Learning to train a horse before you've properly learned to ride one.
It was a dream-come-true I got to enjoy when I was growing up. The part that makes for the best story, though, is ...well, a little dangerous.
Just two years ago, I finally told my dad that the horse (well, pony) I had when growing up had thrown me.1 He was surprised, but I said, “You understand why I didn't tell you back then.” I didn’t tell him then because that might have meant the end of my dream.
It was a dream that entered reality when I was eleven years old. And this dream came in the form of a chestnut mare named Prissy. Her mane and tail looked like they were each made from a pile of fluff—something to make you say "oh how cute" rather a sight to take your breath away with it's majesty. But her glossy coat gleamed brilliantly red-orange in the sunlight. And when she was in a state of high alertness—ears pricked forward, head held high, and stepping in a lively manner—you could see all the beauty of a most majestic steed in her.
But back to the “oh, how cute” assessment—the way that fell out was decidedly mixed. My mare was adorably short and plump. (Some breeds of ponies are nearly as tall as a full horse, but Shetlands like her are pretty tiny. Prissy's back was about three feet off the ground—waist-height for me back then.) And she could be super-friendly: her nickname was “Nosey,” because if you were outside, she would gleefully mosey on over to you, follow you around, and generally stick her face in your business while you tried to get work done. (I, of course, was delighted!) By now, though, I would be silly to conceal from you that she could have quite a temper.
Even when she was kicking and fighting, though, her behavior was pretty logical. She was content enough if you were just standing around, or if you were taking care of her, but if you put something on her back in such a way that it was causing her hairs to be (literally) rubbed the wrong way, that was apparently painful. So you could expect her to kick, buck, or snake her neck around and bite you on the knee. (if the thing on her back was you.) She apparently had sensitive sides, so if you wanted her to go, you had best not cue her for that in the usual way—by squeezing her sides with your legs! (Just make a clucking noise, and she'll move out at a good pace.) These were situations that could be avoided. However, there was one unavoidable situation: if Prissy had found some VERY desirable food (especially grain or corn—which she did not need—these feeds were too "rich" for a pony2 like her.) around the barn, and you walked up behind her, she would plant her front legs in place and kick the back two straight up at you.
Now, this last bit—two hind hooves flying up backwards full-force into your face—now, THAT was a pretty unacceptable-to-my-dad, horse-will-be-gone sort of offense for the mare to commit against anyone in my family. If Dad saw it once, maybe he could write it off as an anomaly, or as us doing something stupid. ("Don't walk up behind an animal when it has its food!") But... sometimes you had to get her out of the barn when she's gotten into the bales of alfalfa. And it was a consistent behavior. In fact, by now we had a second pony, and BOTH of them did this if any human walked up behind them. I had to fix this.
So I trawled through the horse books that I had from the library and stacks of horse magazines that I owned3 for a solution. Fortunately, one of the most exciting things for me—even back when owning a horse or just taking riding lessons was a distant dream—was studying horse training. A favorite topic to read about within that area was "bad habits"—the abnormal psychology of the horse world. Perfect.
I found a series of articles where a woman who adopted two mustangs through the BLM’s Adopt-A-Horse program described the process of gentling and training them. She described the type of dominance battle that her two horses had over the food, with each-other and with her. It matched up with mine. She described one time when the gelding she owned chased the mare away from the food supply, and then did a literal "victory lap," trotting in a circle around it afterwards, keeping the mare out.
Most importantly, she described the process she used to—as she described it at the time—establish dominance over those horses. It was: Walk up to one when it's eating, and then when it tries to kick you, firmly place the heel of your boot on its rump. The idea was to start out close enough to the animal (and while it's in a place where it can't take a step forward) that its hooves couldn't hit you with lots of leverage.
So I set out to do this, or something much like it. I was fairly nervous. I climbed up onto a wooden divider (basically a rail that sort of divided our barn up into "stalls"), and, walking on that rail, came up right behind my ponies while they had some feed. (Except weirdly, you know, like 3 feet off the ground.) As always, they flattened their ears back, ready for a fight, and braced themselves to kick at me. This time, though, I fought back... I don't think I placed the heel of my boot upon either horse's hindquarters, no, not really. I dropped down from the rail, basically on to one pony's rump, and kept shoving him away. I think I shoved that horse's rear and knocked him off his balance before he could get those back hooves up off the ground. (Note: All this is very mild when compared with how horses fight each-other. Yet forceful. With directed force. Cue “We have 5 fingers and that’s what keeps us above the cats” meme.)
They didn't know what hit them! I chased both ponies out of the barn, away from their food. I did this not by getting my hands on their halters and taking control like a human, but more like a horse would. I even did the "victory lap," thinking it might convey in horse body language "I won." Everything. I didn't want to do this again. After like 10 minutes of me guarding the barn door from the two of them only by standing there, (they didn’t try anything) I walked up to each one, took it by the halter and led it back. I used the verbal cues they'd gotten used to for years: “Okay, Prissy, you're free!” “Okay, Tuffy, you're free!”4 They could go there on MY terms, with my permission, because I had decided they would have this food.
And, in the coming days, I found—it worked! In these types of circumstances where they had the good kinds of food in front of them, they. never. kicked. again. This was true not only if I walked up by them, but also if it was my mom or sister. It had worked beyond my wildest dreams.
Well, that was great, and you can bet I’m going to connect it with something bigger. At least one of those horse books I was reading recommended horsemanship specifically for girls—“to build confidence.” This was such a vague general statement. It sounded so much like a platitude. Even I was cynical enough that my eyes half-skipped over that: “Yeah, yeah.”
But thinking about it now, that confidence was no joke. There were so many fruits of that horse-training adventure—and the many others I got myself into. For one, I developed my own philosophy for thinking about dominance battles: I told myself, “Once you've fought a physically-powerful creature 5-20 times as large as you and repeatedly won, you can sort of roll your eyes and inwardly chuckle when a fellow human tries to start one.” (My take-away was "Why bother?" though I imagine that someone with a different sort of personality would say, "Won last time versus a creature much bigger than me; I bet I can win again.") Besides that, I learned how to fall into a “mode” that I called "being calm for someone else." (First with horses, and then I able to “carry this over” for when I was around nervous people, and have it help them.) Oh yeah, I also had responsibilities like buying their feed5 and deciding literally everything about their care. (My parents, self-described city slickers,” left all this research and decision-making to me. The horses were actually my responsibility in addition to being my privilege.) Full disclosure: This care is significantly easier for ponies than for full-sized horses for reasons I won’t get into... because we're almost done!
It was an opportunity to solve grown-up-sized problems as an 11/12/13/14-year-old. On my own. With no “backup system” where I have an adult with all the answers waiting to supply an opportune hint at the right moment.
And it was wonderful.
More than once.
In fact, when we showed my mare to a friend who knew more about horses than we did, the first thing she told us was, “Take her off the oats!” (We weren’t feeding her any.)
Happily, my parents had gotten about 50 pounds of them at a library book sale! (Not an exaggeration.)
I developed those because sometimes when I would finish up working with one of the ponies and un-click the lead rope, it would act like it had just escaped from my control, and run off!
Mostly not bags of grain, but there was hay for the winter.