"Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment."

The past few years have brought movies and books that featured horses in startling new roles, emerging as teachers and guides to a deeper realm of awareness. Natural Horsemanship has burst upon the scene, with insights into the mind of the horse that offers a path to understanding both horsemanship and ourselves.

Human psychology leads us to recognize greater capabilities in our animals and access them through positive reinforcement. The Internet shrinks the globe and shares the best trainers, teachers and veterinarians, loosing a Herculean flow of information into our lives that requires a front-end loader to sort and digest the deluge of possibilities.

"When your horse has reached his potential, leave it. It is such a nice feeling for you and your horse to still be friends."

Each of us is a library of our experiences, expanded by each horse we ride. We succeed when we understand and respect the needs of the animal yet create the motivation for him to handle new tasks and experiences. This takes skill and time.

It also requires the balancing of training techniques to suit both the horse and the rider. Each is an individual, as is the unique combination of the two. This is art.

"Perhaps this is the reason that this revolution occurred. To hand us a powerful tool for developing the rest of our humanity, the part that wasn't genetically endowed, the part that, in fact, goes against our genetically endowed, predatorial instincts. The part we have to work to obtain and is therefore most valuable to us."

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© 2006 Heart'n Hand Farm
Serving Washington, DC and
Montgomery County, Maryland