Published on 11/23/2005

Sue

Some years ago there was a book making the rounds called, "Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten." I sometimes think that everything I've learned about horses I learned from my first one. She was my horse trainer's kindergarten, although I didn't realize how much or just what I was learning from her at the time. It took some years of seasoning for me to understand all of Sue's lessons.

Rafsu wasn't the first horse I worked with but she was the first one I owned. I was 19 at the time. She was a picture pretty bay Arabian mare trimmed with white that stood about 15 hands. I saw her when she was 18 months old and sold an electric guitar to make the first $50 payment on her. So I guess you could say that besides training me how to be a trainer, she's also the reason I'm not a rock star today.

Everybody said you shouldn't ride a horse until it was 2 years old so I decided to work her in a round pen. Everybody had one in those days and 34 feet across was considered the perfect dimension for a round pen. From the middle, you could stretch out your arm and reach them with a longe whip anywhere they were in the pen. You could really keep them moving and turning and boggle their minds.

So I worked Sue for 6 months. I pushed her around the round pen, yelled at her to whoa, startled her into turns and stops and eventually she just ran around and worked off verbal commands. Everybody said I was a really good trainer because I could make her do all that stuff and, of course, I believe them. In those days, I figured that the horse had to obey anything I said instantly and louder I said it, the faster she'd learn.

The day she turned two, I saddled Sue in the morning and rode her round and around the pen. Then I went up and down the road. Then up and down the hill into the orchard. There was a trail ride scheduled at our farm that afternoon and, heck, the sweat had dried, so I figured it was OK to try her on the ride. So she rode along and did everything and everyone was real impressed that she was just a baby horse and doing so well. I figured a broke horse was a trained horse and ready to do anything I asked her to do.

At that stage in my training to be a trainer, I did not understand the concept of methodically applied pressures to create a feeling of a shape that you wanted the horse to take. I tried to teach Sue to turn from saddle pressure by standing in one stirrup and pulling on the saddle horn. That didn't work so I tried putting more weight in the stirrup and pulling harder on the horn because I thought if something was supposed to work, doing it "louder" would work better.

Sue didn't understand backing very well. I'd pull back on my big curb bit but she just didn't get it. So I decided if I got her pointing uphill in the orchard, gravity and that big bit would get her moving back. But she got her feet tangled in the tall grass and wound up going over backwards. I figured if you set a situation up so the horse could only go the direction you wanted, they would have to learn.

Another time, I was trying to open a gap in a fence line from the saddle and Sue was getting antsy and dancing around and eyeing a roll of wire laying there because we were stringing new fence. I finally gave up and, since the roll of wire was the heaviest thing in sight, I decided to tie her to that while I opened the gap. She was quivering and shaking but she was paying attention to me because I'd taught her I was the biggest baddest thing around and she'd better pay attention to me. But she forgot that lesson and wound up backing down the hill with the wire banging against her chest until she backed up to the barn. I figured she was just acting like a crazy Arab.

There were other fiascos, too, but you get the picture. Sue's lessons didn't sink in right away. I started watching other trainers, studying what they did that worked or didn't work. There was one guy who was pretty dramatic. And when the horse's didn't get it, he'd get dramatic to the point of being abusive. He wasn't too successful. Another fellow had some dramatic techniques, too, but he took the pressure off at just the right time to move the horse in the direction he wanted it to go. Then there was a European trainer who taught me the power of real manners to move people and horse and help them understand what he wanted.

I had a day job doing time and motion studies in those early days. It got me in the habit of breaking everything I saw down into the smallest possible pieces and studying how those pieces could be put together different ways. I applied that method to what I was learning about training horses.

Eventually I became what I call a born again horseman. Finally the lessons Sue and other horses had been trying to teach me in those early years became crystal clear. Breaking isn't communication. Relentless repetition is just another form of breaking. Louder isn't better. When you run out of tactics, call it a day and learn some new tactics rather than resorting to violence or profanity. Use pressures to shape a horse but never take them past the point where the horse is comfortable. Anything that elevates a horse's excitement level is dangerous and if you fight with them when they feel they are in danger, it only makes the danger more real. And I could go on.

