A Lonely Road

It feels like a hundred years since I last posted.  I haven't written because my head was so full of new information, of connections that I was making, that I just couldn't piece it all together.  Now, of course, I have no idea where to begin to describe it all.  So I think I'm just going to pick up where I am, and maybe the rest of it will work its way in somehow.

I follow Amy Skinner Horsemanship on Facebook.  I like her page because she often brings together ideas from multiple sources, rather than marketing her own brand of horsemanship.  Not that there is anything wrong with having a brand or a methodology, but I find that participating requires an almost cultlike following.  And I have trouble with commitment...So I like Amy's page because she brings in a diversity of ideas.  I don't always agree with them, but I typically find them thought-provoking.

She recently posted a poll asking how important community is to your success.  She asks, "If you found the 'one path to rule them all' but your community was not supportive, how likely would you be to continue and succeed in this path?  How likely would you be to switch to another style of horsemanship if your community was active in it?"

I responded to her poll by saying, "Having a support system, even if it is just a few people, is essential, I think.  Doing right by your horse is a pretty lonely road these days."

I'm not sure that actually answers her questions, really.  A support system is a little different than a community, and I didn't address whether I would switch to another style of horsemanship if my community was active in it.  At the time, I hadn't really given it as much thought as I should have.  But like all my really good comebacks, my response has come days later - ha, ha!

For me, the reality is that I won't switch to another style of horsemanship even if my community was active in it.  For one thing, I don't really have a community that is committed to one style of horsemanship.  I have friends who do a lot of different things with horses, from hunters to dressage to endurance to trail riding to "just" riding to having horses but not riding at all.  But they are all over the place when it comes to methodology.  Some use a marketed technique, but most of them use different techniques to fit the situation.  A lot of those techniques are outdated based on what science is showing us about horses, but I know as well as anyone else that changing the way you do something can be challenging, even when the evidence supports the change.

And for another thing, I've learned through hard experience that doing what the people around me are doing is a surefire way to screw up my horse.  The thing about interacting with horses is that every combination of handler and horse is unique.  Just like every marriage is unique and every parent-child relationship is unique and every best friend to best friend relationship is unique.  There are techniques that often work for many horse-human relationships, but none that I know of that work for everyone.

The problem, of course, is that as humas, we are social, and we are sort of programmed to want to do things with others and be like others and learn from others.  So if a person is going to go outside that framework, things start to get a bit uncomfortable.  It is flat out easier to follow the group and do the same things that others do.  You can commiserate together when things don't go well and celebrate the successes when things do go well.

If you aren't in a community, it becomes almost impossible to talk about anything that you do with horses.  Everything is so controversial these days, from blanketing to shoeing to saddle fit to bits to training methods.  And people can be quite intolerant of differences.

I'll give a recent example.  I happen to use a Baucher bit or a variation of it for all my bridles.  I use Mark Rashid's Rockin' S snaffle for a western style bridle, a Kimberwicke on the snaffle setting for a hunter bridle, a Myler snaffle with hooks when I want to experiment with a tongue-relief mouthpiece, and even an actual Baucher for a dressage bridle.  Part of the reason I use all these different bits is because different disciplines have different rules about which bits are legal.  And in the case of Donut, I use a Kimberwicke because I haven't been able to find a Baucher bit in the size I need with the mouthpiece that I want to use for her mouth, and I want to wait until she is done growing before I decide if I need to have a custom Baucher made for her.  

I like the Baucher style bit because of the stability it offers.  But I overheard an equine professional loudly disparaging people who use Baucher bits because, according to her, these people are uneducated about the Baucher and think that they should use it because it is a leverage bit or because it is trendy (I had no idea using the Baucher was trendy).  She doesn't believe these people could possibly be using it because they have tried a variety of bits and determined that the Baucher is actually the best bit for their horse.

So that is kind of a crappy thing to say.  Out of all the people I know who use Baucher bits, 100% of them use it because they understand it offers stability and they have compared it to at least one other bit and determined that their horse went better in it than other bits.  Their use of the bit had nothing to do with wanting more leverage in a bit (and there are plenty of people who will argue that a Baucher is not a leverage bit...) and everything to do with wanting to improve their horse's experience with the bit.  That isn't uneducated.  That is responsible horsemanship.

But when something as simple as the choice of a bit causes so much intolerance, where do we go in terms of supporting each other?  And for less confident or less advanced riders, this kind of disparagement creates a huge problem.  

I think that I should be clear that I don't judge anyone for wanting to have a community to be a part of.  While it can come with its own frustrations, caring for and riding horses is a pretty complex process.  It only makes sense to be part of a larger community to share ideas and to learn.

The problem for me is that communities tend to be intolerant of differences and often expect the kind of loyalty that only a Golden Retriever is capable of.  So I've chosen the lonely road.  It means that most of the time, people look at me like I have two heads when I'm expounding on something exciting that I learned in a bodywork class or trying to regurgitate what I discovered in a podcast I listened to.  And when it comes to my riding, well, even my own child thinks I'm a nutter most of the time.  After all, who wants to spend a half hour trying to get their horse to walk as slowly as possible when the conventional method is to ask for as much impulsion as possible?  Slowly walking is not even in the same ballpark as jumping when it comes to the Fun-o-meter.

But for reasons that I hope will become clear if I can ever get my thoughts together enough to write more blog posts, it is the nuances of communicating with the horse that have become incredibly exciting to me.  Feeling a subtle shift in the horse's body is more meaningful to me than jumping a 3-foot jump.  Executing a whiff of a half-pass is more energizing that a gallop across a field because I know that the movement is helping the horse be better balanced.

To be clear, though, I am not condemning those who choose to jump or gallop their horses.  Jumping and galloping have their place and all of us are taking different journeys.  I happen to be in a particular place now.  It is a place I have been working toward for years, but I haven't always been on this path, and I may not always be on this path.

And while I don't have a community, I do have a support system.  I have people that I can talk to about hoof care and different people I can talk to about riding and still other people I can talk to about feeding and blanketing and turnout.  It's what works for me, and it enables me to follow that lonely road to search out the best for my horses.