Articles People Problems
The old horsemen know. The really good ones do. Most of them have given up saying much, because they see how hopeless it is. But I haven't run out of energy, yet. It's like this: not a single horse on this planet has a problem. Not one. But what a lot of them do have is a people problem.
All of planet earth has a people problem. And Natural Horsemanship, at its very best, is a place to address this people problem.
Natural horsemanship isn't about not hitting a horse. Folks, sometimes I whack my horse, and it's just the right thing. Horses whack other horses, and then they go on about their business. No, it's not about not whacking. It's not about being soft and cooing and never making a mistake. It's not about who's the most righteous celebrity horse oil salesman of the moment. It's not about an ideal in your head, or a "someday place" to be with your horse. Natural horsemanship isn't even about a dream, although many people come to it with a dream, and that's good, because it's a start.
Natural Horsemanship, when things really get working right, is about people. It's about you. Horses don't have problems, but they do have people problems. We are the problem with horses.
Most of the time, when folks come to me, they want me to help them to fix their horse. They tell me that their horse pushes them around when they are leading them. Those people get a slightly angry look in their eye, like they think their horse is a jerk. Or they tell me that their horse jigged on the trail all last weekend, and they roll their eyes, like the horse is the equine equivalent of a hysterical woman. Oh, I could fill the page with stories, but I just get bored, because it's really the same story, told over and over again.
The story is, most people don't know a danged thing about horses, and they really don't want to. The dirty little secret is that in order to find out about horses, you have to find out about yourself. And most of what you don't know about horses is what you think you do know about horses, which is not too much. Because you don't know about yourself.
If we human beings knew more about ourselves, we would know that our fundamental flaw is in our way of seeing. We see ourselves as separate from the thing we are seeing. Horses feel our way of seeing them, and it feels to a horse like someone put cake crumbs inside his skin. It feels odd and bad.
Horses don't feel separate from their world; they feel a part of it. They are in perfect, true unity with the air and the grass and with each other, and with us, when we are ready. But along we come, and they learn to be exploited by us, because we use them like an object. They're used like something absolutely separate from us, like a motorcycle with hair or a baby dolly or for financial gain or as a thing to fill the hole in our separate, sad lives. And bless them for eternity, because those horses do their best to be all those things for us, to the utmost of their ability. And sure enough, when things break down a little between the horse and the human, the human always blames the horse.
The good news is this: I have seen many, many times that when a person starts asking, "What did I do to cause this problem between me and my horse," that things start to get better. Beautiful, in fact; I would say things start to get beautiful. Those horses begin to change for the better when people get polite to their horses, and I don't mean polite like at a cocktail party. I mean polite as in the human starts to pay attention to what's going on inside of their selves. When the human being starts to turn their eyeballs around and look back inside of themselves, the horse can start to take the cake crumbs out of his skin, because the laser beam of that separate way of looking doesn't shine so danged bright in his eyes.
And a horse without cake crumbs in his skin is so subtle and full of love that it about knocks your socks off. And a person who has turned their eyeballs around is so subtle and full of love that it about knocks your socks off, too. Because when all this starts to happen it's just pretty to watch.
The horse and the human are trying so hard to understand each other, and you can see communication taking place. This means sharing your actual real life with another species. A species, which by nature wants to run away from you, but has chosen instead to stay. As long as you are looking at yourself, and paying good attention to the whole situation, the horse will begin to trust and even like you. He won't wag his tail, but he won't run away, which is the horse equivalent of wagging his tail.
None of us need horses anymore. They are not vital, in the old way, to our survival. They rarely plow our fields anymore, or carry onions to market. They don't deliver our mail, or help fight our wars. They don't help us find a doctor in the middle of the night.
We used to need them for these vital things. Now we need them for something that I think is even more vital. We need them to help transform the human race.
The rarest and bravest people who come to Natural Horsemanship will find out that when a change happens, it's a change inside of the person. Old Ray Hunt once said "don't drag your horse down in your ditch with you." But you have to look at your ditch to get out of your ditch. I've seen some hellacious ditches where horses and people are. And I've seen those good people cry when they see how dark and nasty those ditches are. The human race is in a dark and nasty ditch right now; we've been digging it for a long time.
Somewhere, there is an ideal. Before I found Natural Horsemanship, or it found me, I knew about that ideal from books, but not from life. I loved reading about, asking and striving to be better, to learn. I loved that there could be honor and dignity and a life
lived with the full realization of what it can mean to be a human being. But I couldn't put it into my life until I learned from Tom Dorrance that horses do their best when humans do their best. And the best I can do is to be aware of myself, which helps me to see that along with my impatience can come patience. That with my impulsiveness comes self control. That judgment can become compassion, and that self hatred can become self love. That the inside of a human can be as good as the inside of a horse, and every
day horses show me that. For me, horses are a personal salvation beyond measure, because they so instantly tell me if today is a deep ditch day, or today there are a few flowers poking up around the edges. They help take care of me, and they will take care of anyone who says, " Horse, I think you have a people problem, and I am that person."
Author is Unknown
(But I would suspect that it is Tom or Bill Dorrance or Ray Hunt)