Natural Horsemanship South Africa is situated in the foothills of the Langeberg outside Robertson and is run by Tamasine Smith, the only Silversand Associate in South Africa.

The Silversand Natural Horsemanship programme was created in Australia by Steve and Irena Halfpenny. Their programme is based on a model developed by Philip Nye. They have developed an easy to follow ­self-study ­programme which, in Tamasine’s ­opinion, goes far beyond what some of the other ­natural horsemanship (NH) study programmes are offering.

The Silversand Programme fits much more with what Tamasine feels NH is about. To quote Steve, it is more about “who we need to become as people” than about training methods. The Silversand Programme is about “awareness” and asks us constantly whether what we are doing is “for” the horse rather than “to” the horse.

The programme helps us to help our horse “think his own way through problems” and to avoid confrontation as much as possible. It is about having a dialogue with our horses and giving them options that help them make their own decisions. This makes for a far better relationship with our horses than in other programmes.

Students of the Silversand Programme recently had the opportunity to attend a six-day camp with Steven Halfpenny himself and to work with their horses under his guidance. Steve elicited much discussion about goals and also the problems horse owners encounter in our attempts to achieve these goals with our horses. Each morning we discussed what we had noticed or learnt during the sessions with the horses.

While working with our horses, many of us discovered – despite initial protests – that certain behaviours which our horses exhibited, were most definitely caused by what we inadvertently taught them. I had to learn to be far more aware of how I had developed a habit of unconsciously stepping away from my horse, for fear of him standing on me – this had started a process of my drawing him ever more on top of me.

Energy projection

Hand-in-hand with our attempts to influence our horses, came the need to become aware of how much energy we were carrying in ourselves and projecting at the horse. Steve guided us into using our intent and level of energy (and far less stick or rope) to increase or decrease our horse’s impulsion, or to move him away from us.

Working in this way had wonderful follow-on effects, in that we started doing away with pulling on ropes and reins, and uselessly waving and tapping with sticks, or bumping and squeezing with our legs to get something to happen.

We spent lots of time on practising to help our horses move their feet backwards, forwards, shoulders laterally, hind quarters laterally and both together, on the straight and on a circle, in different paces and combinations, always looking to achieve lightness and responsiveness with the bare minimum of effort on our part.

Steve gave us plenty of tips and pointers about learning to see, feel and anticipate the horse's footfall, so that we could ask for movements by directly guiding his feet, as opposed to hoping that he would figure out what we meant with ill-timed squeezes from the leg or taps from a stick. You knew when you were asking with the correct timing and energy by the supple and confident yielding that your horse gave you – even if horse and human only managed to keep this up for short periods initially.

Get your horse ready

A phrase that proved to be of great worth to many of us, was something that Steve quoted Ray Hunt as telling his students: “Get your horse ready!” On closer investigation of this phrase in relation to what I was doing, I found that quite often I was pretty much ambushing my horse with an instruction to perform a certain movement, without actually getting my intention and communication clear.

I would, for example, want him to move his shoulders away from me by pivoting on his hind. Feeling that I needed to be assertive, I would rush into the whole thing with rather too much gusto, failing to notice that my horse was resting a hind leg and generally not paying attention to me, and so was unable to produce what I required.

With higher energy work, “ambushing” your horse can get you all sorts of movements that you neither want nor enjoy, like kicks or rears. With some practice, the “get your horse ready” process happens in split seconds and quite automatically, and the result is a far smoother motion that your horse is able to give with confidence.

Give your horse a choice

Steve strives to bring about situations in which the horse is required to make a choice. He concentrates on setting things up so that making the right choice is easy and comfortable for his equine student, whereas the wrong choice becomes work – as opposed to punishment. When the horse makes a choice, the learning from that choice is well-founded, because he initiated it himself.

I applied this line of thought to all my interactions with my horse and got the distinct impression that my horse respected me a whole lot more for giving him the opportunity to think and make choices. The turn side of this wonderful situation is that I also needed to be big enough to accept that he did not always agree with what I asked, at which point I ­re-examined the situation I had created.

For more information on Silversand Horsemanship as well as training within South Africa, go to www.nhza.com and www.silversand.com.au.