Horses in the Yard

Interrupt-driven Lives

2012-02-13T09:35:00.002-05:00

Meet the Life Hackers - New York Times

I apologize up front for the corrupt use of the programming concept. I didn't start this, but it sure works for me, so I'm running with it.

Translated into Human Speak, the big question here is "How much of your time is spent multitasking?" Oh, I know that's all the rage these days. I had a dressage instructor once who yelled at me for being so limited in my ability to multitask in the saddle. If you're not a multitasking, you're somewhere below dirt on the totem pole. In the classroom, I prided myself on being on top of every interruption--and if ever there is an interrupt-driven task, it's teaching high school kids anything. It's in the job description. But there's a point where both self- and other-directed multitasking takes a toll on one's productivity in every aspect of life.

By "other-directed", I mean driven by interruptions and demands from outside oneself. It's bad enough, in my not-so-humble opinion, that we've developed a societal knack for self-interruption. Some of that is just human nature. I'm sure there was an Early Man who, in the midst of mammoth hunting and fire starting suddenly realized he hadn't brushed the dirt off his pile of twigs bed in a month and needed to get on that right away. To do that, he needed a new branch with flat leaves, so his hunt took on a distracted air. Perhaps he even came upon the fire thing along the mammoth trail when his spear head nicked a rock and sent up a spark that got him distracted. Maybe he "put a pin in it" (or "a rock on it") for later, or maybe he stopped and checked it out. Hard to say since his iPad probably wasn't charged enough to take a memo.

The Organized Life is one with some sense of decorum. I'm trying to regain that even as I type. For the first time in ages, I lined up the postcards and notes reminding me of the appointments I needed to make, and I made all the calls in order this morning before I fired up my email app. I felt incredibly liberated! Not only are those chores no longer hanging over me, but I actually got through them all without once getting up to do something else that would have led to still another activity (because nothing spawns nothing), and so on.


Invitation to Multitask: My tack room is an attention sponge.

Nowhere is my Interrupt Drive in higher gear than in the barn. It's my first stop in the morning before breakfast, and I can almost guarantee that I walk through the door these days without a plan other than to make sure the barn is still standing. Oh, I might be harboring some vague thought about what I'll do in the afternoon, but that's a whole half-day away. I walk through the door, and if the phone doesn't ring (the most common interrupt sequence in my personal coding is a call from someone needing to rant or asking for information or advice that has nothing to do with the task at hand), there's probably an unidentified sound coming from the loft that needs to be checked out. While I'm up there, and assuming I don't fall off a hay bale like last week and whack my head, leading to an entirely new event sequence, I make note of which hay we're using now based on the color of the twine. And perish the thought that I actually put the feed into the buckets without stopping to rehang some tack or improve my saddle pad feng shui.

If I'm lucky, by the time I walk out of the barn, I've accomplished something that moves my barely-recognized plan forward. That's not guaranteed. So add on the multiple false starts requiring house-to-barn-to-house transits.

The end result of just this one task event (and it truly is an event) is that I feel frustrated and at loose ends. And it's in that frame of mind that I'm supposed to approach my horses (not to mention family and other humans) and work with them. Really? Is it any wonder that Zip sometimes catches me unaware with one of his tricks--usually the one that involves clipping me behind the knee with his front hoof as I'm not in position when he gives me his leg to brush--and a whole new event is launched?

Can I talk on the phone and email at the same time? No. Not well. I sent a rambling email one day to my lawyer because while I was emailing him my question, I was also on the phone with my daughter answering hers. The mish-mosh that resulted was comical at worst, but it could have been seriously damaging to the lawyer's opinion of my intellectual ability if that weren't already in doubt.

Can I read the instructions on the bottle of meds while I'm using it on the horse and talk to a friend who dropped by to pick up the coupons from the Sunday paper? No. Not at all. That's the sort of thing that leads to powdered meds being smeared on the mare's butt without the required addition of water.

Can I get my horse's attention while mine is scattered all over? Do I really need to answer that?

Read the article from the Times about the "Life Hackers" and weep. We have met the enemy, and they are multitasking.

The Art of Positive Thinking

2012-02-06T10:37:00.001-05:00

Call it "reframing" or positive psychology, or whatever you like, but I do believe that being a baby unicorn is a far better fate than spending one's life as an injured five-year-old. Shawn Achor's lecture is loaded with memorable moments, and I predict, positively, that you will bookmark it and return to it over and over in the coming months.

Eliminating the outliers--creating the Cult of the Average--is a problem bigger than all of the political BS we're suffering through in this pre-election Silly Season. It's bigger because it goes on day after day, in every sector of society, and it's more depressing for its relentless attack on our joy. Like Bo-bo, I seem to find a new disease daily and the symptoms I see in myself are rampant and unrepentant. I don't have leprosy--yet--but I sure have a passel of other things wrong with me!

So I, for one, needed to hear a positive message. Not "You're positively never going to be an Olympic rider and you are doomed to ruin more horses than you can possibly imagine" positive. More like, "Zip is eating his blanket, and once again you've got more wormer paste on your jacket than in Leo, but look at the pretty flowers growing in the manure pile!" positive. Happiness is far over my cognitive horizon, and that needs to change.

My problem is that, like so many of us, I consciously strive for Outlier status. I want to be above the mean (preferably), though in some cases below will do just fine. I learned to ride when I was 13. I thought that was the best thing since sliced bread, mostly because only one of my friends had ever touched a horse, and I felt it gave me the right to wear my hair in a ponytail that would bounce, horse-tail-like, as I walked through the junior high hallways. No one else needed to know about it. It was an internal and private Big Deal, and I was happy. Then I found out about horse shows.

I learned to ride better when I was 15, and I was incredibly excited. I rode in two horse shows--one a year, which was all they had at the lesson barn where I was learning--and won a blue ribbon in one and two blue ribbons in the second. And I was so proud of those trophies that even though the cast-metal horses broke off the tops, I still keep them in my hutch as a reminder of how special I once was. Briefly. Briefly special. Briefly an Outlier.

Briefly, because the next thing I found out was that there were better riders, better horses, better disciplines, better breeches and boots, and more things I needed to accomplish before I could be happily average-or-above again. So I gave it a good go. The old college try. And as years went by, I got degrees and certificates and more ribbons and trophies and plaques and, in one case, a typed note saying I'd won some class or other. I framed that, too. And I was happy again because I was special again. Above average. Good. Better than many.

Until...well, you can finish the sentence as well as I with your own discoveries that set your HQ (Happiness Quotient) back and made you think you needed to just work harder.

The question Achor asks is, "But are you happy?" The answer, sadly, is "Not really". Why not? Because the media--mainstream and interest-specific--keep showing me more and better and bigger and smoother and costlier and up and up and up, and I'm on the downhill side. There's no clawing back up that hill from 64 to 34.

I recently had the great good fortune to be interviewed by a niece of my idol, Cowboy Hall-of-Famer Connie Reeves, who died in a fall of her horse at the age of 101. Talk about raising the Outlier bar..! Now, Reeves isn't merely notable for longevity and for being saddle-worthy at an age when most women are drooling into their oatmeal, but because the horse thing--the ranch for troubled girls she built and ran until her death-- was a second career, piled on top of several decades as one of the first females in banking...ever. Women weren't real popular in financial circles when she cracked that glass ceiling.

