Teaching Your Horse to Overcome Fears by Laura Harrison McBride

Author:Laura Harrison McBride
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
Published: 2001-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

New Age Trainers

“New Age” is a broad category, and it includes anyone who practices natural horsemanship, including such well-known trainers as Monty Roberts, Mark Rashid, Sally Swift, and Dominique Barbier, whose book,Dressage for the New Age, is a modern classic.

But many local trainers, too, operate New Age practices. One of these, Lynn Newcomb of Richmond,Virginia, thinks spooking is highly overrated, and approaches the problem from the point of view of the rider/horse connection. She begins by getting riders familiar with “riding from their center,”from going beyond technique to possessing an inner calm that begins below and behind the solar plexus, and supples their bellies, relaxes their muscles and prevents the rider from inadvertently tensing. Tensing, most trainers think, enhances a horse’s need to spook.

When a rider is “centered” (see Sally Swift’s book,Centered Riding), the horse has no reason to become uncentered. Still, instinct remains. So, when a horse is reactive in a certain place or situation, Newcomb advises riding through it while repeating comfort phrases such as “that’s nothing at all,”or “you’re fine,”and immediately engaging the horse’s attention on what you’re asking: for a bend, or some collection, or anything that changes his frame of reference while you reassure — but not reward — the horse.

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