Natural Horsemanship

Written by James Cooler

long my journey in horsemanship, there came a point when I discovered that our relationships with our horses can be a remarkable mirror for not only all relationships in our lives, but in many other aspects as well. One aspect that horsemanship seems to inevitably bring out in people is how they handle conflict. Some people meet conflict head on, and have knee jerk reactions more often than not. Others seem to never stick up for themselves and always end up being stepped on (in both life, and by horses). Then there seem to be people that don’t get into arguments, yet no one takes advantage of them either. They just have a way of staying even keeled, through the good times and bad. I’ve often wondered how these people wound up that way. Were they just born with it? For me, I’ve always drifted on the side of avoiding conflict, and then dealing with it head on in one big storm. Quite frequently, the results weren’t what I would call desirable. Lucky for me, horsemanship has also led me down a path of self-discovery and self-development. Sounds deep, I know, but it’s what it takes for me to find that little spot between too much and too little.

This brings me to my point in horsemanship. Sooner or later, if you own a horse, you are more than likely going to run into a conflict situation. Picking up feet, trailer loading, trail riding; these are just a few of the hundreds of scenarios you can encounter with a horse in which things don’t go the way you had intended. The reality of it is, you are having nothing more than a conflict. So, now that we understand we will probably have a conflict sooner or later, we might ask ourselves how to deal with conflict. Before we get there, let’s go a little deeper with our word - conflict. Even though we all have our own individual examples of conflict issues, we can still generalize the fact that all of them are conflicts in communication. That is all a conflict usually is; nothing more than a misunderstanding in the communication of at least two individuals. Those individuals can be animal or human. Again, how do you deal with conflict? First, you have to listen. Of all the times I can look back and see where I had a big conflict, I would have dealt better with it if I would have spent more time listening instead of talking. But, you might say, if all we do is listen, then we end up being the person who gets stepped on. True, but I didn’t say you couldn’t reply. The idea is to listen first, and reply when the second party is through explaining themselves.

Well, we may ask ourselves, why do we have to be the ones that always listen first? You don’t. But, you are the only one who is responsible for the conflicts in your life, and how you react to them is up to you. If you desire peaceful conflicts, then I can tell you from experience, learn to listen. The more you listen, the easier it is to solve conflicts. Allowing yourself to listen will allow you to form a complete thought, so that your response can become a resolution to the conflict that works for both parties.

Well, it all sounds dandy in theory, but real life doesn’t seem to always work that way. True. However, if you’re like me, and you hate conflict, then you are always striving to better yourself, so that someday you may learn to not only deal with conflict, but how to avoid it as well. To tie it back into horsemanship, I believe listening to horses is the key to developing a true relationship. A lot of people usually put the brakes on horsemanship right at that point, because it’s difficult to comprehend a horse by listening. What you might not understand is that you aren’t listening to sounds; you’re listening to their body language. The more you can read their body language, and listen to what they are telling you, the more effective you will be in developing your response, and the more effective you will become at dealing with, and avoiding, conflict altogether. To learn more about Cooler Horsemanship, visit our website at www.coolerhorsemanship.com. Until next week, I hope you’ll spend some time listening...to whomever.