Connie Reeves
[Photo courtesy of Julie Stratton]

Naturally, I hope to be riding at 101. Hell! I hope to be breathing at 101! But I've already missed the banking boat and the glass-ceiling-busting boat, so while I remain a loyal fan, I can't realistically hold Ms. Reeves up as the average I expect to be above.

But, and this is the salient point here, he also says that we decide whether to be happy or to continue the battle to become above-average, as average is a constantly-moving, man-made target. And I think it's time, at least for me, to embrace my average-ness and stop worrying about how it looks from the outside.

Honestly, from the inside it's pretty cool. I've got six horses I love, three horses I enjoy riding, only one that does regular damage to my body and my self-esteem, and others I get to try out on occasion to remind me that I'm not locked into an inflexible routine and to keep the fear factor from entering the picture. I've had a career that I truly loved despite the fact that I never ran a corporation or got my name engraved on anything more impressive than the "Hi! My Name Is" tag I had to wear for Back to School Night and a clock that hangs in my office. I have a daughter who makes me proud every day, grandkids who do the same though I can't take credit for anything other than a genetic contribution to their makeup, and a partner who makes me smile every time he walks through the door despite his not being Brad Pitt.

So from here on, when I find myself on all fours (or upside down on my back, which, unfortunately, happens more often than I'd like), I'm going to be a unicorn. And if at 101 I'm still here, that, alone, will be sufficient. Striving for excellence is what keeps our society moving forward, but it's also the key to the rampant depression that is more and more evident. I will do my best not to wind up in therapy or drugged in order to be my happiest self.

Welcome to my Positive World!

The Choices We Make

2012-01-30T13:02:00.000-05:00

ecisions,decisions, decisions…! Boy, did thislecture strike a familiar chord! BarrySwartz (The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less) couldn’t have been moreon-point if he’d actually looked in my pantry and seen my reaction to too manykinds of jelly on the shelf at the supermarket. My reaction? Too many kinds ofjelly on my pantry shelf as well. If I’dbeen forced by circumstance to choose just one, I would have come homeempty-handed like the folks in the study wound up doing, because the options were overwhelming. But given a debit card and amplejelly-and-jam-buying resources, I went the other way. I can slather every slice of toast in theneighborhood for months without ever having to shop…and I don’t even eat jelly.

There’sthe irony. I’m one of those people notonly overwhelmed by options for things that I actually want and need, but giveme enough options on anything, and I’llfeel forced to pick one. Or twenty.

Wheredoes this leave me in the world of horses? Well, it leaves me with a herd of horses that can’t be described in oneword. I’m not a “hunter rider” or a “westernrider” or any other easily-pigeonholed type. I’m not even a hoarder. I havethe number of horses I need in order to do all the things that I feel I want todo, even when I don’t want to do them.

I used to be the type that strikes fear into the hearts of barn owners and thrills the horse dealers. I didn't know what I wanted, so I wound up appearing a little loose around the edges. I solved the problem by resolving to never make decisions on impulse.

Okay, that's a lie. I never made that resolution. I do decide--and often buy-- on impulse, but I avoid life-changing decisions and purchases of anything bigger than new shoes and medium-weight horse turnout blankets, which I buy in multiples and far too often. In truth, I've raised dithering to an art form.

What I do hasn't really got a name yet. I wait for the monthly landslide of catalogs like I'm expecting to find diamonds in the mailbox. Then I sit in ritualistic rigor, hour after hour, reading descriptions of everything from pj's to saddles to jewelry and real estate, dog-earing pages, circling product numbers, and fantasizing about how this purchase or that will make my life ever so much better.

Then I put the catalogs on my desk and walk away. By the next morning, I can't remember why I thought any of it was a good idea. I flip through the dog-ears. If there's something I actually meant to order--a refill on a horse supplement, for instance--I order it online. The rest land in a pile on the floor on their way to the recycling bin.

Can't do that with horses. They don't recycle as easily. I've taken a Just Say No stance on those. It took hours of practice, saying that in front of a mirror, before I got good enough at it to go public.

The options are just so broad, and the reasons for choosing them are even broader. So, like the people observed in the study, I freeze. Unlike them, I can sometimes thaw and make huge rash purchases that leave me wondering later. But through it all I can't help but wonder at what point will the marketing gurus figure out that we don't really need another different kind of whatever. Cell phone/nose hair trimmer/creme brulee torch? Hoof pick/flashlight/keychain/MP3 player?

We are becoming a society of maximizers, always looking for the Next Big Thing and living in a constant state of regret, because nothing we've already done can possibly be as good at the choices in front of us or the ones we let get away. And according to Zip, we're freaking out our horses. Zip has become flinchy every time I reach for my latest grooming product "must-have".

ME: Check this out! It's going to make your tail grow six inches by the end of the month!

ZIP: It smells like something I'm gonna have to roll in manure in the pasture to get rid of.

ME: Look at the cool applicator bottle! It's got little sunshines all over it and it glitters. It has to be super-great if it's in a glitter bottle.

ZIP: [eyes rolling] And you wonder why I listed myself on Dreamhorse.com....

So it goes. There will always be another "best" halter, horse, partner, hair style, fad food. Maybe it's okay to let a few slide on by and focus on why we have the things we've already got....like this super-nifty massager/letter opener/pencil sharpener I just found in my bottom drawer! Hoo-hah!

Too Much of Not Enough

2012-01-23T15:03:00.000-05:00

hisis a fun video no matter who you are. Believe me, I didn’t insert it for its religious significance, though it does have its share. Living healthy isn't for the meek, and A. J. Jacobs puts a hilarious spin on how far we can take things if we let ourselves get lost in the conventional wisdom and News About Your Hair: Is Air the New Dioxin? We live, Jacobs says, in a noisy world (I, for one, love that he cites Bill Reilly as one of the noises, but I digress...). It's noisy in more ways than one.

The "too much" part of the title of this post is obvious, but the "not enough" part, maybe not so much. What I mean by that is that there's far too much of everything else--noise, news, social rules, fashion up-and-downgrades--and not nearly enough of the truth. Facts are in short supply these days. Sources rush to the starting gate the minute they think they might have something to warn us about that will boost their ratings. Who among us hasn't DVR'd the late-night news because the morning blurb said something tantalizing about Uranium in our corn flakes or the impending "baby bump" on the front of some Starlet somewhere? Okay, maybe not the latter, but certainly the former is going to catch the attention of the masses long before the Noted Scientists involved have finished dotting the last i on the last page of their report. Just last week the Fungicide In Your Orange Juice thing lasted a full 12 hours before it was reduced to a sound byte in the face of questionable actual evidence.

So we have too much of not enough information, and that applies to all parts of our culture, including the horse industry. My first boarder had so much input from so many sources, for instance, that before I'd learned to use my NO! with authority, I'd bought five different kinds of grain and gone through the laborious switch-over process five times. What she (and I) didn't have was enough real information.

What else do we have too much of not enough of?

How about responsibility?

