainly don't like hanging around someone or something that is threatening their lives. Horses will run away just long enough to get out of the way of danger and far enough away to see what the danger is clearly. To add to the "teaching" to which I was hearing, the instructor also told the student that "she wanted to see that horse so tired that it will BEG to join up and stand next to her. It will be frothing at the mouth, licking and chewing. That shows the submissive action that we want to see." OK, well thinking like that one could be predisposed to thinking that a horse will run away from a horse-eating lion or bear until it was so tired that it would walk up to the lion or bear and stand quietly in submission and BEG the bear or lion to have it for lunch. Somehow, I don't think this is the case. I don't think I have ever heard of a horse asking to be made into a 7 course meal. Let's go into some of the sensible issues of connecting or joining up.

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