My point here isn't to tell you how many mistakes I made in those early years before I learned the concept of methodically applied corridors of pressures that the horse can feel as a shape you want him to take. Mistakes you make honestly as you work at becoming a horse trainer are OK as long as you learn from them. Those mistakes are due to a lack of education and they mean that you need to go out and get more education if you're going to become a better horseman.

I had Sue for 12 years. She did a lot of winning in the show ring and the foals she gave me literally bought the farm that became Meredith Manor International Equestrian Centre. So I owe her for that. As I came to a better understanding of true communication between horses and humans, I also came to realize how much more I owed her. Despite all my mistakes, she forgave me. Despite my lack of tact or methodology, she always tried hard for me. She was a fantastic horse who learned in spite of me.

So the next time you come across a horse that's stupid or stubborn or flighty or unforgiving, bless them. They're just trying to teach you another lesson in horse-human communication. Pay attention because they're your real teachers.

1997-2004 Meredith Manor International Equestrian Centre. All rights reserved. Instructor and trainer <a href="http://www.meredithmanor.com/about/staff.asp#ron"> Ron Meredith</a> has refined his "horse logical" methods for communicating with equines for over 30 years as president of <a href="http://www.meredithmanor.com/"> Meredith Manor International Equestrian Centre</a>, an ACCET accredited equestrian educational institution.
Rt. 1 Box 66
Waverly, WV 26184
(800)679-2603

Mama

Everything I've learned about communicating with horses I've learned from horses. Sometimes it took awhile for the lessons they were teaching me to sink in. But the wisdom they shared with me gradually accumulated and became the system we now teach at Meredith Manor. Particular horses stand out in my memory.

One was an old style, liver chestnut Quarter mare with those bulgy muscles and little feet who was already doing a lot of things before we bought her to show. She had high withers, the kind that are good for holding a saddle when you're roping or cutting. She had a rather plain, coarse head that might have been ugly except that she had a real soft eye that made you forgive the rest. Her registered name was WMD Aloha and the guy we bought her from called her Mother. That got shortened to Mama and Mama she was for the rest of her life.

Mama never got overly excited. I remember one time when I was pulling a homemade trailer behind a six-cylinder Chevy truck. In those days, most of the trailers were homemade and nobody had thought of putting springs under them. They were pretty much wooden boxes bolted to axles and the ride must have been pretty rough. The trailer came unhitched when the truck bottomed out going over the crest of a hill and it started to pass me. I managed to block it with the truck and get it stopped so I could rehitch. There wasn't a sound from the trailer. Mama was as calm as anything though the sweat was pouring off her. When Mama got worried, she'd sweat. But that was all.

The incident was even more remarkable when I learned from her previous owner that she's been in a trailer once that had been hit by a truck. Mama spent an hour in the overturned trailer til they got her out. I always marveled that she'd get back in a trailer at all after all that but Mama was always compliant.

Mama was a great arena horse. Whatever the game was, she knew the drill and she'd just go along. It didn't matter if the rider was flopping around. That was OK. It didn't matter if you gave her the wrong cues. She'd ignore them and do her job. I came to really admire Mama because, pretty or not, she was so honest about understanding what her job was and going ahead and doing it. We rented her out for classes because all anybody had to do was sit in the saddle and hold the reins. They'd be fine and might even get a ribbon.

My point about Mama is that sometimes a horse can be so honest and uncomplicated and unperturbed by whatever you throw at them that you begin to think you're pretty good. Horses like Mama make you think you're someplace even when you haven't done anything yet.

Then along comes the next horse and you find you haven't really got the vocabulary to talk to them and explain what you want them to do. People who buy a really trained horse with the notion that the horse is going to teach them what they need to know are missing the point. The horse can teach them what the right thing feels like, but the horse can't teach them how to communicate that same feel to another horse. That's a different skill.