Has there been a time lately when you were on the giving or receiving end of an "explanation" for bad behavior that just made your head spin? There are so many variations on this theme, it's mind-boggling. Did someone kind of skirt the law because it seemed easier, then rant about how they were forced into that position? Did you explain to your neighbor that your horses keep wandering into his Elegant Landscape Water Feature because it's too close the fence you keep forgetting to repair and the empty troughs you keep forgetting to fill? Did you send a note to school explaining how the pony ate your kid's homework?

Did you buy or adopt a horse (or anything else) you can't afford, and did multiply the insult by begging for money to support your bad habit?

Reliability?

Did you say you'd pick up your daughter after soccer practice and forget? Did your barn sitter neglect to check the buckets before dumping a scoop of grain on top of a manure deposit left from the night before? Did you mean to call the farrier and change your appointment and forget? Did you leave him to find, catch, and shoe your lunatic gelding by himself?

Are you neglecting a horse (or anything else) you bought or adopted that you can't take care of?

Honesty?

How often do you spin the truth to avoid looking bad? "Oh, his ribs were sticking out like that when he got here" is a scant excuse after five years. "No, I don't know what happened to your ____________." Really, or are you just afraid to admit that you borrowed it and broke it? "I hope you win your class!" sounds really good only if you're not gritting your teeth and poking the friend standing next to you so she won't miss your eye-roll. "We're a horse rescue" has to be applied to actual horse rescues, not the faux variety. "Nice horse!" only applies to nice horses.

Did you go all sappy over a down-on-his-luck horse (or anything else) and take it home without mentioning that said home is in foreclosure?

Integrity?

This is a big one. Integrity is the sum of all the above-noted parts. If you have too much of not enough of any of them, you're going to get gonged. An honest, reliable, responsible person has integrity. If any of those parts is missing, then you get a big zero on the Integrity Quotient scale. There's no partial credit. No make-up test. No option for a discount.

There is, however, the chance to rebuild yourself. Like A. J. Jacobs' Year of Healthy Living, we can all launch a Year of Living With Integrity. That may mean ignoring the "news" and passing up conventional wisdom for the real thing. It may mean that sometimes the path won't be clear and your motivation will be less than stellar. It might mean some hard work to toe a line you'd rather pretend doesn't exist. But it may also mean that this time next year you'll be able to look at yourself with new pride and without holding up a pillow and glowering through the fringes.

If nothing else, it may give you a funny story that you can put in a video for posterity.

Lover, Rider, Owner, Caretaker.. Who Are You?

2012-01-16T12:00:00.000-05:00

met a nice, shiny-new horsewoman the other daywhen she came to my farm to pick up something I was “freecycling”. We talked for a bit about what we were eachdoing with our farms, and she made the comment that she had quickly gottentired of the boarding business when the first horse person dropped off thefirst horse at her barn and not one board payment ensued. There’s a legal process here for dealing withthat situation, and it doesn’t benefit the barn owner in any way. She said something to the effect that thesepeople (and the folks who made the legal process of dealing with them soonerous) didn’t get what it takes to take care of a horse.

Thatgot me thinking. There are, I’mpositing, five levels of horse involvement.


Horse riders, Horse lovers, Horse owners, and folks who just like to tailgate

1. TheHorse Lover

Horselovers are wonderful people who may or may not have ever actually touched,smelled, or been run over or dragged by an equine of any description. They love horses mostly from a distance. They love horse-centered movies, horse-themeddécor, horse farms dotting the landscape, books featuring horses, but haveprobably never had the full-immersion Equi-sperience. These people are a danger mostly to themselves. They’re the ones who will be likely to donateto spurious charities and write letters to Congress. We need them for their letter-writing skillsand because they buy our books and our art, we just need to aim them properly.

2. TheRider

Thisincludes adults who loved pony rides as kids, people taking lessons on lessonhorses, and those who used to ride but don’t anymore because something happenedto end the fantasy…like contact with Real Life. If you get on a horse astride, aside, or abaft (I’m borrowing thatnautical term to refer to riding behind a horse in a carriage or sled, orcovering ground at the end of a rope after an ill-fated “ground driving”effort—those folks need love too), you’re an official Horse Rider, as it tendsto be called on insurance forms. We needyou because without you and your dreams, the rest of us would have nothing todo all day.

3. The Owner

Anyonewho has now or ever paid for or adopted an equid of any kind can join thisgroup. Even if you share a horse withthree other people, you’re welcome. It’s the owners who pay the freight for therest of the clan, so we definitely need them. Not all owners are created equal, however. The one who dropped the horse at my new friend’sbarn and never came back is a Bad Owner. The ones who get their horses shod and vaccinated and make sure they’rein safe environments and pay their bills are Good Owners. It’s a spectrum.

4. TheCaretaker

Ifyou own a farm, have horses in the backyard, or work somewhere mucking stalls,this is your group. These are theleast-understood, most-maligned of horse people. The first three groups may think they know about horses, but untilyou’ve been up all night keeping watch over a barn roof during a blizzard, youdon’t know about horses. You don’treally know about bedding, feed, hay, or brands of stall fans until you’ve runup a tab buying them and tossing them out. And you don’t know what it means to dump your horse at “the barn” whileyou go on vacation until you’ve had a sleepless night or two listening to oddnoises that could be predators in the pasture or thieves in the night comingfor the dumpees. These are the true FootSoldiers of the business. We arenecessary, and we are to be commended. Without us, your horses would be living in your garage and everythingyou own would smell like horse, which sounds lovely in small, controlledwhiffs, but not as a full-time affair.

5. Miscellaneous Horse Professionals and Artistes

Ifyou do anything else with horses from brokering them, to shipping them, to slaughtering them, toshoeing them, to giving lessons and training them, todisposing of carcasses, to looking up their noses with your cute littleflashlights and sticking needles in them, this is where you belong. You are the moons that control the tides of the horse business. Sometimes you’re the rocky shoal againstwhich we crash. But you are ultimatelyimportant to the horse world. Keep that in mind, know we appreciate you, and be careful how you roll. You have the power to sink us.

So,who are you? And how much do you know about the otherhorse people in the other groups? Andare you willing to learn?

Winter Brings Finds and Snappy Solutions

2012-01-08T10:48:00.000-05:00

Pro Equine Grooms - A Preview of 2012

henbetter to think through all the problems you had during the last nine monthsthan while you’re waiting for the snow thrower to upchuck you dog’s squeakytoy? While my toes were thawing thismorning I realized that I’ve been very creative of late. Sometimes time off from riding leads toactual coherent thought.

Before I go on about myself (as I so love to do), click the link above. This site by, for, and about grooms and grooming issues is a must-see. Your input is requested there to help with their 2012 planning, so jump on in!

Myfirst “find” of late is my new favorite barn boots. These are they:

BOGS!!!

They are rubber boots by Bogs©. Those laces are only for appearances, sodon’t be put off by them. These are thebestest pull-on/stomp-into boots I’ve found, and I really didn’t think anythingwould outdo my Uggs© fleece-lined rubbers rain boots.

