Hardiman Horsemanship, Chieming (2026)

29/10/2022

TRY THIS EXPERIMENT....

I want you to try an experiment.

Put about 200-500 ml of water in a container. Then add a sq**rt of liquid detergent into the water. Get a spoon or whisk and gently stir the solution. Slow and steady like you were stroking a cat on your lap. Notice if any foam is formed by your gentle stirring. If there is no foam, gradually increase the energy of your stirring. Incrementally increase the energy and the agitation of the whisk/spoon until you start to see bubbles forming. Note the difference in the amount of energy you used when you first started to gently stir the water solution to the energy required to create foam.

In the horse world, in particular, the dressage world, when foam appears from the horse’s mouth it is considered a good thing. It is believed to be a sign of a soft, relaxed, mobile jaw. It is sometimes called a “happy mouth” and a positive sign of a horse “seeking” the bit or “accepting” the bit. Tension can often result in a locked and tense jaw in a horse, so if the jaw is not locked or super tight it is very often assumed the horse is relaxed or at least more relaxed.

There can be disease factors that lead to the production of foam in the mouth (eg, rabies), but for the purposes of this essay I’ll stick to the role of training and riding.

However, before I go on, let’s look at the causes of foaming from a horse’s mouth.

Foam around the lips or dripping from the mouth is the result of two things occurring simultaneously.

Foam is simply saliva with bubbles in it. Creating the bubbles requires the saliva to be mixed with air. In fact, it takes a lot of air because foam is approximately air and only a small fraction is saliva. So the first factor necessary to create foam is a mechanism to mix air into the saliva.

The second factor is swallowing. Creating foam requires a pool of saliva in the mouth. But when a horse swallows, the mouth is emptied of saliva. When a horse swallows all that is left is a coating of saliva over the tongue, teeth, palate, epiglottis, gums, inner lips surface, etc to prevent dryness in the mouth. But there is no pool of saliva until more is secreted into the mouth, which in turn is whisked away when the horse next swallows.

The formation of foam requires a pool of saliva to be mixed with air. So foam from the mouth requires the swallowing reflex to be inhibited enough to allow a pool of saliva to build up. That pool of saliva is then mixed with air by the action of the tongue rolling around, much like the spoon or whisk in our experiment.

If we look a little more closely at the claim that foam created in a horse’s mouth is a positive sign of relaxation, how does that gel with the logic?

Our experiment indicates that a gentle and relaxed swirling of the solution does not create foam. Instead, it takes some vigorous agitation to mix enough air into the solution to cause bubbles to form. If your horse was swirling its tongue with the same energy you had to swirl the whisk in the container of water/detergent to create some foam, would you consider that a relaxed tongue?

I am puzzled how a tongue rolling around with enough energy to create bubbles in a horse’s mouth is a sign of relaxation and acceptance of the bit or rein contact. In fact, when I have seen horses exhibit that response there are always plenty of other indicators to tell me the horse carries considerable anxiety and resistance.

Secondly, how can an inhibition of the swallow reflex be an indication of an emotionally comfortable horse? I don’t know of any circumstance where relaxation turns off the swallow reflex. For that to happen, the production of saliva would also need to be inhibited. But we know that in the case of foam build up in a horse’s mouth, saliva is present and being released into the mouth.

So the question begs, what is the logic that the inhibition of the swallowing reflex and a busy tongue are indicators of a horse’s quiet emotions and relaxed jaw? I have never seen foam in the mouth of a horse with a quiet mind and a relaxed mouth while being worked.

When I see a horse being worked with foam around the lips or dripping from the mouth I see a horse in trouble.

23/06/2022

The way a horse is can always be attributed to two things, nature, and nurture. Everything a horse does, how it responds, and what it understands, is a combination of what it learned from its life experience and what it inherited in its genetic makeup. This is true of all species with a complex nervous system.

When we attempt to work with a horse we can only focus on the ‘nurture’ side of what shapes their behaviour. We have no influence on the ‘nature’ side of the equation. But we are even more limited than that. Not only can we not affect their genetic disposition, but we also can’t affect their past life experiences. We can’t undo what has already been done or teach a horse to unlearn what it has already been learned. We can only try to influence their future experiences to achieve the training outcome we desire.

