(upbeat country music)
- Good day, I'm Warwick Schiller,
and I wanted to talk about something that I see quite a bit
that people are doing with their horses
and they're trying to actually solve a problem,
but they're actually causing the problem
to be much worse than it probably was in the first place.
The thing that they're doing is,
when people hold onto the lead rope
and they're always putting pressure on the lead rope
and they carry their arm stiff out to the side like this.
Now, if you think about horses in a hood situation the,
this sense of security from a hood,
does not come from the physicality of the hood,
like, we're gonna beat up the bad guys.
It comes from the awareness of the hoods.
I can not stay over here and relax because
if something from, approaches from that side of the hood
those horses will notice it and their energy will come up
and that energy will ripple through the hood
and I will feel it and off we can go.
And if you think about that horses aren't vocal
horses don't go,
hey,
there's a bad guy coming
and that , we need to the other side of the hood.
You know, there's silent communicators that
where they're communicated a lot with energy.
And what we have to realize is they really read our energy.
And so when I see people holding onto a horse like that
the person's energy is usually in a very defensive energy.
Like I'm worried about getting hurt here,
and their arms will stiff so that
their energy is saying
there is something scary in this environment.
Okay? I am in I'm in panic mode.
There's something scary in this environment
that I'm worried about.
And the horse feeds off that energy.
Does that make sense there?
So that's part of that.
And then the other part of it is
they're always hanging on to that lead rope
and putting pressure on that horse's head.
And
when a horse can't make pressure go away
no matter what they do,
because they put it on the head
when the horse is standing still at pulling on the horse
when the horse is moving around
if the horse can't make pressure go away
that tends to make them anxious too.
And so you tend to see both of those things going on.
And I just recently did a clinic where there was
I think almost every single horse there that was anxious
and couldn't stand still had someone
trying to make them stand still.
And what you have to understand with horses
is you don't control the horse.
You have to control you.
And when you can control you
then the horse can figure how to control themselves.
But there was everybody there I would say,
so let go of that lead rope.
So drop that you don't need to hang on to that
and they'd let it go.
And I'd be talking to them.
And while we were talking
that would reach out and grab it again.
And I would say, what are you doing with your right arm?
And they'd go, oh.
They didn't even realize they did it.
Now, I said before, horses are very,
their sense of security comes from the sense
of awareness of the hood
and not just the awareness
the hoods awareness of what's going on
but awareness of self, especially with humans.
And so if you have got a right arm
that reaches out and pulls on the lead rope
without you knowing that it's doing it
the horse knows that you don't know what your body's doing
which means you are no of help to me
in case there was a saber-toothed tiger around here
you can't even control yourself.
How the hell could you help me
keep an eye on the surroundings?
And so,
you know, the first thing I usually do with horses like that
is turn loose of them.
And probably you probably think,
but what if he runs away?
And so if you think about
horses will tend to go towards where their thoughts are.
Okay?
And a lot of times you see people pull on the lead rope
and the horses dragging them around.
Even though there's quite a bit of pressure
on that lead rope, their thoughts are going over there.
Their thoughts didn't come with a lead rope because,
in what, I've got some videos I put on here
from different horse expos and stuff me doing this.
But what I will do
if the horse gets to the end of the lead rope,
as it feels the pressure
that slack coming out of that lead rope
I'll use it to take my flag
and just wave it towards their hind end
to attract their attention.
And so if you think about you're training them
you train your thoughts to follow the lead rope.
There's a little field in the lead rope.
Then the flag attracts their attention
and the pressure goes around the lead rope.
And you do that.
And after a while, you can pick up the lead rope
and if thoughts come towards it.
But you cannot do it
if you're always pulling on that lead rope.
And so you think about these three things that happens
when you do this right here
one is you're scared and you are, your energy
you've got bad juju.
You've got negative energy.
You've got worried energy which worries the horse.
But then the horse would like to move their feet
and then you try to stop them from moving their feet.
So there's those two things too.
And then that makes him more claustrophobic.
And the third part of it is you're wearing out
your communication with this lead rope.
I mean, I don't, I usually hold the lead rope in one hand.
And if I wanna do something
with the
with the horse, I will reach down the lead rope
pick up that lead rope, do something with it
and then drop this lead rope here again.
And there's a,
at that clinic, I was talking about racing
and there was a horse there that the first day
was like that just dragging the lady all over the place.
And the lead rope really didn't mean anything.
And he was also quite pushy too
like really wanting to run over us.
But by the second day
we could have him standing away from us.
But I could also, I could just reach down the lead rope
and pick up on it softly and subtly
and send him off around me
just by following the feel of that lead rope,
but I had to restore some of that feel back in there
because a lot of it had gone away just from the,
like I said the hanging on the head
and having that energy.
And it's hard because none of those people
who are doing that are actually,
they're not actually going,
you know what I'm gonna do,
I'm gonna do everything wrong
so my horse gets more nervous.
They're actually trying to save themselves but,
it's a little bit like if you
get into a skinned car, what you'll tend to do
is look at the thing you don't wanna hit.
And if you've ever taken a defensive driving course
they will teach you to look where you wanna go,
not where you don't wanna go.
And our first, our tendency
our first response tends to be looking at
thinking about all the things you don't wanna happen
instead of thinking about the things you do wanna happen.
So, you know, being around horses is really learning
about to control your thoughts, control your energy
and control your physical movements.
And if you can control those
usually it helps the horse a great deal.
But if you cannot control those things
just those things in themselves
they usually probably gonna make those horses
a whole lot worse.
(country music)