I'm in a cybercafe in a nearby town. It's very brightly coloured and loud 80s rock is playing in the background. Jordie the owner of the cyber cafe and I have become good chums, well chums in that special way where you don't share much of a language but because you are chaps you don't need that much to get along.
It's pleasantly warm here, and everyone is very jovial. I like the relaxed attitude to things as well. I'm in a cybercafe but Jordie is fine with me just plugging my laptop in to one of their network cables and using that instead of their computers. I like easy going people.
I had to make my bed by candle-light last night which was a bit of an experience and this morning we had to herd up some naughty horses with the help of the St Bernard 'Bubba' who has adopted the family I'm staying with. He is a big dribbling monster of a dog but very good natured. There are two other dogs, a big sleepy one that looks like lassie and a very naughty mongrel puppy called Cyrus. Cyrus spends large parts of his day hanging off the tail of the St Bernard.
I realise now that I've also packed almost entirely the wrong wardrobe for this trip, my jumper selection is very limited (it gets quite chilly in the evenings because we are so high up) and I doubt there will be much call for a waistcoat while bimbling about on horses.
The stables I'm staying at believe in Natural Horsemanship. This seems to be about letting a horse be a horse. Horses should run free in a pack and spend all day grazing because that is what horses do. By forcing a horse to spend most of it's day in a stable and then feeding it a couple of high-energy meals you are making it not be a horse. All of the problems you can get with horses - biting and bad nature and so on seem to come from when they are made to act in a way that is un-natural to them. I'm not sure if I'm completely understanding the concept or explaining it very well but what I've seen so far is very compelling.
Once you get that horses should be allowed to be horses then you get onto the principle of working with horses. The idea is to get the horse to willingly submit to you being a leader rather than dominating it. My father believed in sort of the same thing with his horses and treated them accordingly. It took me an evening over a bottle of wine to understand the concept but now I completely get it and well it makes the other ways of treating horses seem a bit, well unpleasant.
It is time for me to leave now, but I'll be posting more by my phone which seems to be working well enough.
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3 comments:
I used to be friends with an ex racehorse called Oliver (now sadly passed away).
Domestically kept horses are treated badly, very true, but have you ever seen the state of a bony old misery like Oliver?
It makes me well up thinking of the old white-maned sod.
Journalists should be handled in much the same fashion. Rather than being penned up near high-energy snacks, we should be allowed to run feral.
Oh how I pity staffers. But in the States, they're sneering right back: "you broke chump without corporate identity and HEALTH INSURANCE".
Watchwithmothers - It's heartbreaking isn't it? I'm going to have to work hard to control my temper the next time some ghastly horsey person goes on about how you have to dominate the horse.
Amanda - I completely agree. We should be running across the savana while humming the theme from Born Free.
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