The Soul of a Horse Read Online Free PDF

this as being bad tempered. Mean.
    Mariah once freaked out over a squirrel in the brush and leaped three feet sideways, straight into Kathleen, knocking her to the ground. She wasn’t being mean. She wasn’t trying to hurt Kathleen. She was probably trying to jump into her pocket.
Save me, Mommy!
Because Kathleen had proven herself a good and trusted leader.
    The trainer mentioned above would’ve likely beaten the horse, without even considering the fact that she was simply afraid, and reacting in the way that horses have reacted, automatically, for millions of years. A beating would cause more reaction and one thing would lead to another. Soon the horse would come to believe that humans are mean. Predators. And anytime one gets near, it will most likely mean pain. So they become even more fearful. They try to take flight, and if they cannot, they resort to a last-ditch attempt to protect themselves from what they are certain is about to come.
    Kathleen kept her adrenaline down. Which, in turn, calmed the horse. She picked herself up and rubbed the little mare, letting her know that she was safe, that nothing was going to harm her. And she made a mental note to always do what renowned Australian clinician Clinton Anderson preaches: Don’t stand right next to a horse until she’s well along in her training and desensitization! In other words, stay out of harm’s way and be prepared. Then slowly teach the horse. Desensitize the horse to whatever makes her afraid. Let her know that in your presence she’s safe. All the while, teaching the horse to respect your personal space, and teaching her to focus; to get back to thinking instead of reacting, keeping ever in mind that, like us, horses have different makeups. Some are
very
sensitive, and some are not. Some are more freaky than others. Some learn fast, some slowly. Some are more mischievous than others. But if they have made the choice, on their own, to trust and be with you, with that comes a willingness to learn and to follow your lead.
    They need only to understand what it is they should be learning. Which puts the ball squarely in our court. How do we become clear communicators? Without domination, intimidation, meanness, cruelty, or pain.
    Monty Roberts has scores of tales about horses no one could go near, horses most folks would place well inside the
mean
category. But they are now happy, well-adjusted partners. One in England took three full days to come around, but come around he did. This was a horse who had obviously been badly abused somewhere in his history and had decided that all humans were agents of pain. Monty convinced him otherwise.
    Yet with such positive results coming from so many different directions, why are we still where we are today, with so many owners of horses living in the dark ages? The reason, I believe, is that most people do not begin at the beginning. They want to start halfway around the track, instead of in the starting gate.
    I now have a horse. I want to do something with it. Go riding. Compete. Something!
    We humans are in such a hurry that there’s no time to build a relationship. To learn to communicate. To gain and give understanding. To walk in the horses’ boots, so to speak.
    To begin at the beginning.
    The beginning for us was our discovery of Monty Roberts and his Join-Up process.
    And Kathleen’s fear.
    She was petrified, and I had no idea.
    That birthday trail ride was not something she was looking forward to. It was a gift for me. I was suffering from the so-so results of the last Benji movie and she had wanted to find something for my birthday that would be a diversion and make me smile. That’s the way she is.
    But when her fears began to creep out of the closet, I became even more committed to making sure our new horses were safe and our relationship with them well founded. Begin at the beginning. Take whatever time it takes.
    Clinician John Lyons says that there is a real reason for fear: “Fear is recognition