Horse shows are just games people play to have fun with their horses. And as soon as somebody gets really good at the game and starts winning all the ribbons, somebody else decides to change the game so other people have a chance to win.

A true horseman understands how to create a corridor of pressures that create a shape the horse can feel. Those corridors are the same no matter what game the horse is being trained to play or whether he's a baby or an old campaigner or whether he's an Arab or a Quarter horse.

You can be a true horseman without necessarily being a winner in the show game. But the people who win all the performance games are not necessarily horsemen. They may just be riding Mama.

Plute

Anyone who's honest with themselves and has been in the horse business for very long can look back and count quite a few mistakes. It's the old "if I knew then what I know now" thing. Honest mistakes are OK. Everybody makes them, so don't beat yourself up too much about the things you do wrong. The important thing is to learn from your mistakes.

Plute was a very smart horse. He was a short, muscular mahogany bay with a dished face, chipmunk cheeks, tiny ears and a big, wise eye. He'd been trained by Dale Wilkinson and had gone on to become a winning cutting horse. Then his owner sort of semi-retired Plute and turned him over to his kids to ride.

One day after a clinic I did for the Erie Hunt and Saddle Club, Plute's owner approached me and commented that he liked my way with horses. He told me he had a good cutting horse that had gotten spoiled by his kids so he wouldn't canter anymore. The horse was a Poco Bueno son, he said, whose sister was winning lots so he wanted me to get the horse loping good for a sale that was coming up. What he didn't tell me was the reason the kids weren't cantering him anymore was that Plute wanted to buck into the canter. If you didn't let him buck, he wouldn't canter.

I told Plute's owner I didn't know anything about cutting horses but he said that was no problem. He'd arrange for me to take Plute to Dale's so I could learn all about cutting horses. So I hauled Plute to Dale's place feeling pretty good about myself. Plute's owner said I was good, I was holding an Arabian judge's card and I figured I had a bigger business than Dale's. In my mind at the time, all that made me a big dog.

Dale, on the other hand, saw a kid who needed a lesson and figured Plute was the one to give it to him. He sent me into a herd of cattle on the horse and when I asked Plute to canter, all I can say is that I survived. Ole Plute sent me up in the air and when I came back down, I was behind the saddle. He bucked again and I wound up in front. Somehow I managed to stay on board but it wasn't a pretty ride.

While I was there, Dale asked me what my program was. It took me awhile to figure out what he meant. At that point in my career I was pretty much doing things as they came up. I hadn't defined a series of training steps that would get me to a particular goal.

If I had a program at all at that point , I guess you could've called it "spang" training. That means you surprise the horse and the horse reacts and spangs back or sidewise or wherever. Then you know the horse is paying attention to you. And I thought if you knew how to punish a horse when it didn't behave the way you wanted, you were a good trainer.

Now if Plute had been a horse that was flighty, or tried to fight me, or sulked, or tried to get even or had any other kind of dramatic reaction, I probably wouldn't have learned as much from him as I did. Plute refused to spang. He'd just quit, put his head up in the air, roll that big eye and wait til I was done fussing. Gradually he taught me that a whole lot of fuss doesn't really mean much unless you know how to shape it. And then he taught me that a whole lot of fuss wasn't really very respectful of the horse. And it finally dawned on me that respectful got you a whole lot farther than spang.

I came to respect Plute as I might respect an older man as a mentor. I guess you could say we did some male bonding and became real buddies. He got me started on the program we now call heeding here at Meredith Manor. Heeding is about constantly reading the horse's emotions and controlling or responding to those emotions in a way that changes and shapes what the horse feels. Respect and compassion for horses is necessary to train them but it's not enough to train them. Heeding can take you from compassion to connection. Then you have to use that connection to create shapes that the horse can feel. Create the feel in the horse of any number of shapes you want him to take and now you have a trained horse.

We can all look back with regret at things we did when we first started working with horses. But if the horses can forgive us, we should be able to forgive ourselves, too, and move on. Just pay attention to what works, learn from your mistakes, count your horses as teachers and keep improving your program.