By GEORGIA HORSEWOMAN
What is the first thing you do when you go to the barn? Is your only goal for the day to ride your horse?
As a barn owner without any outside help, I constantly handle my horses through feeding, cleaning stalls, turning out in the pasture, and so much more. There are several days when I don’t even ride, but I still spend hours at the barn. I’ll do barn chores just to be around my horse, or I might do groundwork with my horse and observe his reactions. These experiences taught me about my horse’s demeanor, which transferred to riding on a daily basis.
I was able to pinpoint bad behaviors and analyze them so that I could determine the reasons behind them and the best ways to approach them. I think it’s important to note that around this time, I started calling myself a “horsewoman” rather than a “horseback rider.”
When I was younger, I thought the most important factor to improve my riding was the time spent in the saddle. As I grew older, I realized there was much more to it. My riding and horsemanship skills improved exponentially with my daily routine of simply taking care of my horses.
What does it mean to have good horsemanship? This question has been on my mind ever since an experience I had with a horse trial a couple weeks ago. The horse was six years old and didn’t have a consistent trainer. In the wash stall, he was constantly biting things, and his rider warned that he might even bite me. My own horse acted this way for some time, but after trying out several of Buck Brannaman’s techniques from the California vaquero style, he became much more respectful. When I saw this horse behaving in such a way, I thought he could benefit from this style of training and I mentioned it to the rider. She shrugged and said she didn’t put a lot of stock in natural horsemanship, and in her opinion, “good horsemanship is good horsemanship.”
But what does that mean? I watched her ride the horse before I got on him. She gave him three peppermints throughout the ride as a reward. Then, she took a bad turn to a fence, didn’t get him straight, and he stopped at the base of the jump. She hit him on the shoulder with a crop. He didn’t refuse again, so since she got the right result, does that mean what she did was good for the horse? In my opinion, she was reinforcing behaviors in all the wrong ways—even reinforcing bad behaviors, though she might not have realized it.
I recall another time when I audited a Geoff Teall clinic in which a trainer’s horse refused a jump. The trainer whacked the horse ten or fifteen times with the crop—I was in shock. I distinctly remember Mr. Teall saying, “Well, that’s one way to get your point across, although it’s certainly not the way I would’ve gone about it.” It was quite clear that this trainer was embarrassed by her horse’s refusal, and she took out her anger and embarrassment on the animal. Quite frankly, she should’ve been more embarrassed by her own behavior, rather than her horse’s. Anger has no place in horse handling.
I’ve seen several riders and trainers use methods I disagree with when riding and training horses. For some horses, these methods might produce results—but not for all. Just because someone gets results doesn’t mean they’re using good methods. As horse owners, it is our responsibility to be attentive and vigilant when we ask someone to work with our horse, and we should always put the horse’s welfare first and foremost.
In my opinion, good horsemanship requires listening to your horse before your horse can listen to you. Good horsemanship is getting to know your horse so well that you see past his behaviors to the root of the problem.
Finally, good horsemanship is tackling those behaviors in a way that results in a good experience for both horse and rider.
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Georgia Horsewoman has been riding horses for 22 years, focusing on hunter/jumpers and dressage. She has a private barn where she takes care of her horses full-time. This has given her several experiences out of the saddle that have shaped many of her views. She believes horsemanship needs constant nurturing and hopes to inspire others to consistently work on their horsemanship skills as well.
