Glenshee Equestrian Centre

enlightened horsemanship through touch has posted another great discussion on dominance-oriented training. while reading the post i recalled several horses i have met over the years who were trained this way and rebelled. it didn’t work for them, and this post has effectively put into words just why this approach didn’t work. it also got me thinking about what did work, and a possible explanation of why it worked when the standard approach didn’t. in a nutshell, i think it comes down to this: "these dominant-submissive relationships are constantly renegotiated in the wild. they are not static. jostling for rank never ends.. in contrast, a calm, secure state of loving cooperation can be maintained indefinitely, so long as the human does nothing to destroy it." i have seen the effects of this first hand. this approach leaves the horse only two routes forward; the first is as above, to continue jostling for rank, and the other is to create such an atmosphere o...

i'd like to recommend the following blog post: Do You Demand Your Horse’s Complete Attention? I came across this great post over at Enlightened Horsemanship Through Touch , a blog I happen to love! This is a subject that is near and dear to me and my personal training style, but it was never something I thought about in any formal way, so it was really cool to have someone put it all out there in words where I could wrap my brain around it a bit. The result was a comment too long to post that I thought I’d post here in hopes that some of the readers here might visit the original post and share some of their thoughts on the subject too. Anyway, for what it’s worth, here’s my two cents: This is a post I instinctively agree with but have never put into coherent thoughts, so I’m grateful someone has so succinctly put it into words for me! This gets right to the heart of much that I dislike about natural horsemanship and all its talk about “being the alpha” and “respect.” There is ...