Feed ‘em lotsa seaweed and he’ll eventually let you ride. ‘Course, the rescued Alec then had to deal with his mother–and the world–with his new BF Horsey Friend, and I grew less interested in the storyline.

Now, Jim, from downunder, The Man from Snowy River, was a cool movie and yet I always felt a little betrayed by the fact that Jim wanted the loose wild stallion rather than the totally awesome horse he had… that was broke to ride… and did ANYTHING he asked (including jump off foreboding, cliff-like structures that other horses and men were saying, rationally, I might add, “Nuh-uhhhh! No way!” Go figure. The grass-is-always-greener syndrome, I guess. And the ultimate betrayal? He fell in love with a girl, of all things.

Those were my visual learning incidences. I never counted all the spaghetti westerns or even the Lone Ranger. I never thought those cowboys could ride very well (at my very opinionated age of ten… LOL) and they so rarely showed any interaction between character and horse that it seemed they used the animals more as transportation than companion.

Unfortunately, all those magazine and home course study guides failed to fulfill my dreams of equine ecstasy. We’ve already established that I was somewhat opinionated (even at that age) and also, to my ever-lasting misfortune, I was, and still am, a rule-following-perfectionist. If I couldn’t do it exactly by the “book”, I wasn’t going to try and do it at all. Those gems of literary perfection were snapshots in time and didn’t describe my exact problem with my horse. I wasn’t starting an unbroke colt and the problems those magazines articles and books endeavored to fix were too glossed over and when I tried to implement, another problem would occur making the situation worse with no solution! There was no “bridging” of problems to solutions to problems to solutions.

I searched on.

While I was at Moorpark College Equine Management and Training Program 1985-86, (I just love saying that out loud over and over… quite the tongue twisting mouthful! LOL) a certain clinician showed up to ply his wares. At that time, nobody knew him and he wasn’t quite the big selling hot ticket he is now. I don’t think he was quite as consistent as he is now either. I didn’t really get to watch his work with the guinea pig (er, horse) because I was doing Security work for crowd control, but mostly what I saw was a lot of running in the bull pen. Run-run, blah blah, run-run. Anyways, Parelli didn’t impress me. Not because he didn’t do what he said he was going to do, and not because HE couldn’t eventually get the job done, but how was that going to get ME from point A (the stall) to point B (the bullpen) if I couldn’t get a halter on my horse safely? The bullpen work was too much work-in-isolation, not something I could apply to my riding or all areas of my horsemanship. It felt like whenever your horse was not doing what you wanted her to do, you’d have to drop everything and find a bullpen! LOL

I basically knew a bunch of tips, tricks and shortcuts; prey-predator psychology; I knew how to leg-yield across the arena and walk-a-lope down the rail; I’d shown English, Western and Dressage. But the idea span between each concept or movement was so great, I was unable to work with certain horses under certain circumstances. I could do all these “things” but didn’t understand why they were happening.

Anyways, the www in the early 1990’s wasn’t anything like it is today. There was something called a BBS (bulletin board system) but I didn’t know anything about that. I highly doubt there was a group of likeminded horse enthusiasts with the wherewithal to create and sustain a Horse Training BBS. And if there was, it was likely small, and oriented to a certain town, city or region. Not World-Wide.

That was even before MY time. :) But as I trundled my slow, laborious way (28.8k? 56k? Is there a difference at that speed? LOL Like watching grass grow or cement set either way) across the information highway, (footpath?) suddenly, I could find ANYTHING online. And as the years passed, and the speed increased, I could find any obscure topic imagined and Somebody, Somewhere, had written it down. OMGAWD! I was in heaven! My thirst for knowledge was only limited by bandwidth and my ability to speed read! LOL

I’ve been accused of knowing everything (or is that of being a know-it-all? LOL) but it’s not true. I don’t need to know everything. I just need to be able to find the answer to everything. I no longer need to actually ride every single type of horse to understand how they work. I could read how someone else handled their horsey problems and then make the connections between their cause/effects and my own.

Suddenly, the neural pathways between universal equine concepts and my own personal experiences grew clearer and clearer. I could see across to the other side. Processing ahead, projecting ahead to a final outcome because I read about someone else’s experiences and their process in doing the same thing. All my incidences and training problems and riding experiences had connections between them. Now, rather than just learning from my own experiences, I tapped into everyone else’s, too. It was no longer a process of learning-in-isolation. And if one website didn’t make sense, one person’s way of explaining a training methods was too difficult, there was ALWAYS another to explain the process a little differently, maybe more clearly.

What was once a solitary learning process, built bought book by lone library book, magazine article by loaned video, now has literally thousands of modes of input. There are SO MANY opportunities to learn from other people’s triumphs and mistakes: video sharing sites, blogs, websites, forums, etc., all just a mouse click away. There is no way to assimilate so much information by merely living it. What took me decades to accrue in knowledge by “living” the experiences, now had been quadrupled in a matter of a few years by surfing the web.

And then you get the person who says, half the stuff on the ‘net is bogus. Yep! It sure is. But you will learn the difference just by reading it all. Stay focused. No phake pharming! That is a life sucker! LOL

Use the internet. It is your friend and you have a responsibility to your horse (your kids, your family, your sanity) to learn and change and be better. Nothing takes the place of actually getting your butt in the saddle and riding—your body learns to ride by riding—BUT your head learns to ride by seeing/reading and hearing about riding.

I love the internet!