I don’t recall if it was Tom Dorrance or Ray Hunt who said about young horses “you only ever have one chance to make the first impression“, and how true that saying was and still is. After watching a painful attempt at trailer loading a young filly I was never more mindful of that saying.
I pulled up at the wrong time, just in time to see a horse owner, frustrated and angry with a young one because it would not get on the trailer for the first time – having absolutely no preparatory work done at all. The youngster was rough handled by the halter, having its head violently jerked around out of anger, pushed and pulled and it was being knocked around in a mindless and uncalled for manner.
The halter was being held firmly, in a clenched fist, by the cheek piece with the youngster being variously jerked toward the handler then effective punched away again. As Dr. Steve Peters wrote in the book Evidence Based Horsemanship “Someone with anger issues could attribute a horse’s confusion, fear, or self preservation as insubordination and deserving of punishment. Horses are horses, and behave as horses should. They have no alternative. It’s humans who decide to label certain of these behaviours as stubborn, lazy, or sour“
I am slowly learning to mind my own business, unfortunately the more I delve into horsemanship the more I notice rough handling. However, with great restraint, instead of intervening, I watched dumbstruck by the sheer stupidity of the moment. Abuse seems ubiquitous in the world of the horse – and I am ever aware of Tom Dorrance declaring he was the “horse’s lawyer” – I count myself fortunate to have friends and mentors who are like minded, yet calling out abuse and implementing change is not easy.
One need not be the highest expert to observe and evaluate faults, one need only have a keen eye, a passion for the activity, and a taste for finer things. Seeing what is wrong with people who demand too much of a horse, or any other animal for that matter, does not require anything more of you than simply caring.
When a horse has been mishandled it can be emotionally scarred for a very long time, fortunately improper handling can be corrected in most horses but it can require a high ratio of proper handling to undo the damage – according to Martin Black, the ratio can easily be 100/1. If you don’t have the patience and mental capacity to handle horses, you probably should not be around them.
There are several reasons why horses are so often subjected to abuse, among the most common are ignorance – the handler simply doesn’t know any different, having never learned horsemanship, and probably the seemingly least likely cause is the nature of the horse itself, horses are by nature very tolerant, and do not live in the past to the same extent humans do. They always default to the easiest path, which is why making the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult is such a well known maxim.
When you are handling a young one for the first time, be kind, thoughtful, and allow them time to make the right decision, then praise it heartily for that choice. Never rush and always be mindful of the old Vaquero saying “tienes siempre mañana” which translates to “you always have tomorrow”. If you approach something with a horse as if you only have five minutes it will usually take a lot longer, whereas if you approach it with the idea you have all day, you’ll probably get it done in five minutes! Perhaps the most important idea expressed by Ray Hunt was “THINK!“