It’s important to appreciate that training does not help a horse to ‘unlearn’. The behaviours and responses we want to change during training are never eradicated. They don’t suddenly disappear in a puff of smoke the moment they learn a different response.

Our training provides layers of new learning to our horse’s understanding. Each new lesson adds another layer to what the horse already knows. But lurking underneath are the layers from lessons learned before. None of the past lessons are removed. This is true whether or not those lessons came from us or from a bee sting.

For this reason, nothing a horse learns is unlearned. When we teach a horse to no longer buck when carrying a rider, we are training a new layer of learning that sits above the old layer. But the old lesson of how to buck when a person sits on its back still exist. All the new training does is to change or suppress the triggers and ill feelings that caused the bucking. Therefore, the moment those triggers and ill feelings re-surface, so does the bucking.

In time, the old lessons that first taught our horse to buck with a rider are so heavily weighed down by the layers of new lessons that it can seem almost unimaginable that anything could trigger a bucking storm in our horse ever again. But it’s not true. The bucking lessons are still in there if you dig deep enough.

It’s important to remember that training does not eradicate old or unwanted behaviours. Training simple overlays the old lessons with new lessons. Old behaviours or unwanted responses are still there waiting for us to screw up and trigger the old emotions that caused them to exist in the first place. That’s why sending your horse to a trainer, without becoming more skilled yourself, has limited benefit. If we don’t step up and learn how to reinforce and build upon the new lesson, it won’t take long before the old behaviours appear again. They are always there, lurking and waiting for us to fail our horses.

Photo: I've been in Minneapolis the past 10 days teaching a clinic and working with my friend, Ellen Kealey. Here is Ellen helping Smoke to line up to the fence. Smoke carries a lot of inner worry and Ellen is doing a great job of layering new lessons and new feelings on top of Smokes old ones.

11/06/2022

Our first walk in the Forrest with yearling Tobago having so much fun ♥️♥️

19/05/2022

Obituario de Bill Dorrance, publicado en julio de 1999 en el New York Times... VERLYN KLINKENBORG "No hay nada parecido a un "susurrador" de caballos. Nunca lo ha habido y nunca lo habrá. Solo la idea es una afrenta para el caballo. Puedes hablar y escuchar a los caballos todo lo que quieras, y lo que llegues a aprender, si es que prestas mucha atención, es que viven en terreno abierto más allá del lenguaje y ese lenguaje, sin importar cómo lo categorices, es solo pobre retórica para lo que los caballos entienden sobre ellos mismos y sobre los humanos.
Necesitas practicar solo tres cosas, paciencia, observación y humildad, todo lo cual se resumió en la vida de un anciano que murió el martes en California, un hombre llamado Bill Dorrance.
Dorrance tenía 93 años, y unos pocos meses antes de su muerte aún cabalgaba y todavía lazaba. Era uno de los pocos hombres, incluido su hermano Tom, que, por separado, ayudaron a redefinir las relaciones entre el caballo y el humano. Bill Dorrance vio que la sutileza era casi siempre una herramienta más efectiva que la fuerza, también se dio cuenta de que la sutileza es una herramienta difícil de ejercitar si crees, como la mayoría de la gente hace, que eres superior al caballo. No había dominancia en la forma en que Dorrance montaba, o en lo que enseñaba, solo colaboración. A la exaltada equitación del vaquero, el vaquero español de la California del siglo XVIII, él aportó una exaltada humanidad, cuya máxima expresión es la fe en la voluntad del caballo.
No hay nada que codifique lo que Bill Dorrance sabía. Una parte de ello, cómo trenzar un lazo de cuero crudo, es relativamente fácil de enseñar, y otra parte, gracias a las diferentes individualidades de caballos y humanos, no se puede enseñar en absoluto, solo se aprende. Su legado es extremadamente complejo y, en cierto sentido, autoanulante. Es un legado interno. Cuanto más un jinete dice que ha aprendido de Dorrance, menos probable es que haya aprendido algo.
Eso suena evasivo, pero refleja el hecho de que, lo que se podía aprender de Dorrance era una forma de aprendizaje cuyo tema era principalmente el caballo, pero que se extendía en direcciones sorprendentes para incluir perros, ganado y personas. Si lo aprendiste, sabrías que no era nada de lo que alardear.
No hay misticismo ni magia en esto, solo el reconocimiento de la afinidad con los caballos. Mucha gente se ha encontrado con Bill Dorrance y ha tomado prestada una o dos ideas, y algunos han ganado mucho dinero al popularizar lo que creían saber sobre lo que él conocía. Pero lo que él sabía nunca llegó a ser popular, y nunca ganó mucho dinero con eso. No puedes vender la modestia o la curiosidad eterna. Es difícil poner precio a aceptar que todo lo que piensas que sabes sobre caballos puede cambiar con el siguiente caballo." Traducción: Mercè Herrero.

