Monday L&HB Day One

Apologies for the delay in writing - been busy! And before all the emails come in about photos - I'll do some at the weekend - been busy! Anyway, it will be worth the wait!

Day One of Liberty&HorseBehaviour

I learned the Parelli declaration of the 8 principles of horse-man-ship (a horse and a man on a journey) which I shall post separately for those that are interested.

And then I was plunged into the scary world of 100% participation American style! Dancing, clapping, yahooing! and that was just their way of saying 'Good Morning!' - so out of my comfort zone, we Brits are definitely more reserved!

Next was my responsibilities as a learner. 100% participation, knowing the power of empowering "how" questions, recognising their effect upon others and living through the question to find the answer myself. Also recognising those sneaky little voices in your head that say helpful things like "I already know that" and replying "thankyou for sharing that with me, but maybe I can learn something new anyway"!

"It's not about the........trailer, jump, piece of plastic, etc...." was then covered and what that really means. If the horse trusts your leadership then he will do anything for you. And to remember that, even today, the number one use for horses (even above recreation) is for food/meat and therefore it should not be suprising that the ultimate prey animal sees us as PREDATORS!

Interesting fact: EQUUS mean equal to us.

Wild horses live perfectly content lives. WE bring horses into OUR environment and provide for their needs - food, water, farrier, dentist - but all of these are physical needs. Like humans, horses have mental and emotional needs also- how do we cater for these? Mostly we don't.

A horse's horsenality consists of the following; innate characteristics, spirit, learned behaviour and environment. We have influence over the latter two only. Learned behaviour comes from the dam, herd and humans and can be both good AND bad! Horses are cowards, claustrophobics and panickaholics by varying degrees - it's their nature.

I played "Me and My Shadow" with Roget today. "Me" was Roget and "My Shadow" was me - basically I gave him 51% leadership and kept 49%, so he was the boss! He took me on a grand tour of all the feed buckets we could find, the best grazing spots to be had and the route out to the forest, where I can only assume he likes to go hacking. My job was to shadow, i.e. copy his behaviour and stance, try to feel what he was feeling and focus on the things he deemed important. This was a powerful exercise.

Horsenality wise, I believe Roget to be Left Brained, but am unsure whether it is extrovert or introvert at the moment (he may be both?). Generally he is friendly, responsive, food orientated and a very nice chap!