About Us

Holly
My horsemanship journey started about 21 years ago when I was first learning to ride in college and got a job exercise riding thoroughbred race horses. Talk about baptism by fire! I was bound and determined to learn how to be a good exercise rider and I did succeed in creating a career in exercise riding that took me to Ocala, FL in the winters and to various racetracks in the summers—mainly Canterbury Downs. This gave me a chance to handle and ride hundreds of horses and really learn how to read a horse.

Life intervened and my exercise riding career came to an end. Very shortly I became a horse owner and this changed everything. My experience had taught me how to ride and handle a horse, but I didn’t know the first thing about creating a lasting relationship with one. My quest for knowledge began and I started studying all of the natural horsemanship resources I could find. I wanted to learn how to have my horse enjoy our rides as much as I enjoyed them. My quest continues to this day as I learn and discover more and look for ways to do things even better.


Trainers/Methods I have studied in depth include:

• Parelli
• Alexandra Kurland (clicker training)
• Applied Behavior Analysis
• Carolyn Resnick

I want to share some of the things I have learned on my horsemanship journey, including my experiences with horses, and the results that I have had and theories about those results, as I learn to journey into the horse's mind. I will be writing the majority of this blog but Gunny has informed me that he wants to have a voice and write some articles too.

I have also been teaching horsemanship lessons for the last 9 years and really enjoy helping others to achieve harmony and success with their own horses. I will occasionally include stories of my students and their horses.

Gunny
Holly has decided to allow me to start writing articles on a regular basis now. I have finally convinced her that I have things to say that would be a benefit to others on their journeys with their horses.  Before I start, I should tell you a little bit about me and how I became the Way I am.
 

I am now a 10-year-old Quarter Horse but it all started when I came into this life as a horse, I wanted to learn more about how humans operate and how to teach a human to have a relationship with a horse. Horses want relationships that function by having a clear-cut leader during each interaction. This leadership can fluctuate depending on the strengths, talents, and roles of each herd member. My mother was a dominant horse who made her way in the herd by bossing other horses around. So early on I learned that the way to get what you wanted was to pin your ears and demand it. When my human, Holly, picked me I was still a youngster and pretty ornery all the time. She brought me home to a small herd and one horse in particular started to shape my behavior. His name was Buster and he was a Lead Horse and he recognized that underneath my orneriness, I was a Lead Horse too. Lead Horses operate from a different mind-set than dominant and submissive horses do. They think about the herd from a community perspective rather than from the self-serving perspective that dominant horses operate from. Buster taught me all kinds of things, including how to be calm and look at things first before blasting off, how to go out on trail riding adventures with our humans, how to play games together with a ball, but mostly how to be a friend and be peaceful and harmonious in our interactions. Buster was a really big part of my life until last year when he had to leave suddenly. Holly told me that he had to go Home because he had a job to do there and that I would see him sometime again and he was sorry that he didn’t get to say goodbye. I was sad for quite awhile after Buster left but then I realized how much he taught me and that I knew his lessons well enough to carry on without his instruction.

I have been working at shaping Holly, my human into being a leader that I want to follow. I want to have a relationship that is fun, challenging, interesting, nurturing, harmonious, peaceful, interactive, and cohesive. I have had to be very persistent while teaching Holly because she kept on trying to change me instead of allowing me to change her. The Code of Horses says that the one who allows themselves to be changed is the one who is in the position to lead. When Holly kept trying to get me to change, she kept on putting me in the position of leadership. She also kept on engaging in dominance games with me. I knew how to play dominance games really well because my mother was so good at them. Every time she played a dominance game with me or responded to my behavior in a way that tried to change it without changing her own, it confirmed for me that she wasn’t really my leader. When I was younger I used to submit to her dominance games because I felt like that was the right thing to do. As long as I was submissive our relationship felt pretty good. But I always felt the need to test things and I got better and better at winning the dominance games. This made me feel like I could control Holly by dominating her and I got more and more powerful and opinionated about what I was willing and not willing to do.

The summer before Buster went Home I had a lot of fun. I discovered that I could turn almost every interaction with Holly into a dominance game. I didn’t care whether I won the game or not, it was just the act of playing the game that was fun for me. I became more and more arrogant over that summer. A couple of times I heard Holly talking about me to Eric and being all upset about my arrogance, but I didn’t care because I was in control, feeling really sure of myself, and having fun playing all the games I had invented.

After Buster left, everything changed. I was sad that Buster was gone and I could tell that Holly and Eric were sad too. But Holly changed the way that she was when she was around me. It was like she suddenly learned how to speak Horse. Before she was communicating with me in a way I could understand, but not according to the Code of Horses. She started to sit with me while I ate my hay for long periods of time. And she quit playing my dominance games with me. At first I couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t playing those games any more, they were so much fun! So each day I would think of a different way to try to get her to play. A few times I succeeded but I started to run out of ideas and realized that Holly was acting more like Buster had acted with me.

Lately I have changed how I feel about Holly. I have noticed that she is more likely to shape her behavior in response to mine as we go about our day together. She seems to be acting more like a Lead Horse. She started to do some things that Buster used to do, like make sure I am paying attention to him, herd me around, and chase me off my spot if I got too arrogant and forgot to pay attention to where he was. She has quit trying to make me change my response to her requests. Instead she changes her request until I can respond in the way that she is looking for. This makes much more sense to me and makes me want to follow her lead. We have quit playing dominance games altogether.

She only asserts herself over food, territory, or personal space and if she wants me to move, she uses her energy plus a really long piece of grass stuff to disturb the air in the area. This makes me decide to go stand somewhere else but I don’t feel like she is engaging in a battle with me about where my feet are or how I am moving them.

I guess I like being peaceful and harmonious as long as I am sure that Holly is still my leader. Sometimes Holly allows me too much opinion and I start to feel like I am the leader and then I want to be bossy about it. Life isn’t as exciting as when we played dominance games all the time, but I like it in a different way. I feel more relaxed about being around Holly now and like feeling connected to her and having it be my choice. Before I would connect with her because it was the best way to get her to leave me alone. Also, our connection was based on dominance so I was always looking for a chance to play and get another step up the ladder. 

The articles that I plan to write will be about the things that I have taught Holly in this journey from a dominance-based relationship to a community-minded relationship