16/05/2022

I want to briefly talk about the ethics of working with horses, and the responsibilities that arise from them.

From time to time I am asked, that given my views on horses and training, why do I ride horses at all? Apparently, if I really cared about a horse’s welfare and their comfort, I should just let them roam freely and never ride or train them.

The first time I was asked this, my immediate reaction was that it was a silly question. But years later, I can see that it is a question all horse people should ask themselves, so they are clear in their own minds regarding the type of relationship they are working towards with a horse.

Surprisingly, there is still some argument in the horse world about whether horses have emotions at all. I think this dates back to the 13th century when philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas proclaimed animals were not worthy of consideration because it was assumed they could not reason like humans. This makes sense for those times because most philosophers were also theologians and their belief system put humans as God’s children and animals were a gift from God for the benefit of humans.

Thankfully, only a handful of people still hold those views.

However, there is still a considerable stigma in assigning human-like qualities (like emotions) to animals. These days, many people believe that anthropomorphizing (describing animal traits as being similar to human traits) animals is wrong.

Personally, I believe anthropomorphism is a positive thing on the whole and is completely justified. The problem comes from people taking anthropomorphism too far. For example, horses have a neural network capable of experiencing emotions, so it is perfectly reasonable to suggest they can experience suffering. Even so, horses don’t have the brain mechanisms to plot and scheme, so it is not reasonable to assume that horses can try to trick us or plot against us. Yet, people want to make the issue of anthropomorphism black and white, i.e. either horses share human-like qualities or they don’t. The reality is that they share some, but not all.

Anybody who has spent time with horses will know that they can exhibit fear, joy, nervousness, relaxation, curiosity, and many other emotions. They can make decisions between two or more choices, which I consider a form of reasoning or problem-solving. So it is not unreasonable to assign human-like qualities to a horse if it helps people have a better understanding of how they operate.

Scientists are only catching up to what horse people have known for centuries with regard to the emotional nature of horses and all species with a complex central nervous system. It’s been shown that there are common centres of the brain across all vertebrates that relate to the emotional capacity of an animal. In particular, the amygdala is similar in humans, horses, birds, fish, and amphibians. Studies have shown that if the thinking part of the brain is destroyed, but the amygdala is left intact, rats still show emotionally driven behaviour. I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to consider that horses would exhibit similar responses.

To me, this makes perfect sense when you consider that evolution works by small modifications to create a new species. Most species of vertebrates have more DNA in common than they do different. So it is a much more rational argument to consider that humans differ from horses as a matter of degree, rather than as two species radically and completely different.

The bottom line is that all species with a complex brain (including horses) have an emotional nature that is hardwired into them. As we know, horses are not automatons, but animals with strong emotional needs that largely determine how they behave in the world. If we deny the emotional nature of a horse as the primary motivator for behaviour and response to training, then we deny the true nature of the animal. Emotions drive everything.

When I have talked about the link between a horse’s emotions and thoughts in the past, I have been asked, “How can you know what a horse is thinking and feeling?”