TheBogs are lined with some sort of knit fabric with a layer of neoprene foam insulationunder it. They fit like a glove, arecomfy as all get-out, have aggressively ribbed soles, and I even wore them forriding in a western saddle with great success. I wouldn't recommend them in English stirrups as too-aggressive tread can spell unplanned horizontal girth and footing inspections.I know Bogs makes taller boots too, but with the barn only a couple ofhundred feet from the house, barring deep snow, I only needed somethingabove-ankle height, and these do well under jeans where my tall, insulated MuckBoots make a pile of my pants legs.

Mysecond Helpful Horse-keeping Hint is a solution to the Ring Around the Hay Feederproblem. You who have horses at yourplace have seen the game the horses play, right? It doesn’t matter how many you have, ifthere’s more than one horse, there’s a game afoot. They’ll be standing all innocent one minuteeating hay next to each other or on opposite sides of the rack, then suddenlyone will take offense to the mere existence of the other and shoot him a dirtylook that sends him scurrying to the opposite side. This can go on all day every day forever.

The solution: Move the feeder to the fence and
take down the top board for access! Ha!


A side view of the coolness

Noteveryone sees it as a problem, but I was beginning to hate the deep, manure-filled gully thathad appeared around the hay rack by winter's end, and I had a twinge every time one of thegeriatrics was chased even a quarter way around. The old guys need their peace and quiet whilethey quid their hay, d’ya mind?

Soafter 14 years of thought, this is what I came up with. Can you imagine that it took me thatlong? The crossed boards, by the way,are not accidental. They keep the horses from reaching to the groundon the other side of the fence and gaming the system that way by stealing theirbuddy’s hay. Leo had no problem teachingme that.

Thefence in the photo surrounds a small paddock, which at this time was locked soDuke was sequestered. But I’ve foundthat even with the gate wide open, the horses, big or small, still sortthemselves on opposite sides of the fence and no chasing at all goes on. Wah-HOO!

Finally,this is the best gate latch I’ve found:

Sure Latch by Co-Line Welding

It’s automatic, closes and opens in either direction with the lift of afinger-grip, allows the slamming shut of the gate with the back of one’s footwhile one is being mugged by a horse of any size, and can be locked againstaccidental opening with just a stick or clip through a hole designed for thatpurpose. Could you just die?

Where was this when I was building the placeso I could have spaced all the gates properly? That’s the only drawback. Itrequires very specific spacing to fit and work. Note the multiple shims of varying sized between the latch and thewarped fence post. Thank you. I agree I did a superb job. But it took me two hours. That wasn’t necessary.

Ihope you’re all putting your occasional down time to good use this winter, andI hope you’ll share some of your finds and solutions. I’m always eager to hear what other horsepeople are doing, if only for the comic relief.

Moving On

2012-01-03T11:22:00.003-05:00

ost-Holidaydoldrums have arrived at my farm. Ican’t say the horses are sad that thelighted, animated deer are gone from the gardens. It’s always a kick to watch the equineswatching the fake deer on the first night they notice the change, but even thatgets old after a couple of days. So I,for one, am ready to move on into Political Silly Season.

Zip for Barn President!

Ifyou think politics and horses are strange barn-fellows, you are only scratchingthe tip of the manure pile. The currentuproar over the restoration of funding for slaughterhouse inspectors is one of the biggest I’veseen since…well, since the removal of funding for slaughterhouseinspectors. There are petitions galoreonline and elsewhere touching on that topic from both sides and addressingmyriad others that are more local in nature. I’m not going to list them all. Sorry if that disappoints anyone. I'm taking the stand that "politics" has deeper meaning than just what's zipping around our heads under the guise of "reality". That's where I want to go today.

Thismorning I posted on Facebook a video of our esteemed New Jersey Governor ChrisChristie making a fool of himself and all Jerseyans at the Iowa Pre-Caucus SlamFest. In that news clip he threatenedthe State of Iowa with “Jersey-style” repercussions should they fail to supporthis chosen candidate. It doesn’t evenmatter who that candidate is. Whatmatters is that Christie is fostering a stereotype that we here in the GardenState could easily live without.

Thatgot me thinking about other stereotypes and the damage they do. Since this is a horse-business blog, I’llstick with those. These should soundfamiliar:

All horse people are crazy.

Horse lovers are basically hoarders who will consistentlyover-extend themselves in ridonculous ways to keep their horses.

Farmers are uneducated, incoherent, shotgun-toting rednecks whoshould not have a say in the political arena.

Emotionality rules when it comes to sorting out the mess that thehorse business has created for itself.

Most farmhands are illegal immigrants and horse people are fostering the illegal immigrant problem.

Equestrian sports are only for the rich.

I could goon, but I think everyone reading this can add to the list with more astuteness thanI possess.

Stereotypesare rarely a good thing. I believe itwould behoove each of us to think carefully about whether or not we as individuals are perpetuating a stereotype that would bebetter buried with our first pony’s remains never to be ridden into a lather again.

Do youscream endlessly about the problem of homeless horses (or other animals, forthat matter) while you step over the homeless guy who sleeps in front of yourbank? Do you have more horses than youcan really care for but ample excuses for why this situation is necessary? Have you evertalked a friend into taking ownership of a horse you knew s/he wasn’t capableof maintaining? Have you bothered toeducate yourself on the truth about the racing industry (or any other darkalleys in our business)? Do you makesome effort to be involved in local politics in realms that don’t directlyaffect agribusiness and the horse world? When was the last time you caught yourself speaking loudly (that alwayshelps) or in Spanglish to your neighbor’s barn hand? Have you “signed” and forwardedmore than two online petitions in the past month without checking the details or considering the repercussions?

On that last, about horses and money going hand-in-hand, well, that's a little hard to argue against. Either that's just a statement of fact, or perhaps some stereotypes really do serve a purpose as more and more horse owners find themselves over their heads in debt in an effort to prove the belief wrong.

This morningI’m smarting over the whole “Jersey-style” thing. I can’t handle another stereotype that I need to fight. To be a Jerseyan is trouble enough. To be Jersey horseman with all the nonsense that’s become attached to both designations ismore than I want to deal with before my morning coffee.

So I’masking that all of us horsemen think twice about the kind of example we’resetting. Christie makes New Jersey sound like a haven for the brow-ridge boys. What are you making Horseman sound like? If you can do better, I hopeyou will. Keep your horses, but keepthem properly and responsibly without putting an untenable financial burden on yourself andyour family. Reach out and mentornewcomers who might be strong of heart but weak of mind when it comes to thebusiness of horses. Work within thesystem for the changes you want to see. Make the title “Horseman” mean something that dispels all of thestereotypical BS we’ve come to hate.

It’s up toeach of us to husband our own space on the planet. Do so with true Horseman's flair and an eye to the future. It sure can't hurt.

The Holiday Edition

2011-12-19T13:24:00.000-05:00

t’sthe Holiday Season. If that’s news toyou, then your cave needs more windows. The Holidays bring with them a lot of stress and some truly oddbehavior. Today’s topic is HolidaySyndrome.

