Two years ago this week I had a lovely experience with our horse Sequoia and at the time I was watching some instructional videos from Paulette Evans of Ribbleton Horse Attunement in Australia. Today I came across a few photos that were taken on that day and was inspired to post here what I wrote to Paulette in February of 2015.
“Refining my senses of when to pull back and not ask for more than the horse is willing to offer”.
Dear Paulette,
This is Tamara in Los Angeles. I wanted to tell you that I absolutely LOVE watching the sessions on the Ribbleton Online Training each week! Having never had a foal, it is so great to see how they develop and how you approach and work with them. They are so honest with their responses and they give you such clear answers and communication every time. It is wonderful to watch how you listen and respond to each one as an individual. Truly anyone who values horsemanship and partnership at all would benefit greatly by watching and learning from your videos.
To give a bit more detail, we have three horses and two ponies with VERY different personalities. Previously we had learned and practiced the pressure and release techniques of traditional Natural Horsemanship with all of them. While this has helped with their overall groundwork and manners, our two introverts still learned rather reluctantly. They were able to understand what we were asking, but my husband and I re-watched some of our training sessions and noticed that months later, they just didn’t look filled with joy when we were working with them.
After beginning your online training series, I walked into our pasture one day to ask our most introverted horse to come and work and then stood still to try to listen a bit harder to what he was telling me. Instead of doing a gentle hind-quarter disengagement to ask him to bring his head around to put on the halter (which he was trained to do), I simply stood, scratched his withers and walked away. I repeated this process at least for ten minutes with the understanding, that if he didn’t end up completely wanting to be with me on his own, that would be our session for the day. After what seemed like an endless amount of time, however, he finally locked on to me so deeply that I opened the gate, he walked out calmly and stood in front of a pile of fresh hay without the slightest desire to go and take a nibble. He was calm and entirely focused on me above the call of food, which for him was astounding!
I started to get the bridle and saddle out, but then noticed that he flicked his glance away from me ever so slightly when I went to put them on. This was a normal occurrence, but as I always try to be gentle and he doesn't usually give a glaring admission of rejecting the tack, I would normally tack him up anyway. Today, I decided to “Be like Paulette” and keep listening on a deeper level. I put the tack away, pulled out a neck rope and bareback pad, and then asked him if these items were ok. His response was so obvious! He said YES and then followed me down to the arena WITHOUT me even asking him to and stood quietly for me to mount. We proceeded to have one of the most connected rides we have ever had. And afterwards, when he rolled, we laid together in the sand for over 30 minutes, with me stroking him the entire time. At one point, he even fell asleep so deeply that he began to twitch and dream with me laying on top of him. Let me say that he has NEVER done this before.
It was absolutely magical!
I thought I had relatively decent listening skills before, but your course is bringing me up to a much higher level and really causing me to re-think some of my old patterns and habits of being around and working with horses, as well as refining my senses of when to pull back and not ask for more than the horse is willing to offer.
So thank you!”
