...and an Ethologist’s approach to Natural Horsemanship
I remember viewing the early years of ‘Natural Horsemanship’ with some bemusement. The growing question was; just what was it that was being referred to as Natural? Was it the idea that one animal riding on the back of another was natural? If it was, I was very puzzled in what way could this be considered natural?
So I raised this objection with some Natural Horsemanship folk, only to be told that I had it wrong what Natural Horsemanship meant was that the horse was treated in a natural way. This seemed to me to be even more confusing: after all, relationships with the hunters that fed on horsemeat for tens of thousands of years before ever a saddle was dreamt of could hardly be termed natural to the horse.
And so I left the issue, as I’m sure did many others, assuming that there was some kind of visceral ‘feel-good’ quality about the term that people liked, whatever the actual meaning of the term might be, and that this was just another fad.
However, if the end result was to be an improvement in management and training of horses then any ‘fuzziness’ about actual meaning could surely be forgiven.
Now, some years later, it seems that those who distanced themselves from the populist nature of the term and went on about their business, should perhaps have been more critical of the looseness of thought that it was bound to bring with it. If there was uncertainty about what the term meant then, now there appears to be a total confusion.