First,I’m not going to ask what your chosen holiday might be. Nor am I going to succumb to the War and calleverything Christmas just to be on the safe side. I know for a fact that my readers are aneclectic bunch, as are their horses and their ideas of holiday celebration. All of the holiday season engages us in aninordinate amount of stress and anxiety, not just because we can’t settle on aname for it all, but because we focus our entire sense of humanity and charityon a short period in the winter without any thought about why we’re so damnedstingy the rest of the time.

We need to do better than that, but that's a different post.

The Big Conversation, the raging argument over what to call this time period,truly does a disservice to the real problem at hand, to wit: What shall I buy my horse/dog/cat/gerbil sohe won’t feel left out?

First,I’m pretty sure that your animal partners have no clue there’s anything unusualafoot until the moment the animated deer or inflatable elf suddenly lights upthe yard and scares the bejeezus out of them. For most animals, the winter holiday season is a time of freakiness,highlighted by musical lighting arrangements and owners wearing a lot of theonly color most horses really recognize: Red. Most likely, if you asked yourhorse what he wants for the holiday, he’d answer that he’d like his owner’smind back. So the concern about whatsort of gift to buy him is something probably best put on a back burner whileyou sort out all the strange human relatives first.

Inorder to make your holidays simpler, here are a few reminders and suggestionsto help you and your chosen animal buddies through the crazy season.

· Animals are not all fond of wearing clothing at any time of year,not just at the winter holidays. If theyare willing to let you put a red hat or antlers on their heads or dress them aselves or snowmen or whatever floats your holiday boat, and if they do thatwithout biting you or each other, consider that their gift to you. No need to get more touchy-feely than that. Taking off the hat/horns/whatever can be yourgift to them. A cookie would also benice.


Last year we got Tuft his own predator. It did not go over as well as expected.

· Your house pet might feel a little left out when the family isgathered ripping into packages and they have nothing to tear. He’s probably happy to tear up something you’vealready opened, so just give the cat the box or the dog the paper and let themhave at it. Then give them a cookie.

· Some horse owners get all fuzzy and decide a “nice hot bran mash”is just the ticket for holiday breakfast for their favorite equine buddy. He may like it. Just remember as you shove the kids out ofthe house to clear the kitchen for your mash-making episode that you’re the onewho’s benefiting most from the effort, not the horse. Give him a cookie, and he’ll be Just ashappy.


Pinky is not showing off his new blanket here. He's teaming up with Duke to get the thing off him.

· When you’re already financially stressed and you’re countingpennies to pay off the lay-away at Wal Mart for your kids’ winter clothes isnot the time to be fussing over the perfect winter blanket forFluffernutter. If he needs one, heprobably needed it before this when it was on off-season sale. And “I’llbuy the most expensive one” because it’s a holiday gift is bizarrethinking. Get him whatever is on salethat will work, and invest the extra in a really special cookie. The yummy,soft cookies I bought this year were so special I couldn’t get the horses toleave the barn after they had their allotted one cookie each. That kind of gratitude and excitement never followed thepresentation of a bright purple, high-necked, gusseted blanket with a lifetime tear-resistant guarantee.

· Finally, probably the best thing you can do for your horses is tokeep them in mind and heart and not disrupt their world any more thannecessary. Just because it’s a holidayfor you doesn’t mean they’re going to set aside their herd hierarchy issues anddeal with sharing a paddock because it looks so festive or forgive you for the frozen water buckets because you're so obviously distracted. They’re not suddenly going to be broke topull a sleigh or enjoy giving rides to your kids, grandkids, neighbor’sgrandkids, or paunchy Uncle Walt. Believe in miracles if you wish, but remember that the horses are horsesand believe mostly in the next meal and their sacrosanct spot in line at thewater trough.

Remember that if it's winter in your locale, you need to be sure every animal in your house and barn has what they need to survive. If you buy silly gifts, make sure they're safe for the animals. And if you can spare more than a minute or two, a scratch behind the ear, a pat on the head, or a thorough grooming will be much appreciated.

Seasons Greetings From Me and the Herd

HappyHolidays! May the New Year bring you andyour non-human family everything you desire and a small dose of sanity to topit off.

The Value of This Horse Life

2011-12-14T13:55:00.000-05:00

Pavan Sukhdev: Put a value on nature! | Video on TED.com

"The economic invisibility of Nature...." That has a very sad and forbidding sound. Pavan Sukdev has it right. It's not just about the Amazonian rain forest and the ecosystem. It's about our own survival.

Open space. You can almost hear the hum-buzz of the bugs
and the grateful chirping of the birds,
and the coyote killing the groundhog.
Oops!

When you are worrying about making your next board payment, it's probably hard to see the value in what you're doing, but it's there. Your feeding that horse and keeping him healthy means that the vet and the barn owner also get to eat and pay their bills. No, I'm not being sarcastic...very much, anyway. I'm talking about the local ecosystem, the "benefits that flow from Nature to humanity for free", what your horse ownership does for you and for the system around you.

You pay, and the people you pay get to pay other people. You buy tack, and somewhere a guy with a cow skin laid across his work bench gets to buy another roll of waxed thread and have a burger while he works. You buy a slinky, and the spangle industry feels a friendly bump. The land your horse is turning into a mud-wrestling pit as you read this is open space that is so very vital to the planet and the local ecology. Fields, trees, even the bits of undigested grain in his 50 pounds of daily manure requirement feed and house other animals. Do you ever think about the flies that buzz so happily around your manure pile? Yes, they're annoying, but without them there would be no maggots, and without maggots there would be some serious pile-ups of biological materials that they devote themselves to breaking down.

Doesn't that suggest that you're doing a good thing? Something to be admired, even? It does, and it should. I know first hand how hard it is to explain this lifestyle to people not involved in any way with livestock. It's hard to explain to other livestock people why we keep animals that don't give milk, lay eggs, or put steak on the table. In my book, that gives us an extra gold star on our mental health reports. We do it just to do it.

20,000 people appreciating what we do

Sometimes we get so caught up in the economic minutiae of the world that we forget that all of that other stuff is mere human construct. Wall Street (occupied or otherwise), politics, religion....all of it is meaningless in the face of Nature. The planet simply is. We play on it as we choose. It's my belief that those of us who choose to husband it even a little should respect our roles and ourselves whether or not we feel the love from everyone around us.

In this economy, it's hard to justify horse ownership, but we must justify it to ourselves. Certainly, human construct or not, we also need to be sane and make sure our responsibilities are covered before we stretch farther than we can reach. But with the holiday season nearly at an end, I think it would behoove us all to step back and simply appreciate who we are, what we're doing, and the land and the animals that allow us to do it.

Happy New Year!

The Cheap Luxury We Really Can't Live Without

2011-12-04T12:03:00.000-05:00

pretty much knew before I read this article that horses were not the item. There's nothing cheap about them, and only non-horse people consider them a luxury item. We horse folk know that they are a total necessity, right up there with food, water, TiVo, and Ariat breeches. So of course I had to try to guess what the "cheap luxury" in question might be. Boxed wine? Burgers not served through a window?

Go ahead and guess. I'll wait.....

