Arianna Llewellyn of Serendipity Farms in Quilcene invited me to co-host a horsemanship workshop last month, which turned out to be a fun afternoon of motion. We started by putting motion in ourselves with jumping jacks, just to see what our horses thought of it. Some horses crowded in, while others started jumping around, themselves. The ones that crowded in ran into our flapping arms, while those that moved their feet inspired us to get even more active with our jumping jacks. But soon, all the horses settled down and found a place to rest quietly as their owners caught their breath and digested what caused the change in their horse.
We discussed commotion, and how horses sometimes use commotion to get their handlers to weaken their position, allowing the horse to take over. The horse that crowds in wants to weaken our position by moving us off our ground or personal space. The horse that becomes active is looking for the same thing, but is pulling us to weaken our position while he is in motion. Both tactics cause a change in the human rather than a change in the horse.
As an exercise to build our influence over the horse's feet we started working on our lead-by's, evaluating the feel on the rope as we gave our horse's feet a job. We worked on this skill until we felt our horses begin feeling back to us. The horses could tell when we wanted them to move off and when we wanted them to stop, turn and go the other way, with just a soft feel of the rope.
When directing the feet at a higher rate of speed than the horse is willing to go we become the leader of the situation. As we said earlier, horses often make a commotion to weaken the position of their handler, specifically to test our power to see what their position will be in this herd of two. With these horses we can cause their own efforts to become work. In other words, we don't shut their feet down, but through our skill in rope handling activities such as lead by's, we add to his energy with changes of direction and a little more speed. The beauty of this is that the horses' acting out how athletic and smart they were becomes a whole lot of work and soon the game is over. The handlers' emotions remain calm and confident throughout the exercise, which is exactly what a horse needs us to be in order for them to trust us as a leader.
Commotion is converted into motion with the help of educated rope handling. Controlled movement of the horse's feet turns chaos into a dance of confidence and leadership. Look at your emotions around your horse: are you dancing around him? ...Or is he dancing with you, at your direction? As you work on your rope handling skills you will become calm and confident, and be the leader your horse wants and needs you to be.
