What's your brand of horsemanship? A look inside creating THU

Creating a resource in horse training? Conditioning? Convincing? Horsemanship?

When thinking about creating this “Horseman’s University” the plan seemed simple enough: get together some great horsemen and horsewomen and create a resource where people can learn “horsemanship” from many different “brands” of trainers. After all, everyone learns a bit differently. The way that Jake Biernbaum may describe a horse approaching a ditch might resonate a little different than how Tik Maynard describes it to a given person. That opened the door to some deeper, existential kind of thinking… What are they talking about? What is horsemanship? Do horses have feelings? How is their process any different from the rest of “traditional” trainers? Is there a difference? Things that seemed black and white blurred to grey, then blue, orange, back to black, then swirled in to a confusing rainbow of terms and techniques and finally fell back into organized thought. Are there universal truths to horse training? Well, I have a couple cents about it. Take it for what it’s worth, I wouldn’t consider myself a professional horse trainer. Sure I have a little experience in training but so does anyone else who’s given a horse a cookie… The vast majority of my knowledge comes mostly from countless of hours of filming, editing and watching from behind a camera lens. Nevertheless, patterns and commonalities can’t help but surface.

Tools and such

When is a stick just a stick, and when is it something more? Sounds like an automobile ad for sticks doesn’t it? Well, a stick, as it would turn out, is just a stick… as is a stick and string, stick and flag, whip, crop, etc. In the context of horse training I generally file them in a category of “things to shush a horse around with” and as such, a stick becomes something else depending greatly on how the thing is used. After all, a paintbrush is just a stick with bristles on it. Is it some indefinable quality of the brush that makes a masterpiece? It is the subtle movements, the years and repetitions and experience of the artist that turns the paintbrush into an artful medium. If you asked an artist to paint something with a sponge or their fingers, no doubt they could accomplish a beautiful work of art. Similarly, with training horses, I have seen the best communicate with horses via a stick and string just the same as with a plastic grocery bag on the end of a fishing rod or the tail of the longe line. Some tools make training easier or more difficult because of their length, sturdiness or form. The fundamental element remains the same; how the tool is used makes the training effective, kind, cruel, and whether or not a trainer is in our minds practicing “good horsemanship.”

Communication, patience and things

This one is a rabbit hole, and I’m sure there will be many future articles addressing this. One thing I’ll say is that in teaching a horse (not refining something that’s already trained) there is a good amount of figuring in the beginning. After all, the horse is being asked to do something that it has no idea about yet. A horse doesn’t really understand if you say, “Please, get in the trailer.” It will, however, understand that outside the trailer, looking away from the trailer, being away from the trailer is uncomfortable. It is in this contrast that lies the training and pattern building - trailer good: other things not so good. It doesn’t have to be with an obstacle like a trailer either, it could be something as simple as a hind end yield away from you. An incremental amount of contrast is offered until the hip moves away - yielding hip good: standing still not good and getting worse. A common underlying theme in “horsemanship” is offering a contrast consistently, patiently, incrementally and fairly towards a goal. Ryan Rose has described training these patterns as something like this: first you start off with a little deer path through the woods - a basic understanding that takes a little while to get from point A to point B, then it becomes an ATV trail - things go a little faster but you’re still off-road, then it becomes a gravel drive, then a paved road, and eventually a high-speed freeway. It works to a great advantage both in training and in developing a good relationship.

Just scratching the surface…

There is so much information out there about the training, psychology and care of animals. Sorting training out into digestible chunks in your mind can be a daunting task and just as you do, you start learning about biomechanics and things start to drift back out into orbit. But really, that is the great thing about the love of horses, whether as a hobbyist, trainer, or competitor… there is always more to learn, more to teach, more to share with everyone else working on this puzzle. I just hope The Horseman’s University can be one more way to help find the edge pieces.

Looking forward to sharing more thoughts soon -