Straightness

When I work with a horse, it seems like most of my time is spent with centering their minds to m request at the task at hand.

Most horses that come to me also have a brace in their body and in their mind. It’s like their body and mind are separate.

I see them walking in one direction while they are looking in another, extremely crooked, have no sense of where their hind end is, and a lot of them seem to be escaping mentally and physically. I worked with a western trained horse yesterday who was suffering from mechanical training.

I could just imagine someone pulling the rein to his hip, over bending his head, and spurring his hind end over. It felt like his thoughts were going one way, his front end going another way, and his hind end dragging behind him all crooked.

So we spent the session picking up a rein, and just waiting for him to let go of looking everywhere else but where we were asking him to look with the rein.

When he would look the direction the rein was lifted, we would release. The next step was to ask him to move that direction.

This horse was so used to looking in the opposite direction of his body that this took a while. He finally started moving his front end towards the direction of his thoughts.

Then came the daunting task of lining his hind end up to his thoughts. A horse will naturally line his hind end up to where he is thinking. Just watch them when they are out in a herd.

Something gets their attention, they look, and pretty soon their hind end will step over to line up to where they are looking.

It is also demonstrated when a horse is on a circle. You will see when it is incorrect when their hind end foot falls are too much to the inside of the circle, just look at where their eyes are looking.

Most of the time their eyes will be rolled to the outside of the circle, so they will be looking really strong to the outside, trying to escape, and their hind end will be trying to line up to where they are looking.

If a horse is allowed to travel like this, they are essentially being taught to disconnect their feet from their mind, or in other words, being taught to travel crookedly.

A lot of training methods will then use mechanics to straighten them up. A horse will get put in-between a rock and a hard place to physically be made to straighten up.

For me, the simple solution is just to get their thoughts lined up to what they are being asked to do. But
sometimes that means letting go of an agenda with the horse, and take the time to get them centered.

After we finished with the western trained horse, a client brought in a 2 yr old mustang that has hardly
had any handling.

This young mare had a hard time being present with humans, and she looked like she was beginning to conform to the handler’s request. So we decided to work her at liberty.

I stood in the middle, and the goal was to bring her thought in to me when I made noise with a flag. The flag was not meant to drive her, or to punish her, it was simply meant to remind her that I was still there, and to encourage her to search for a better place to be inside of herself.

I was amazed when I watched how she moved. Here was a clean slate, horse who knew how to travel straight.

You could see when she would stop and face up to me, every thought that went through her head. Her thoughts bounced around pretty quick.

She would center up to me, then she would just think off to her left, and her hind end would start
to swing right, but then she would think to the right, and her hind end would start to move to the left.

This would go on for a few minutes, with the mare trying to figure out her best way to escape me. What I
marveled at with her was how connected she was in her body.

She had not been taught to disconnect her body from her thoughts, she was not crooked, she had none of the issues that I see in so many trained, domestic horses. She was pure and speaking to me loud and clear.

I see so many books and manuals on how to get a horse straight, how to collect a horse, etc. But left to
their own devices, they have this in them anyway.

I think we take it out of them with our mechanical ways. Then we spend a life time trying to get it back. This mustang came into the pen tight in her neck and back.

By the end of the session, she had let down emotionally so much that her eyes were really soft, and her top line was full. She had the carriage that we all strive for, but have such a hard time getting.

I see so many trained horses who let down this much too, but because they have spent so many years being emotionally tight, that their muscles are developed incorrectly.

I wondered if this mustang would be able to maintain this while she was being trained as a riding horse. It seems like they are all begging for us to make things clear to them, clarity though feel and energy, through timing, through communication with the horse, not through physical mechanics.

Straightness is so crucial to a horses mental state. But they come to us straight, they are naturally straight. Their bodies naturally line up to their thoughts.

A thought weighs nothing when the clarity is there. A body weighs a lot when the thoughts are disconnected.