Equine Instincts & Horsemanship

The riding of a horse, especially when one is performing some other task not relevant to the horse, must be purely instinctive. A man's mind must be 100% concentrated on the environment as presented in the above pic, lest he will die. You will not learn how to ride in lessons or riding rings, especially when concentrating on how to ride, but you may learn something when using the horse to accomplish some work or task. This is not to say that men like these were a decent riders, but at least they had better understanding in how to relate to the horse in general.

The "not thinking in what to do with the horse when riding it" will not necessary transforms one into a decent rider, but it will insure him not to become a bad rider, or a worse rider as he goes. In short, the less you think on the horse in what to do with the animal the better chance to learn, the more you think the greater chance to fuck your brains up, as well as the horse.

The thinking on a horse will make one into an ignorant and crude rider that completely lacks the ability to feel, and respond to, the horse, as such fool responds to his own mind.

The today's dressage is one of the worse places to get education on riding. One must first learn how to do nothing on a horse, before he can learn what to do on the horse from the horse, but most folks simply have no clue what I am talking about. In any case the dressage folks are one of the worst riders in the world, because most of them simply failed to learn how to ride from the horse, and went instantly to concentrating on what to do with the horse, which totally conflicts with the instinctive learning nature of the horse and the rider alike and their interactions. The more they ride in the dressage rings the worse they get, as they subject everything to their reason, and hardly anything to their senses and relevant awareness. The fact was known for millennia, that the riding in the riding rings, more than once per weak, will not only make the horse worse for practical riding purposes, but it will also make the rider worse. Hence those that spend more time in the riding rings than outside in nature and open fields and environments are the worst riders, and they get worse in time the more they practice the riding in the riding rings and arenas. People riding in the riding ring more than once per weak will never learn to ride, for if they would know how to ride at least a little bit, and mainly if they would understand what riding a horse is about, they would never do it. (Doing it for money is another issue, but most decent riders do not want such jobs anyway.)

       As I have previously mentioned, it is almost impossible for us to purge ourselves from thinking about what we are doing, but if long enough with horse, it will eventually rub off on you and the horse will awake, or better said improve, your own instinctive learning nature in relevance to itself.
     Now you can also clearly see why no one can possibly teach some instinctive horsemanship except the horse, and so it is the horse that proves these "natural horsemen" to be genuine assholes, and mainly deceivers and exploiters of the feminine weaknesses and human stupidity in general, especially when it comes to horses. I can understand why women fall for this, because of their emotion and passion for horses that they feel, but how a man falls for this is beyond me.
     Most men however, do not fall for this bullshit, but they only learn it so they themselves can now exploit women. And so again, I do not blame women for abusing horses, and for the mess in the horse world, though I hold them to some extent accountable, but rather blame men like these, through which weak and naive people learn to inadvertently abuse and misuse horses.

      You need to understand first the instinctive learning nature about yourself before you can learn it from horses. I will show few examples so you can understand what it actually is, as we often refer to this function as "subconsciousness".
     For example when you buy a car and drive for the first time, your attention is all on the road and on the driving.
     Now if and when you drive long enough in your life, please note the "long enough" in your life, you may start to day dream ("zone out") when driving, often to the point that you cannot remember much of the things you have passed, what turns you've made, and sometimes even getting lost. I usually call this event the "driving on autopilot", which needless to say can malfunction and accidents happen.
     I am not talking about what many of us call "multi tasking" like texting and driving, which is something else, but rather talking about doing something that we have done for so long that it does not require our "full" attention ("consciousness", if you will) for us to do it.
    It is in this way that horses not only learn but also respond, but unlike us they are fully aware ("conscious", if you will) at that state, because their awareness is not overlapped by thinking like in us humans. As mentioned before they do not think, but rather the information is processed via the "instinctive tree" (no thinking, no memory retrieval), and so their responses or learning capacity is simply lightning fast when compared to humans.

     If and when you use your thinking or memory in responding to a horse, you are simply too slow, and horses end up ignoring you, or better said ignoring your responses and "requests", (commonly seen in prevalence in riding horses), obviously.
    The most important part of the instinctive responses to horses is the ability to feel the horse, see it, hear it, at all times, and always respond not only suitably, but also, and at least, in the same speed. This is almost impossible to explain to anyone that never lived it, and those that did, well, they will hardly read anything about horses anywhere, since they have no use for it.
    Many think they have it, so keep in mind that you do not, for if you would have it, you would not be here reading this!

     Every instinct a horse gains is permanently imprinted into this instinctive tree and the tree becomes a sort of a record, or a calendar, of events the horse lived. It is for this reason why any decent horsemen can clearly see in this tree/in that horse what kind of people the animal dealt with, as well as what the animal is, and how to deal with it.

     We say that something is like riding a bike, once you've learned it you will never forget it. Well, this is partially inaccurate statement, because I do not recall riding the bike using my memory, but rather using my gained instincts that I have gained by riding the bike, hence we cannot forget it, because it is not stored in our conscious memory only, but our responses to the bike are stored in this instinctive tree, the instinctive memory that we also have, just like all mammals. 
    You will also become aware, if you pay attention, that our responses to the bike bypass our thinking mind, and so it is not our thinking that keeps us on the bike, but rather our instinctive nature that programmed itself by constant repetitions to ride the bike. And so, the more we do it, the better we get, since our responses to the bike are faster and faster, hence we say, "practice makes perfect", in such activities.

     The training of a horse is not much different, as the horse simply "learns", (gains instincts) to "work", (move), for human beings via repetitions of particular motions, or one could say tasks, and so in reality it does not take much expertise to train or teach animals anything, though many of the fools, for some odd reason, like to call themselves masters.
    The longer you do something with the horse, or better said, the more often you do something with the horse repetitiously, the more familiar it becomes to the animal, as well as more predictable, and so in time, if not abused beyond the bearing of the animal, the animals can pretty much adjust to any nincompoop.

     It really does not take much intellect, if any, to train and work with animals. It only takes some basic knowledge (no longer taught unfortunately) and enough intelligence to learn from the experience with the animal, which is a subject to one's awareness of what is happening, the latter tends to improve with time.
    The training and working with animals is no art, but many like to call it that, because it markets better that way, or something like "classical dressage" sells to people just because of the word "classical".

      Beware of all the words or terms like "natural horsemanship, natural hoof trim, equine podiatrist, think like a horse, instinctive horsemanship, classical anything around horses, the word art attached to anything around horses except to paintings and related arts-crafts, terms like scientific facts or researches, or any results referring to some animal related studies. The words like love, beauty, power/powerful, correct, incorrect, graceful, the right way, the wrong way, and so on and such, as all these terms and words, (combinations of words) referring to anything equine are for most part nothing more but commercialized/humanized nature (animals and their behavior) for sale targeting exclusively fools and for most part silly women.
    Henceforth we have so many of them using these terms, especially if they wish to prove some point in defense of their silly views of nature and the life within.
    If you have bought to any of such bullshit, well, I do not have to tell you what you are, though you are well aware, or at least heard of, that "there is a sucker born every minute", which in reality refers to all human beings born (sucking on mama's tits). And so, if you did not become aware of being the sucker that is born every minute at one time or another during your lifetime, the odds are about 1000:1 that you are more likely still that sucker. (Whose tits are you sucking on now?)

In today's world of horses one should not concern himself with getting better,
but rather with keeping oneself from getting worse.
The horse will take care of the former, therefore no need for concern, but it is the people that contribute to the latter, hence beware of the people, especially the famous ones.