Becoming the kind of human a horse seeks to be with
Posted in Anaïs, followership, friendship, Horses, Humans, Lucy Rees, Michael Bevilacqua, Pip on Feb 8th, 2018
Ultimately, the type of relationship which has worked best with Pip is that of friendship. Being a friend to her is a lesson that, once learned, she has reciprocated. But what does being a friend mean? At the end of the day, it boils down to a simple four-letter word, one which I had difficulty […]
Posted in Anaïs, Horses, Humans, liberty, Pip on Feb 2nd, 2018
This is a lesson which goes hand-in-hand with expecting nothing. When Pip came to me, her experience of humans had been dictated by their demands and expectations of her. Instead of being allowed to live like a horse, she was confined to a stable with the exception of a few hours a day and her […]
Posted in Farinelli, Horses, Humans, Pip, Trust on Jan 26th, 2018
Often when we refer to trust in relation to horses, we treat it as a one-way street from the human to the horse. How often have we not heard that the horse needs to learn to trust the human? Part of the truth, as Pip has taught me, is that a horse does not need […]
On the face of it, not too much effort is required to control a horse or even dominate them. You can use force or the threat of it. Alternatively, you might opt for bribery or trickery. You may even assign fancy names to these types of approaches, calling them positive or negative reinforcement, punishment, operant […]
Posted in Being, closeness, friendship, Horses, Humans, Pip on Jan 14th, 2018
Liberty with a human may be a traumatic experience for a horse that has been denied the opportunity to live as one. This is the very first thing that Pip showed me. I had taken her into a large jumping arena, just the two of us, on our first day together. When I removed all […]
We know so much about horses but have such little understanding of the horse. Understanding the horse’s nature allows us to pursue choice rather than control, connection instead of coercion, communication as opposed to conditioning. This is a reality that I now experience with my own horses. A path to the horse is open to all of us. Simply discover the power of being with horses. Is it not time to be fully human … for them, for ourselves?
I have learned to listen to horses speak through their movements, their expressions and ultimately their energy along with much that has been recorded about them. Listening to horses speak has changed my life and taught me a great deal. This book contains a little of what I have learned from horses while listening to them speak. And much of it is startlingly different from what we take for granted.
Urgently in need of a meaningful change of life, a man decides to cross the world together with his wife, a horse and a dog to spend a year training full-time with Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling , arguably the most popular horse trainer in the world based on social media statistics. He expects it to be life-changing. It is. These are his reflections.