Riding in tune with the nature of the horse
We invested an enormous amount of time in trying "to model" the horse, to accustom it to a lifestyle and to principles of education that, ultimately, are our own. We devised schools for horses with stales, arenas and round pens, all firmly secured so that our pupil does not escape, either physically or mentally, during its 'training', tightly structured in function of our timetables.
Then we developed numerous equitation techniques and methods as well as more and more equipements considered necessary by those who aspire to be better educators and to improve the performance of their mount. The basic idea : to be dominant enough to make oneself respected. The whole process ranges from the cruelest method, i.e. "acquired resignation", to conditioning to sounds and/or gestures, a technique originally descended from taming wild animals, to the most recent - the "desensitization" of the horse in order to obtain its total mental subordination.
Because the horse is a domestic animal and dependent on us, it has fairly well adapted to this concept. But every artificial perfection has a hidden side, moments where the horse shows us that it has a behavioral or physical problem, when tries to escape our authority by refusing to submit and by falling sick...
We therefore came to the conclusion that the horse was complicated to manage and even more difficult to manipulate, and we adapted our equitation principles to this idea. Moreover, the remedies, the education programs and the equipment, whether traditional, ethological or even natural, have become so complicated and sometimes so contradictory that it is difficult for us to make sense of them, and even more difficult for our horses.
And what if, contrary to general opinion, riding was quite simple, and did not require any particular method, or educational concept, or equipment and/or superfluous accessories? Riding that placed the respect of the natural, emotional and physical needs of our horses at the heart of the relationship with man?
