But it does have something to do with mindfulness.

If a piece of Tupperware falls down on my head every time I go into the pantry to get a can of beans, I need to fix that because it’s just plain stupid.  And if my husband accuses me of saving more glass jars than Howard Hughes, I might have a problem because . . .  ewww.

Why WAS I saving glass jars?  Adams 100% Natural Peanut Butter jars to be exact, plus a few odd sized pickle jars and such.  Some of them I use for storing things like nuts and candy.  But if my family goes through one jar of peanut butter per week, in one year I would have about 45 more empty jars than I could ever use or have room for, and anyway if I ever really did need another jar, it’s just a few more slabs of peanut butter toast away.

​ I am blessed to work with horses of all different breeds and disciplines. Either starting their education under saddle, or helping them with various issues, or helping owners get along a little better with their horse. I am also blessed to occasionally be asked to teach clinics. I don't call them horsemanship clinics, because they are equally as applicable to the Natural Horsemanship student, as they are to the aspiring cross country super star (and the term can seem to bias prejudice even though any interaction with a horse is horsemanship). They are not broadly applicable because I am great at any of those disciplines, but because I focus on teaching people to hear their horse's side of the story (and why what they do that works, works; and why what they do that doesn't always work, doesn't always work). A side of the story that is often encouraged to be completely dismissed by less empathetic or less thoughtful trainers, educators and coaches.

One of my pet hates in this industry is the "don't let the horse win" mentality. Why shouldn't it win? We love them don't we? Yes of course we do, but there is a little extra difficulty in getting the horse to feel like it is winning when doing what we ask, and it requires that we see things from their point of view, based on how the horse has evolved to think and feel, not how the human wants to do things.

Tony Haines 

​
​Horses were said to have come into existence about 55 million years ago, as a small animal around the size of a dog, with toed feet. They evolved quite successfully for millions of years, but relatively recently (I'm thinking less than 100,000 years ago, but my memory may be eluding me), their numbers began to drop rapidly. Nearly all species of horse were sent extinct, except for a very few ancestors of the modern horse. So why did the modern horse survive, when others that had been evolving successfully for many millions of years did not? Research of fossil's suggest it is because the modern horse is basically extremely paranoid and extremely agile.

A few weeks ago, while on a trip to the UK, I was lucky enough to be able to watch my British friend Katie Richards teach a horse to load onto a trailer.  It was a rainy afternoon, and I sat in the front seat of the car snapping photos of Katie working with the horse, while our friend Lysette Marie took detailed notes.

There are few things more distressing than several people trying to force a terrified horse onto a trailer using whips and ropes.  THERE IS A BETTER WAY!  

The best part of watching Katie teach a horse to load was her excellent narrative of what was happening literally at every step.  Lysette has turned her notes into an excellent and informative description of Katie's kind, thoughtful and EFFECTIVE methods, and has kindly allowed me to publish them here on my blog.

"My Horse Won't Load"
by Lysette Marie
photos by Logan Darrow

Katie Richards