By Mary Gallagher
Some of the best lessons in horsemanship are those we once learned that come around again, as if to be understood more deeply in the present. For instance, one of my early teachers, master horseman Jimmy Williams used to tell me, "Allow your horse to escape in the direction you want him to go."
Where does your horse want to go?
During the Joe Wolters clinic last month I came to understand what Jimmy was saying on a whole new level. I thought I would share some of my new insight with you this month.
One of the things Joe brought to our attention was how we could use the life in our horses' feet to improve skills we would be needing other places in our riding.
For instance, he had Jess put a tarp on the ground for us to cross over. Of course the tarp got our horses' attention, and some pretty interesting life showed up in our horses' feet. But instead of forcing the horse to go over the tarp, Joe coached us to use the energy the horse was creating in trying to get away from the tarp, to practice our shoulder yields, back ups, or some of the other things we were leaning from Joe. Each time returning to the tarp to see which way our horse would want to escape the next time. The escapes became the yields Joe wanted us to work on for use later in our cow work.
As we repeated this exercise the horses lost interest in the escape part of the game (possibly because it was looking a lot like work) and became more interested in the tarp (building curiosity) and what the other side of the tarp was like. In no time at all our horses were willingly taking us over the tarp, and pretty soon the tarp was not nearly as much fun because the horse no longer needed to look for some place else to go. So we progressed to the cows, using the same technique to get the horse interested in the cow.
Asking ourselves where our horse wants to be, and using the energy of the escape to make our idea his idea is a simple approach with many uses. Thank you Joe, for helping me take my horsemanship to a new place of understanding.
(Originally published August 2013)
