From: "True Horsemanship Through Feel” By Bill Dorrance and Leslie Desmond
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Q: I’ve been told that the horse understands when I try to make the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easy. Can you explain why you don’t use this in your approach?
Bill: Making the wrong thing difficult isn’t going to be a fitting approach for the horse, because so many people only do that part. They forget about the part of making the right thing easy for the horse. They just get to that making-it-difficult [Pg. 339] part and then they put the horse up after that. Someplace, maybe, they’d heard that it was all right to make something difficult and that gets to be their way, all the time. I’ve seen quite a lot of this, and it’s real pleasing to me when a person can get this part switched around in their mind. To my way of thinking, instead of making that horse do anything,
trying to help [Pg. 327] the animal is a better way. I’m in hopes that a fella could think of helping the animal, because without help that horse won’t know what he’s supposed to do, and really, that’s what a fella’s main job is here. Just helping that horse.
A person could start trying to help the horse to understand the right thing, through feel, even if he hadn’t done much experimenting [Pg. 317] with it before. It might even bring out something a little different in the person, to not try to make things difficult for that horse. I’m sure that helping a horse understand is more fitting to that horse — any horse. It might be more fitting to most people too.
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Questions About Feel
Q: Can feel be taught?
Bill: Some people say they don’t think it can be taught and in a way they’re right. Maybe it depends on who’s doing the teaching and who’s doing the learning. I think feel can be taught.
But there’s preparation [Pg. 344] you need first, before you can learn how to feel. There isn’t any mystery about that to me. Because it’s there, that feel, in the person and in the horse. And with help from someone who’s more experienced, why a person can sure learn how to feel of the horse [Pp. 318-322], if they want to. That’s an actual fact [Pg. 297].
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