Horse Sense

When I was ten, our family moved from California to Minnesota. This was 1974 so pretty much everything about that image applies. I felt like my life was moving backwards. It might have been a total psychological train wreck except that my parents decided against the familiar environs of suburbia. Instead, they purchased an old country house outside the tiny community of Hamel, MN.

This turned out to be an incredible surprise and a great blessing for a young boy whole loved to be outside. I played in the woods, tromped through the alfalfa and built enormous snow forts in the winter drifts. But the greatest blessing was that my dad purchased two horses, a two-year old Appaloosa mix for me and an overweight Shetland that was supposedly for my sisters. I named my horse, Dakota and my sister named its companion, Pearl. My dad paid $75 for the Appaloosa and I am pretty sure the farmer threw in the Shetland just to get rid of her. The Shetland was utterly wild and my sisters were only seven so they never actually sat on Pearl's back. But Dakota had some training (they actually call it breaking). So I rode her just about every day that the weather was agreeable; or at least I tried.

The thing is, neither I nor my parents knew anything about horses. I helped my dad assemble a cheap electronic fence that took up a couple of acres of our land. We kept water in the tank and hay in the barn—which was really just a wind shelter. But other than that, we just sort of learned as we went along. The truth was Dakota could escape the fence pretty much any time she had the inclination. But she never went far. We'd find her standing in the front yard or clomping on the porch. One time, my mother was airing out the house and Dakota stuck her head though the open kitchen door.

We understood stuff like this. We knew about cats and dogs and that it was important to love your pets. But Dakota was a horse and it's sort of the point of horses to enjoy riding them. But my experience with that was limited. I had ridden some with our neighbors, Sandy and Julie. And I had watched TV—you now those Westerns where cowboys just jerk the reins and the horse takes off in a full gallop in exactly the direction the rider wants to go. So that was sort of my model. I would hop on Dakota's back, yank her mouth in the direction I wanted her to go and give her a firm kick to let her know that I was in charge. (Remember we are talking about a ten-year-old boy so there’s no need to call PETA just yet.)

Well, the results were mixed. Sometimes Dakota would respond and sometimes no. In fact, sometimes she seemed to purposely do the very opposite thing that I was commanding. I would pull left and she would go right. The harder I yanked her head in the direction I wanted to go, the more she would defy me. I chalked it up to my $75 horse. After all, those two beautiful horses that belonged to Sandy and Julie didn’t act like that. Whenever I rode with them, even Dakota seemed to behave. I figured it had to be the difference between their real horses and the one my dad picked up in a two-for-one fire sale.

That's how it went. I rode Dakota a lot. Sometimes alone and sometimes with Sandy and Julie. It was pretty much a constant negotiation. I almost always rode bareback so I was sort of at her mercy. Sometimes we'd get two miles from home, running through a hay field and she would shy to avoid a gopher hole, conveniently lowering her head at the same time. I'd sail off according to one of Newton's laws and it would be 50-50 whether or not I'd be walking the rest of the way home.

Then one day, I was riding with Sandy and Julie and Julie suggested that we trade for a while. I think she took pity on me because I had been struggling with Dakota. So she invited me to ride her horse, Comanche. He probably rolled his eyes at the suggestion but I was thrilled. But as soon as I got on, I discovered my problems weren't necessarily the horse. It was the same challenge. I would yank right and Comanche would either just stand there or insist on going left. Was this contagious? Was I just such a wimp that every horse on the planet was just bound and determined to reject my authority?

After a few moments of watching me try to wrestle respect out of her gentle Morgan, Julie stopped me and said something that I will never forget, “Remember, he doesn’t straight-rein. Pulling on his bit like that is only going to confuse him.” Sandy then proceeded to explain to me the difference between straight-reining and neck-reining. I learned that all I had to do was hold the reins together and move my hand in the direction that I wanted Comanche to go. At first, I thought she was crazy. If he didn't respond to all that jerking and kicking, how in the world was he going to understand something as delicate as a single strap of leather across the side of his neck. But it turned out Sandy and Julie were right. Here I was a ten-year-old actually directing a 1000-pound beast. It seems altogether too simple. It was the first time I realized how smart horses really were.

You see, a good riding horse is not driven by the bit in its mouth. It learns to pay attention to the feel of the rein on its neck. What appeared to me as effortless direction was really nothing more than communicating in a language that Comanche understood. As sad as it is, it all makes sense now. The whole process was a reversal from my thinking. I began with the assumption that horses are essentially stupid creatures that need to be broken and controlled. Consequently, I assumed the bit was the key because it was the most obvious and apparently powerful steering mechanism available. So while I tugged the rein across my body to the left in order to bring the bit further to right, this also brought the strap of the rein to the right side of the horse’s neck. I imagined that I was directing the horse right but the rein on his neck was telling him that I wanted to go left. As I escalated what I assumed to be a battle, the horse only became further confused.

Even though the concept of neck-reining is really quite simple, it took me a while to get. Or perhaps rather, it took me a while to actually believe it--to believe that gentleness and meaningful communication really does outperform violence and control. But I sure get it now. I see coaches or teachers yanking bits and screaming at kids. I see bosses who act more like ten-year-olds torturing respect out of their coworkers. It’s so very sad and so very unnecessary. I don’t even know if there really is such a thing as straight-reining. It's probably just a made up word to make idiots feel like their strategy actually has a name.

The truth is I probably ruined Dakota, at least in the time that we had her. Even though she loved me and our whole family, I imagine she hated those negotiations probably more than I did. Who knows, maybe she'd even been taught to neck-rein before we got her. She might have been happy to walk me through the woods and alfalfa, if I had only had the sense to stop yanking at that bit.

A few years later we moved again. I ended up selling Dakota to a girl who had her properly trained. She turned out to be a lovely riding horse, walking in parades and shows. I am actually very happy it turned out this way but looking back, it also makes me sad. I wish I could go back and see her sticking her nose through that front door. I'd hug her around the neck. I'd tell her how sorry I am now for being such a stupid animal.