this is something that I have been musing about recently as well. Millions of people all over the world own dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters and gerbils, allsorts of birds, insects and reptiles and fish, some even goats and pigs etc and they don't *expect* anything of these animals other than for them to just be what ever animal they are. nobody (or very very few at least) think I'll get a cat because I like the idea of having one sleep on my bed and then shout at / punish / force it to sleep on the bed if it turns out that the cat doesn't want to and evetually sell it or kill it just because they can't make it do this. and yet as soon as we get into the arena of horses you are told that you have to make your horse do things. Walk, trot, be ridden, pull a cart, lie down, what ever. the horse *has* to do something, *has* to have a use. We keep allsorts of animals for little more than their companionship and yet horse *must* be for something else.
Something I find, now that I stand on the other side of the fence, very difficult to understand even though I once thought the same.
And of course if a horse *has* to do something we therefore have to *make* it do that something. Even if it doesn't want to. no, especially if it doesn't want to because otherwise it has no purpose and we would have to sell it and give up the dream. And yet the dream, as we know, has nothing to do with forcing our horse to do things and we feel bad about forcing our horse and other people seeing us forcing our horse and so we drill the horse over and over, knocking out all signs of resistance from him until he is nothing more than a robot so that it looks like we aren't forcing him, it looks like he is doing it all because he wants to because then we can decieve ourselves and others into thinking that we are living the dream, we have the perfect horse that will let us do anything to it because it loves us.
And this need to appear to have this perfect relationship drives us to use stronger and stronger force, a stronger bit here, a whip there, add the spurs and double reins, anything to make the horse comply and keep our distorted version of the dream alive. shouting, hitting, screaming, frustration and anger at our horses because they make us look bad, because they are ruining our dream.
And all the time this behaviour is reinforced by seeing others around us doing the same, we feed off each others need to pretend this is normal so that we can all live this dream, marketing men feed it by telling us we need these things, trainers feed it by showing us how to do it, and all the time the thing that is driving us is the very thing we are never going to acheive if we keep doing things the way we are. If asked, i believe that 90% of people would tell you they keep horses because they love them.
Another aspect of it of course is adreneline. We humans are hunters and dominators. Hunting our pray and forcing submission releases adreniline into our system which urges us to do more, push more, release more and more adreneline. It is part of our genetic make-up and for some very difficult to overcome.
Add into all this the fact that horses are big, heavy, strong willful animals that most people are afraid of, and rightly so if they treat them this way. We know in our human reasoning that even with the strongest bit in the history of the world, we don't actualy have any control, not when it all come down to it, and we are terrified that one day the horse is going to realise this. And so we keep him beaten down, submissive and "under control" so that he doesn't get any lofty ideas about exercising his own will, or seeking retribution for all the wrongs we have done him.
Derision and disbelief of any other ideas on how to treat or train horses usualy comes from those with the most to lose. If they start to believe there are other ways of doing it, if they are wrong to be doing it this way, if horses really will do what you ask if you just give them time and patience and understanding, then everything they have with their horses starts to unravel. These methods can't be true because then i wouldn't be able to get my horse to do anything, i wouldn't be able to show other people how well I am living the dream, i wouldn't be able to keep up the pretence in my own mind that I am living the dream. If I thought that my horse running away from me in the paddock was anything other than disobedience to be punnished I might have to start looking at everything differently and then I would never be able to get a saddle on him again, let alone a bit in his mouth. and without a bit i have no tool of submission and without submission I have nothing.
And this also goes some way towards explaining why the NH method is so popular. It allows us to still dominate our horses and force them to submit to us whilst covering it in a nice wrapping. It is "natural" and has nice terminology like "games" and so we can pretend to be really understanding and working with our horses and truely living the dream because it is all "natural", isn't it?
So yes, i guess what it boils down to most is fear. Fear of the horse, fear of ridicule from our peers, fear of not being able to make things happen, fear of realising that we aren't living the dream, not even close, and fear perhaps of what they will unleash if they really give the horse a choice?
And the real kicker...if you ask these people why they think we AND type people do things the way we do, a lot of them will tell you we do it because we are afraid of our horses.
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