An Introduction to the Path - Philosophy in Action

by Sascha Day

Some of you may hold the question, how on earth is it possible to do anything other that what I do with my horse today. How do I get my horse to do anything without a bit? How can I do anything without pressure? How do I approach my horse in order to have a real friendship? Many fears and doubts may play with your thoughts and emotions.

Many will not venture beyond these thoughts. There has been too much investment already in the life with horses. The expensive saddle and 10 different bits aside, there is the investment in our beliefs about horses. Most of us have spent a lifetime learning about horses. We know about shoes, saddles, riding. We know what to feed and we know how to deal with the envitable breakdown and injury of our horses. We have become experts in the field of horses, so we believe.

There is a revolution in progress.

What we think we know, what we believe about horses, physiologically, psychologically is being broken down. And more than that, our fundamental beliefs about man’s rights over animals is questioned.

Ask any horse person, or any rider if they love horses, and the answer will undoubtably be yes. We invest countless dollars, countless hours to the pursuit and hobby of horse ownership, horse riding or competition. We buy properties, stables, all the gear. We attend clinics by well-known instructors.

In the end, hardly any horse person looks to the horse for any of these answers. The horse isonly a tool for human means. The horse is never considered. We do what WE think is best for them and rarely, if ever consider the thoughts, emotions of the horse himself.

We force, we order and we demand from our horses. We make them live in unnatural stinking boxes. We nail steel shoes to their feet. We strap metal in their mouths, we whip them over jumps. Any sane person looking on, who can see the horse beyond the lies and misnomers of common horse knowledge, will see a creature bound and tortured, in pain, frightened or worse, the light is gone. Horses for human pleasure suffer. And again the fundamental question arises, what right does man have to subject a horse to his will for any reason? The answer you come up with may surprise you.

Courage 

The process to walk the Path will initially be one of stripping back well worn beliefs and "rules" and will require courage to be honest with ourself, about our motives, about our ego. Some people are simply not ready for this step.

It can be frightening to let go of what you think is right or correct, to release “control” and to allow yourself no expectation from your horse. It is even more frightening for some to consider the consequences of not having a horse for any specific purpose, if not to ride and compete with... Some may be terrified to relinquish a belief of themselves, that until this point has defined them as a person. Some may realise they are not the horsepeople they thought they were...

These doubts and fears aside, if we are to evolve, we need to consider what it is we do  with animals. We have to be conscious of what we are instilling in our children and what legacy we will leave them.

The Horse Is Always Right

Understanding these five words and living what they mean, has lit the way to my own personal freedom with horses. It has helped me to let go of many “rules” that I would be otherwise terrified to do. It has stopped me punishing horses and instead, it has helped me to develop a mental appitude that I hadn’t been given a chance to exercise before. It has made my interactions with horses multi dimensional and it has brought me great peace.

The Horse is Always Right.

Fundamentally, this is a simple understanding of differences in perspective and the ability to believe that one’s own vision of the world is not “right” but in truth, only “our own”. This is true of each of us as humans but is even more relevent when we speak of human perspective and the horse perspective.

We cannot be so arrogant to think the horse can see life from our perspective - that our motives for riding and training are shared in anyway, by the horse.

As horsepeople, we are under the illusion that the horse needs "training" or "education" whereas the truth may be far more confronting... The horse can teach us great honesty and humility. The horse has motives pure and responds to his world physiologically. 

For example, we may see the bit as a tool to be used gently to increase subtlety of our aides - whereas the horse, who has no comprehension of what "aides" are, responds as a horse does, in complete honesty, reacting to an unnatural painful piece of metal that he is forced to wear and cannot escape from. He never learns that our aides are subtle, instead he learns that to avoid pain, he must follow pressure from a rein or hold his head in a certain way. He becomes crippled by fear and threat of pain.

Living in a harmonious balance with his surroundings is no longer possible for the horse. Instead the horse learns to live with a constant goal of the avoidance of punishment and only when his upper thresholds has been reached, when the whole organism rebels in a desperate bid to protect itself, do we see what we call "bad" behaviour. What we are really seeing is a horse fighting for his survival...and his sanity.

This is sadly, the truth of most horse-man relationships - there is one who inflicts pain for his own means and one who suffers and must endure a torture without ability to understand why.

First steps on the Path

To develop the understanding of why The Horse is Always Right, we must first free our horse of any pain based methods of control.

We must be prepared to free his body and mind from oppression, fear or threat of pain as a means to control him and we must be courageous enough to give him his voice. And when he starts to use it, we must promise to listen.

When we remove the gadgets, the force, the metal, the pain, the negative reinforcement – only then can you really see the horse.

The bits, riding and training schedules, and the use of force, completely masks our ability to recognize the true nature of our horses. Horses are incredibly gentle and  harmonious beings. Their whole design is of one that seeks to flow without resistance to their surroundings, which includes us. They want to get along with us.

They want to co-operate. But instead, we give them every reason to fear and hate us…and even despite this, horses will still seek to get along with us.

You will witness this innate nature in horses when you promise to stop using force, punishment or pain as a means of “getting along” with horses. And when you see it, you will always seek to protect it...