The inference is that I can’t possibly know what a horse is thinking and feeling because horses don’t sit down with us over a cup of tea and tell us their problems. However, they do tell us. They are always telling us. In fact, they hardly ever shut up! People make the mistake of confusing their inability to listen to a horse, with the horse’s inability to talk to them. It is the arrogance of human nature for us to believe that because we don’t understand something, it does not exist.

The 18th century German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer believed that suffering should determine the ethics of all our decisions in life, and in this regard, we should empathize with the suffering of animals.

If you agree with Schopenhauer, then the ethics of horse training is an easy choice. The emotional well-being of the horse should be the most important determinant in the methods of training we choose. Other factors, such as obedience and competitive success, should play minor roles in the choice of training approaches we adopt.

Having given you all the pre-amble about ethics, how do I justify training horses instead of letting them roam untouched in my paddocks?

In my mind, the justification lies in the choices I make. I choose not to do things with horses that I believe are not to their benefit. For example, I keep my horses in as natural an environment as possible. I choose methods and equipment that I have a thorough understanding of how and why to use. I work towards a better relationship in everything I do with a horse and strive to never stop being the student.

It’s not for me to preach to others about the ethics of training horses. Each person has his or her own ethics and values. Nevertheless, I urge everybody to have at the forefront of their minds when working with a horse that everything they do should be judged foremost in terms of the emotional wellbeing of each and every horse.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated” – Mahatma Gandhi.

Photo: Tommaso d'Aquino (1225-1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and Roman Catholic priest. He is considered by some to be responsible for shaping modern-day philosophy and theology.

06/05/2022

A few days ago I asked a question at a clinic during a lunchtime discussion. It’s a question that I have never heard from other trainers nor had any of the lunchtime crowd come across the question. It made me and I think most people feel uncomfortable. It may make you uncomfortable too, but if you read to the end of this essay you may feel better.

The question is, do horses or can horses suffer from Stockholm syndrome?

According to the Oxford dictionary, “Stockholm syndrome are feelings of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim towards a captor”

Not all psychologists believe in Stockholm syndrome, but most do and there have been many reported cases. The most high profile case that I know is Patty Hearst. She was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974. After her capture she became a sympathiser and willingly participated in several crimes with them.

I don’t know if horses can experience Stockholm syndrome. However, I wonder if sometimes we mistake our horse’s willingness, co-operation, trust and even partnership to be an equine version of the response to them being our captives.

When we bring a horse into our lives we make almost all the important decisions in their life. We decide where they will live, how they will live, who their companions will be, what and (often) when they will eat, how they must behave in our company, their reproductive status, etc. Very little is left to the horse to decide. Can this cause a horsey version Stockholm syndrome?

When we see a horse come up to us in the paddock to be caught, is it Stockholm syndrome at work? When our horse shows a willing compliance to be ridden, shod, tied up, trailer loaded, etc, is it Stockholm syndrome at work?

Can we ever know if the horse that shows all the signs of being happy to work with us is really acting out because we are really good at getting along with horses and fulfilling their needs or because we played our Jedi mind games?

If horses can/do suffer from Stockholm syndrome, I feel it would be a different phenomena than in humans. I say this because unlike humans, horse live in the moment. They don’t dream or envision what could be. If we move a horse to a different paddock, they don’t dream of the day they can go back their old paddock. Or if we load them into a trailer, they don’t look forward to getting to their destination. That doesn’t mean that horses can’t experience Stockholm syndrome, but it may not be the same as in humans and may even be expressed as very different behaviours than what is seen in humans.

Lastly, does it even matter? We all apply training techniques to change a horse’s behaviour and the relationship we have. If part of the process involves a form of Stockholm syndrome, does it matter? If they are doing well and appear to show minimum stress and anxiety, does it matter? If the outcome is identical whether we use pure good horsemanship or use a bit of Stockholm syndrome, does it matter?

Photo. Me with some of our horses gathered in the paddock. Is this an example of Stockholm syndrome at work?

Hardiman Horsemanship

29/10/2022

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11/06/2022

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