While focusing on so-called “natural horsemanship" in this issue, I thought it appropriate to dedicate this space to a few pointers as to the history of this phenomenon that started in the US, mostly among working cowboys, but has since spread rapidly throughout the world.
The term "natural horsemanship" was, if not coined, then at least made famous by Pat Parelli, one of the leaders of the movement. But to think that natural horsemanship is new, says Pat himself, would be erroneous. "Natural horsemanship is so old, it is new again," he says. "Such good horsemanship has been around since the days of Xenophon (365 BC), but we have somehow got lost along the way."
At the basis of natural horsemanship lies this simple theme: That horses can be controlled more effectively without the use of force.
The late Tom Dorrance, who is generally regarded as the father of this movement, said that true unity between man and horse is about effective communication. It is about making the right thing easy for the horse, and the wrong thing difficult. It is about presenting oneself in such a way, that the horse will respond correctly to what might be asked of it.
Today there are many proponents of this “new” approach to horsemanship. After Tom Dorrance and his brother Bill came Ray Hunt, Pat Parelli, Monty Roberts, Richard Shrake and John Lyons, to name but a few. These men are regarded as the older generation with people like Clinton Anderson, Buck Brannaman, Craig Cameron, Leslie Desmond, Linda Parelli, Mark Rashid and Dennis Reis considered to be the “next generation”.
They all, at some stage, came to the realisation that they wanted more from the relationship with their horses than one based on domination and brute force. In their search for a better way, all of their paths crossed, directly or indirectly, with those of Tom or Bill Dorrance. They all were able to pick up on the subtle cues these two “horse whisperers” pointed out to them regarding the way in which to communicate.
The basis of this communication is the fact that a horse is a prey animal, with flight as its main defence mechanism, while man is the ultimate predator. To successfully communicate with a horse, man has to alter his instinctively aggressive approach and adapt to the way horses communicate with one another. It is based on this approach that this generation of natural horsemen, in one way or another, developed their own systems of training horses.