The Cheap Luxury Americans Can't Live Without

Okay, how many of you horsey types guessed it would be manicures? I'm still laughing at the idea that my discretionary income might be targeted at some cute young technician who has my hand trapped under a lamp for an hour. I will confess to enjoying the occasional pedicure, but I do not have the patience for a manicure. Tried it. I was a dismal failure. You can't even turn Equus magazine pages with your hands under a dryer! And how long does a mani last in the barn? My do-it-yourself version is nearly impervious, mostly because I use clear nail polish that's a version of the laquer used to seal the outside of an airplane, because the first time you scritch that cute equine under the chin, the sandpaper that is his hair simply peels lesser polishes right off.

All of this made me wonder about the internal dialogs we carry on. I won't go into the whole "bubble" thing again. You know your sphere of reality is yours alone, yada, yada, yada. To complicate things even more, each of us has a story that we tell ourselves that makes it possible for us to get through our day without killing ourselves or someone else. Have you ever thought about what story you've decided to own? I have.

So today we're going to discuss "redirecting", which is a not-so-new concept in psychology related to "reframing" and closely allied with "denial" but more positive in effect. We're going to start the discussion with a book recommendation: Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change, by psychologist Timothy D. Wilson. No, I'm not going to make you go order it and read it while I wait. I'll trust you to do that later as homework.

And that right there is some prime redirecting. By telling you I trust you to do that, I call on the story that you've put in place that tells you who you are (an honorable, responsible, and intelligent human being) and how you respond to things around you (with perfect elan at all times). Cool? You betcha!

"My inner narrative says that I reflexively take responsibility
for your decision not to jump this very intimidating
obstacle, and that I'm okay with that."

Briefly, redirecting is not much different from the concept called "reframing" in NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming), but everything is new when you change the name a little. It means putting a positive spin on something not-so-positive to make it fit in with your personal narrative, the story you buy into to make sense of your place in the world. For some, that's a religion-based tale. For others it's whatever makes it possible for you to move forward out of the cycle of regret and pain that often accompanies trauma no matter how mild. You got yelled at yesterday by your boss/spouse/child/random service representative. That sent you into a mild depression as your negative self-talk ("I'm such a slug!) threatened your Queen of the World persona (okay, maybe that's only my persona). To move forward out of that cycle, you had to reframe the situation ("He's such a turd! He yelled at me because he's jealous that I'm Queen and he's not.") or you had to redirect the situation to whatever narrative you've adopted ("I will let this go because I know and he knows that in the Great Plan of the Hairy Fungerer of the Universe, I will eventually be promoted and he will die an unruly death at the hands of the HR bitch.")

That's Psych 201, Advanced Service to the Ego.

As applied to horse people, the issue becomes just how far will you go to explain away your inability to ride Turkey Trot today? Do you have a story that accounts for your absolute abject terror at the very idea of hopping aboard a snorting, wild-eyed maniac horse who has your demise in his sights, and do you really need anything more than "My children would miss me if I broke my body before I made dinner"? How about the one that gets you out of riding that 30-year-old former trail horse on a drizzly day? What's in your narrative to cover the 50 extra pounds you've put on that keep you from getting into your riding clothes? And is there something about your allergic reaction to the word "exercise"?

For many people, the Will of a Deity is sufficient explanation and narrative to cover pretty much every eventuality. But you, my faithful and highly intelligent reader, are prepared to delve into your inner self.

It may seem elementary, but the things we tell ourselves to help us survive life on this big blue ball affect us in ways that are often counter-intuitive. Some of the research revealed in Timothy Wilson's fascinating book indicates, for instance, that parenting is not nearly as intuitive as we thought, and that our narratives, adopted from various sources for various reasons, can make us fail dismally. Perhaps the most intriguing study cited involved post-trauma patients who were asked to either join a group counseling setting and discuss the trauma or go home and write about the incident in private. Conventional wisdom says that talking it out is the key to getting past the trauma. But...not so! Going home and quietly reframing and redirecting the story until it fits with your personal narrative turns out to be far more effective. The group didn't move forward. The private writers did.

So when you're faced with one of those equestrian situations that threaten to destroy your confidence and shake your self-image, instead of calling all your horse buddies and whining and ranting and sharing Idiocies From My Past, try writing about it. Reframe the hell out of it until you can make sense of what happened, then go forth and try again. The cheap luxury you can't live without is insight into who you really are and why you do what you do. Only You Can Prevent Meltdown!

Do Your Horses "Watch and Learn"?

2011-11-25T12:49:00.000-05:00

The Horse | Can Horses 'Watch and Learn'?

I really thought this was a no-brainer. Goes to show how far "conventional wisdom" will take you in this horse life. I would have sworn--still do swear--that watching is how horses learn pretty much everything. Now along comes all this research stuff to prove me wrong. Huh.

It's possible that horses don't learn everything by watching. I'm willing to grant that much. The focus of such studies tends to be on idiosyncracies like cribbing, weaving, or rooting for the Red Sox. I'm guessing the box-opening in this study might just not appeal to some horses. I'm also guessing (from my vast experience) that some horses just don't care to learn anything that isn't within certain limits of their intellects or their natural tendencies.

Take the following examples under consideration.

Zip (yeah, it always starts with Zip, doesn't it) taught himself to sweep the mat in front of his stall with a broom. My lovely barn slave, Breanna, discovered this talent, and it has become his signature move. He enjoys it so much (and gets rewarded so profusely) that I had to buy him his own whisk broom to keep him from destroying my personal favorite floor broom. He's been doing this for several years at every opportunity.

Zip, sweeping

Enter the new horses. Six or so years ago, I brought home the Appy, Dakota, and the mini, Duke. Neither of them knew any tricks on arrival. Duke, like any good dog, is a very quick study and took to clicker training as if he'd been born to it. Dakota just doesn't seem to see the point of doing anything...ever...for any reason. Totally opposite personalities.

An extremely good boy. Note the open stall door.
Note the missing stall guard. Note Dakota standing quietly
in his stall. Not unusual you say? He stood this way for TWO HOURS
while I was in the house eating breakfast and doing chores!

Time passed, and one boring winter day when the horses had been stalled longer than their usual two hours, I let Zip do his sweeping trick and treated him. Behind me, I heard an odd sound and turning to check the source (hoping it wasn't rodent-generated) I saw that Dakota had found a small branch in his hay corner and was sweeping the mat in front of his stall with it! Talk about a shocker. Many cookies ensued, and he did make one more move toward picking up the branch before he called it quits and moseyed out for the day.

I was gleeful, thinking maybe I had proof that horses really do imitate each other with purpose and forethought, but what came next really floored me. I was busily with the post-mucking aisle sweeping, all the horses but Duke out in their respective turnouts (Duke likes to help in the morning...mostly himself to any fallen grain in the big horses' stalls) when I heard another sound and turned around to find that Duke had retrieved Zip's dropped broom and was sweeping behind me as I moved down the aisle! I applauded, shrieked, cookied, ans apparently scared the sweep right out of him as he never did it again. In fact, no cajoling on my part ever got him to even take the broom in his mouth again.

But I know what I saw. I also know I saw Zip watch me fasten the gate then immediately unfasten it with his lips. He may not ever imitate Dakota's weird habit of lipping his bucked after each mouthful of grain, but he definitely mimicked me. If I put my head down, he puts his down. If I back up next to Duke, Duke backs up at the same pace. I didn't teach them these things purposely. I contend that they just watched and learned.

