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| Jerry Munns Natural Horsemanship |
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| This is what I do at my clinics. I try to get people to see where their horses are troubled and what to do to help them get through it. We start off on the ground getting the horse to free up his feet and pay more attention to the handler. We work on several groundwork exercises from backing the horse several ways to just simply leading them from one side of the arena to the other. We work on getting them around and through obstacles forward and backwards and lateral flexion exercises like bending their neck around to the handler. I have seen a lot of horses at liberty reach around to bite at their side, then the handler takes a hold of them and they brace up and can't seem to reach around there anymore. We circle the horse ( lunge them ) with purpose, not just mindless circles like you see countless people do. I try to give people a little job or task to do with their horses so there is something new and interesting to the horse, not just arena exercises that in my opinion most people overdo. I like to get my horses out on the trail and expose them to as much natural surroundings as possible. I do not train on them every ride. I sometimes just ride a loose rein and enjoy the scenery. The horse gets to where he looks forward to our time together instead of wanting to get back and get me off him. I teach people to work with the horse through the mind to the feet, not the bit or the stud chain or whatever else it is they are using to control the horse. We have to figure out what we need to do to that particular horse to change his way of thinking about what we are doing with them. Sometimes that is an easy thing to do and sometimes it is not. |
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| Through this philosophy, you learn how to work with the horse through feel and communication, not pain and fear. You strive for a willing partnership between horse and human, not a dominance of master over slave. The horse is a living,breathing, decision making animal. He has a very strong instinct to survive. We call that self-preservation. We do not want to take all of that out of a horse. We do want to be able to help him when his instinct for self-preservation comes up, and through communication and feel we can do just that. If the horse understands what we are asking of him, he will do it; it is when he doesn't understand that he gets himself into trouble. We can use that instinct to help us to get him to understand. |
| The biggest problem I run into is a genuine lack of respect that a lot of horses have for their humans. They lead very poorly and walk on the owners or drag them from here to there, and the human just tolerates it and goes on. I don't allow my horses to be that way. I have a definite set of guidelines that my horses have to live by. If they don't, then we work on that issue and see if they can change their minds. We work on these things no matter what else we are doing at the same time. Getting my horse right is the most important thing to me, not working the cow or jumping the fence or winning that ribbon or whatever else you are doing when the issue arises. I see a lot of people riding troubled horses. They just don't know what else to do to help them. You see more troubled horses than you do soft and relaxed horses. I personally would rather ride a horse that is willing and wants to be my partner, not one that is braced against everything I ask him to do. |
| If we are persistant and patient and allow him to figure it out, we can get it done. The horse just wants to get along. That is how he has made it all these millions of years. We humans have a lot to learn from the horse. We just need to quit trying to change him into thinking like a human and start thinking more like he does. |
| Jerry Munns, Horseman |
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