The Project:
One Mustang directly off the range, One trainer, No tools, Just body language
The Goal:
To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.
Training Versus Development
My recognized job title might be that of “Horse Trainer”; my business cards read “Equine Development Specialist”. Are they different or one in the same? The last week has me thinking…. training versus development, what’s the difference?
Here is what I think. Training is building a set of habits or skills in a time frame. Development is setting up the environment to allow growth at ones own rate and speed.
Training conforms the trainee to what we think they should be. Development allows them the freedom to be whatever they are fostering and encouraging the best they can be.
Training follows a predictable path of cause and effect creating results; development is an organic evolutionary process where the positive results are often dramatic and surprising.
What I do is somewhere in the middle. I feel that the grey area between training and development gives me the best of both worlds. Wherever safety might be an issue, I tend toward the predictability of training. Where I want that inexplicably beautiful connection and bond with my horse, I lean toward a developmental process.
With Myrnah, in this project with no tools, I have an opportunity to lean a little farther into development instead of training. Without her full participation in the process I am lost. She has to want to do everything I want to do, because I don’t have any tools to push her into doing things she would rather not.
Last week I fell more into a training routine when I pushed harder than usual to try to get the hind end yield. When I realized I felt I had missed a step in our process, I then felt we SHOULD have been able to do it by now. Without the training tools on hand to help me threaten her into submission, Myrnah kicked at me under that kind of pressure. Then when safety felt at stake, I maxed out the tools I did have to re-engaged her: running around clapping my hands, yelling…. and then getting quiet when she came to me with her ears forward again. Simple cause and effect: pressure to make the unwanted action unpleasant, release to make the wanted action pleasant.
Training has a time frame in mind and an idea of what the horse should know by now (such as not to kick at me or threaten my safety). The advantage of that method is the predictable results to pressure and release, and the horse seeming to know “wrong from right.” The disadvantage is the beast-of-burden, dull attitude that can occur in any of us when we feel like we should be different than we are. All of us want to be unconditionally loved and appreciated and we cannot really be the best of ourselves when we are told we are not good enough constantly. Horses are no different from people in that respect.
So what might last Wednesday have looked like if I had taken the developmental approach?
First off, when Myrnah started pinning her ears at me in the specificity exercise, I would have slowed way down, spent more time in advance and retreat, spent more time being playful and affirmative, and been less attached to specificity happening any time soon.
Secondly, once I realized the step I had missed, the hind end yield, I would have spent more time quiet and still with my hand on her side, waiting for her to choose her response to my presence, giving her all the time in the world to decide she wanted to yield and work with me, making sure I released my focus and appreciated her the moment our connection and cooperation got stronger.
Thirdly, if she had kicked at me, and I was in a developmental frame of mind, I wouldn’t have let fear dictate my response. Fear caused me to be desperate about getting our cooperative connection back in a hurry. If I hadn’t been afraid of getting hurt or losing out connection, I would have just stepped out of the way and backed off, playing with the gentle intensity of drive and draw just like we did in the beginning of our relationship to bring our connection back and start over.
It’s all about time really. There is a brilliance
I gave myself a year to train Myrnah without tools. A dear friend said she wished I wouldn’t put a time limit on this process, and I think I now understand her sentiments. None the less as a horse trainer, and an equine development specialist, for my own education, I want to feel the pressure of a time limit. I want to see how close to a developmental process I can keep us in spite of a time frame. Nothing is black and white. Life is shades of grey between extremes. For me seeing the extremes helps me figure out where I would like to stand in the middle ground.
Training versus development is a thought-provoking contrast. While the world might ask me to train horses on a time frame, and I would like to think I am good at it I also hope to get so good at the developmental processes that people see it, and want it and will start to value the brilliance of connection above and beyond physical competence in the moment. Myrnah is here to help me strengthen my skills of development.
So here is to the unique, the surprising and the inexplicable connection between horse and rider. May I have the fortitude and patience to wait for it, nurture it, and encourage it in every way.
Elsa Sinclair