The photo above is, I think, proof of something strange that I'm trying to classify. Dakota could have left at any point. Any of the other horses would have at least gone into the aisle and helped themselves to the hay stalls as Pokey did and Pinky did given the same opportunity. They're his barn mates, and he could have learned that from them. But unlike Pokey and Pinky, Dakota has Good Boy written all over his spirit. He only learns what he thinks is important, like how to stop at the gate and turn and block it (a Zip trick) hoping I'll ask him to do a trick for a cookie before pushing him out into the pasture. And like sweeping the floor...which he has never, never done again because...well, just because.

So in the end, I think there's far more going on than just horses being capabable or incapabable of learning by example. It think there are parts of a horse that simply defy examination of any meaningful sort. I think they think. A lot. About things we haven't a clue about. And the surprises that come with that are more fun than a box of puppies.

And I'm totally okay with that.

Are You Your Horse's Worst Enemy?

2011-11-21T15:27:00.000-05:00

The Horse | Rider and Handler Effect on Horse Behavior

pparentlynot, though you can’t prove that by me. This continuation of the series of articles in The Horse on recent behavioral research suggests that, while you certainly can ruin his otherwise excellent day and the mood that went with it, the amount of distress you accidentally cause your horse just by being you and doing what you do isn't nearly as bad as I, personally, imagined it to be. Whew!

The article summarizes a study published in May in Physiology and Behavior (there's a link to the study's findings). The study checked heart rates on horses as they were lead, ridden, and otherwise handled, and (not surprisingly) found that most of us make our horses tense in the medium range of heart rate increases. Sometimes, watching Zip's eyes roll back in his head when I ask him to get off my foot or move a centimeter to the inside of the gate so I can close it (how do they do that thing where they know precisely where to stand to look like they're cooperating and still prevent gate closure?), I would have expected his heart rate to be through the roof. I guess he fakes it well.

Back to the study, again not surprising is the finding that horses being ridden by professionals are far less stressed than horses being ridden by, say, me. And leading is least stress-inducing of all. Judging from the video my daughter just sent me of the horse she's considering buying working on the longe during the pre-purchase exam, I'm going to have to say that longeing and leading are not at all in the same category. They didn't include round-penning in the study, but I would hazard a guess that it's among the more stressful activities since pressure and release of pressure is the name of that game and some of us should never be allowed in a round pen with a horse without adult supervision.

Topas, new kid in the herd, waiting for his
new BFF, Jess to give him a stress-free life.

Of course, we all know that we can be incredibly dumb when it comes to reading our horses' moods and body language. We can and do ruin perfectly good horses regularly, and they deserve better than many of us have to give. And we know that there are moments when the only thing standing between us and utter equestrian disaster is the unexpected kindness of the equine heart. We need to thank them for not killing us.

On to Gratitude

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and in keeping with the spirit of the holiday and the promise I made to be more vocal about my gratitude, I want to thank the following:

Thank you, second-hand Billy Cook barrel saddle, for all the many, many years of safe and happy riding you have given this unrepentant English rider and multiple friends. Though your conchos have fallen of and you're looking a bit weary, you will always be my friend.

Thank you, Irene and Breanna, my faithful barn hands, for letting me breathe easy when I'm not home to fuss over my equines myself. You're da bomb!

Thanks, all you turkeys, pigs, geese, ducks, and tofurkeys who are about to give your last squawk (or in the case of tofurkeys, little squishy noises) for our dining pleasure. It's sad that you can't join us, but we'll certainly remember you fondly for the week after Thanksgiving. Special thanks goes out to whoever invented sweet potatoes with the little marshmallows on top.

Drunk guy at Far Hills Steeplechase showing
gratitude for cold chili. Thanks for not vomiting on me.
Or the chili.

Thanks, Jack, for bearing with me when I insisted on having you make a special pre-vacation trip to the farm to put Pokey's winter shoes on right after the only blizzard we've ever had in October even though you knew it was a dumb idea. As horseshoers go, you're the best.

Thanks to all of the workers who will be manning the supermarkets tomorrow to help us forgetful idiots make our dinners complete. I hope you'll get to be with your families and friends for at least part of the day. Truly, we could live without that forgotten can of cranberry sauce if we really tried, and I'd be much happier if you were home watching the parade and the dog show and Uncle Bernie drooling on himself during his postprandial nappy time.

Thank you, Zip, Leo, Dakota, Duke, Fancy, Pokey, Prince, Rat, Missy, Grady, and Dolly for your endless patience as I tried out random training methods and equipment on you year after year. I don't know why you put up with me. It sure can't be that scoop of grain and pile of hay and handful of cookies, right? It's got to be pure love....right? Indulge me here, please.

And most of all, thank you, faithful readers, for actually spending your precious time reading my ramblings. I heart you all!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Taming Your Inner Critic

2011-11-15T11:37:00.000-05:00

This article is must reading. Yes, I said "must", which means I need to read it again.

Mike Robbins: 5 Ways to Tame Your Inner Critic

hatbetter time than the Holidays to put to rest those demons that whisper our faults in our earsuntil we are numb? In a much-needed act of kindness towards ourselves, it couldn't hurt to stop for a bit and wonder who in hell it was who made the rules that we are striving so hard to live by. Worse still, we strive to make other people live by the rules we've chosen as well. O, Joy! Like it's not hard enough to just get through the day with all of our aches and pains, idiosyncracies and dysfunctions, we also have to keep score for ourselves and stay on top of everyone around us.

Is it any wonder that depression is a national affliction?

Mike Robbins, motivational speaker and coach, pinpoints five problems and ideas for conquering them and making life a happier experience all around. For us horse people, every one of them pertains in spades.

Who among us truly gives everyone (even that idiot down the road with the dog barking on the deck at all hours freaking out our spooky mount at the worst possible moment) the benefit of the doubt? I'm not sure I can find it in my heart to think rosy thoughts as I wrangle my hysterical horse out of earshot of the nasty mongrel, but I could probably manage a gratuitous "He probably chews the furniture if he's left alone in the house" in a less-resentful tone and without the "and it serves that idiot right" tag line. And at least it's five minutes when I'm not wondering if my weight is evenly split over my hip bones, if both heels are down appropriately, and if my back could be a bit rounder.

Do I take things personally? Well, I can honestly say "not so much" to that one. That, however, is a sign of aging, not of kindness of spirit. I believe I read a research study once that indicated the age of 50 as a turning point for women. Pre-50 we're all about ourselves and our families and protecting the status quo. After 50, we become more other-directed. That's why most of the local charitable organizations and service groups are heavily populated by greying heads. It's hard to take things personally when the bigger picture suddenly becomes apparent like one of those 3-D "put your nose here and unfocus your eyes" things that goes from random colored flowers to a rocket headed for a far-off planet if you can just look at it long enough without getting a headache.


Dressage...Custom-made for picky people. Here, DQ Jessica and Rat have a moment of peace during a test, and...uh....wait...is that foot too far foward?

