Prompted by some students experiences, we’ve been doing an experiment within our discussion group - exploring whether it’s consistently possible to work with one horse on an issue and have a positive affect on the other horses there.
Feedback from the discussion group so far indicates that yes it is happening to other people too. Here’s three of my personal experiences from the last three weeks.
- I saw one horse, severely traumatised by the saddle, release that trauma by watching another horse go through the releasing process with a saddle, using the Zen Connection approach. This was the example that made me wonder if it was possible to use this as a consistent way of doing things, i.e. if anybody can do it.
- So then I checked it out with my own horses. I worked with one horse in getting feet trimming into his deep comfort zone and it had a huge affect on every horse I have (my feet trimmer was awed) – including a dramatic improvement in the scaredest of my horses and hte most difficult to trim, a little miniature called Blondie. Keep in mind, I did no training at all with Blondie, I did it all on another horse. Her feet trimming was a piece of cake with a soft, gooey little horse co-operating brilliantly and in her comfort zone about it. Blondie wasn’t the only one, either. Celtic Peace was another who found a deep comfort zone with his feet without being “trained” at all. He just strolled up, with a very clear “me next” attitude. Every horse in my herd made vast improvements, without any personal “training” at all. So then I was thinking – “wow, I think there’s something in this”.
- Then last week, I saw another horse who released the most amazing amount of trauma from watching another horse work through the saddling process and release “stuff”.
I’m thinking that you could use this teamwork approach to help a horse who has really deep seated trauma with people or some part of the connection with people, like saddling or catching or feet trimmed or saddling, or going into the starting gates or whatever. It could also be extremely useful if the horse had dangerously reactive behaviour patterns that could be risky to work on if the person didn’t have really good skills and techniques.
This is the second clinic in a row where I’ve seen deep seated fear stuff/ sudden reaction to chronic fear / chronic withdrawal/ chronic resistance released so thoroughly that the horse became this little baby horse who needed explanations of how to do something considered known before, e.g. how to lead, how to do feet, how to load on a float etc.
The sheer beauty of the look on those horses’ faces just made me melt.
This release has in all cases so far come from one horse watching another horse do the release process in Zen Connection and releasing trauma/resistance/whatever, themselves. It’s like the horse can find a place of comfort through which to watch and mentally join in with another horse who is doing the work – without feeling the pressure of doing it themselves.
The result was like having a blank canvas again – starting from the beginning, with the opportunity to do it much better this time than had been done before.
The key though, appears to be that the horse being worked on has to be working towards their deep comfort zone and releasing their own old trauma or resistances voluntarily.
To look at the process of releasing deep seated resistance and trauma from your horse, whilst developing an extraordinary relationship, click here to have a look at the books.
