Mastering Natural Horsemanship

Step 3. Never Raise the Excitement Level to a Predatory Level

Keeping yourself rhythmic and relaxed will help you keep your wits and your patience so you never do anything that startles the horse. Never do anything that interrupts the feeling you want him to have that you are a safe place to be. If something you do elevates the excitement level, you put too much pressure on the horse. If you do something and he didn’t notice it, you need to go back and repeat the lessons about paying attention until you both have that down.

Here’s an example. If you are constantly paying attention to the horse you will be constantly aware of what he’s thinking and doing. You will start to catch little things before they escalate into big things. You will start to control your own reactions so that you can control the horse’s reactions. For instance, let’s say you have a horse in a round pen and something startles him and he leaves. You don’t react to his leaving by increasing the pressure and asking him for a few extra laps of the pen. That’s retribution and you are not trying to establish the pattern that if the horse leaves when you didn’t tell him to leave, he’s going to get punished for that.

Instead, if something unusual grabs his attention and raises his excitement level to the point that he needs to leave, you just let him go and act like nothing happened. Then you have to get his attention back before you can do anything else. So you do the smallest thing you need to do to get his attention back on you. Then you invite him to come back to you. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. After awhile when something startles him, he’ll start checking to see what you’re doing before he leaves. If you keep acting like nothing happened, he’ll start to follow your lead and act that way, too.

Step 4. Repeat These Steps Until You Figure it Out.

You have to work on paying attention, staying rhythmic and staying relaxed until your self control is a pattern the horse can absolutely trust. Then you can be in control of your horse.

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