The saying that is often attributed to Oprah, that we would stop worrying about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do, holds true in pretty much every circumstance. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may recall my lecture on spheres of reality and how each of us lives in our own and can't ever cross the bubble into someone else's. Remember that they're busy making it all about them, and you will automatically stop making it about you.

Looking for the good is one of the easier assignments in this article. If you have horses (or any other animal...or small child...or man) living in your bubble, there always comes a moment when you have to justify to yourself that other being's presence and continued existence unmolested in your sphere. That's when you look at him or her (or Zip) and smile because as generally useless and majorly annoying as that being might be, there's just something there that makes it impossible for you to kill it or turn it loose to infest some other bubble. Just last weekend, the Dukester, my mini herd antagonist, had another emotional meltdown thanks to some neighborhood ne'er do well (yeah, the one with the dog) believing every holiday deserves to be celebrated by imported urban idiots shooting shotguns into my woods. As Duke was running laps at the end of the longe instead of doing his little perky Good-Boy thing and as the rest of the herd responded by losing their minds on the other side of the fence, the thought crossed my mind that Duke could go live somewhere else. It barely took form, however, before a dozen excuses for keeping him shot up to block it from my consciousness. Finding the good in anything can require some searching, but we generally manage.

Seeking to understand before jumping to judgment is a toughie. I had a lot of experience with this as a special ed teacher. Since I wasn't allowed to beat or handcuff my students, trying to understand the why of their behavior was a must. I think that's harder to do when 1) there are fewer societal constraints than in the public school classroom, and 2) when it's a horse we're looking at. Alien brains are hard to fathom sometimes. I've often wondered why a particular horse chose a particular behavior that seemed so completely irrational and out-of-character. We try to understand, and sometimes we succeed. Mostly we succeed in projecting onto everyone and everything around us our personal view of the world. That's what makes this part of the assignment so difficult. Taking your "self" out of the equation is nearly as impossible as is seeing into someone else's personal bubble. So I suggest at this point we just reprise the first two suggestions--give them the benefit of the doubt and don't take whatever is happening personally--and hope for the best.

Being gentle should be the basic human reaction to every situation, don't you think? How often is it? If the whip is the first line of defense when we're confused by our animal's behavior, then how likely is it that we'll be less defensive and controlling when it comes to ourselves and our fellow humans? There's something in society that rides the rail between being kind to ourselves and being self-indulgent. I know I can tell when I've crossed that line because it feels so damn good to be kind and I'm so guilt-ridden when I've indulged to the extent that I notice it. It's the one piece of chocolate (dark, for its anti-inflammatory properties of course) to celebrate a job well done as opposed to the new wardrobe to celebrate not killing one's spouse.

We need to forgive ourselves and others for not meeting arbitrary standards. If we could master that, just think how far we could go toward a peaceful life. If we stop setting ourselves up as arbiters of what is right and good, we might discover that it really doesn't matter. Congress might even begin to function again! Wouldn't it be nice for just one day to be able to be completely at peace without the mega-job of controlling everything around us shadowing our every moment?

Go forth and be less critical. It sure couldn't hurt.

Conventional vs "Natural" Training Smackdown!

2011-11-15T09:48:00.000-05:00

The Horse | Conventional vs. Natural Training: Which is Less Stressful?

didn’t think this topic was still under discussion to the extent that actual research was being done, but lo and behold, it is! A research group at the University of Lublin in Poland has taken the...uh...bull by the horns and put 32 Arabian colts and fillies to the test. The results as noted in the article linked above are pretty much what most of us expected: "Natural" is less stressful than conventional training methods based on heart rates monitored before, during, and after three checkpoints in the process.

It's laudable that someone is finally putting numbers to the suppositions that have been bandied about for the past decade or so, but I can't help but wonder if this is really a definitive determination. After all, I, after having spent a couple of hours watching my daughter during her Bob Jeffreys natural horsemanship training program, and after watching her work with her horse at home afterwards, launched myself into the round pen and promptly scared both my horse and myself with my inability to control anything at all. The part where I hit myself in the eye with the clip end of the lead rope I was "naturally" swinging to move the horse off me (he was literally standing on me at the time) was more comic relief than even my daughter could stand as she doubled over in hysterics. Walking and chewing gum is still a goal now that I've found that moving quickly in the round pen results in my sitting in the dirt while the horse "naturally" laughs his ass off from across the pen.

"Want to see natural? Wave that flag in my face one more time
and watch where I plant it."

So, calling on my years in the rat lab at Clark University, the first question that comes to mind is how to control for individual differences in trainers. The summary in The Horse suggests that there were three groups of humans: Natural tainers, Conventional trainers, and the guys with the heart monitors. But it's not very clear as to how many of each were involved and if there was any overlap of chore assignments. I'm not suggesting that the results were skewed, only that, as Margaret Mead discovered and made famous with her Tribriand Islanders studies, results are contaminated by the very act of viewing the subjects, hence the participant and non-participant observer stringency. Individual differences in the humans involved, their ability levels (or lack thereof), and the minute differences in the way each related to each of the horses in the program would have made the outcome anything but pure.

Pidge backs Pinky the One-Eyed Wonder App for the first time.
Pigeon Training--all Natural all the time

Add the fact that training of any kind really can't be called "natural" since in their native habitat there are no gremlins flogging the horses either conventionally or naturally to do anything. As Curt Pate, one of the Big Name Natural Horsemanship Trainers, told us avid followers in an AQHA-sponsored clinic, there's nothing natural about what we do with horses, "and [gesturing at the reining show going on around us] this is the worst of all".


Curt Pate tells his "challenge" pony a story about the Bad Ol' Days

On the other hand, what is being referred to as "conventional" training in the study involves such trappings as a hot walker. A hot walker. I've never been closer than 50 feet to a hot walker, let alone had one to work with. I'm not trying to tear the study apart, but how many times have you conventional types (of which I was one for probably 30 years before John Lyons appeared on the horizon and GaWaNi Ponyboy had me Being One with my herd in the pasture) had access to a hot walker?

This reminds me very much of the saddle pad comparison that didn't use the pads most of us have on hand and judged reindeer fur to be the best option for impact-reduction in English riding. I had to google "reindeer fur saddle pads" to discover there actually are some and they are readily available for the price of a second mortgage on your trailer (with living quarters). As much as I'm thrilled that the research is being done, it's my most personal opinion that reality has to be accounted for for the results to have meaning. In my corner of the twigs, "conventional" training has often included such thrilling endeavors as blindfolding a horse, tripping him, then sitting on his head to "teach him respect". It has involved tying one front leg to the saddle horn and longeing the youngster till he falls down or quits being "stubborn". And it has brought out the very worst in horsemen and horses for generations. Putting a horse on a hot walker then longeing him doesn't really smack of the realities of conventional training methods. And "using body language to communicate" is a pretty vague description of the "natural" style.

We need more research, and this science of horsemanship is truly in its infancy. Here's hoping more researchers will have the opportunity to put their efforts into play. Donations to equine science programs across the land couldn't hurt. Think how many horses could be saved from doom if they were properly trained and cared for? Rutgers, Cornell, and many other universities are working hard to make strides (no pun intended) in the horse management biz. Think about them when you want to toss cash at a horse-related program.