I hear people talk about good old fashion common sense horsemanship. They refer to the horsemanship of days gone by as a better time. They speak of their father, aunt, and grandfather as being their biggest influence and among the best horse people they have ever seen.
Even some professional trainers speak of the old timers as being the best and modern trainers are only re-inventing the wheel. They see today’s most venerated horse people as standing on the shoulders of past masters. In Australia, people speak of Kel Jeffrey and Jim Wilton from the 1930-1970s in revered whispers, as if God gets training advice from them. I will stick my head out a little and argue that in the US modern horsemanship has been largely shaped by Prof Berry and later by Tom Dorrance and they receive the same level of reverence as their Aussie counterparts.
When I look closely, it appears to me the last golden age (note, I said “the last”, not the only) for innovation in horsemanship was in the 1970-80s. This period represents a time when people like Tom Dorrance and Ray Hunt were at their peak and most influential. It also saw the dawn of training behemoths like John Lyons and Pat Parelli – where formula-driven horsemanship was introduced to the masses.
We are now in 2022 and what Tom Dorrance and Ray Hunt were teaching in the 1980s is still considered by many to be the pinnacle of our understanding of training horses. There is a global reverence given to these two talented horsemen and any critical analysis or debate is widely met with disdain and even accusations of blasphemy. To say a person studied with Tom or Ray or works in the style they tried to convey to the world is to give a person instant credibility, without any real analysis of their work. There is even an organization and semi-regular events were held dedicated to the devotion and preservation of their teachings (Legacy of Legends).
This is all okay with me, but I feel it both creates a problem and begs a question. The problem is that it led to a stagnation of innovation in horsemanship. And the question is if the education of horse people is stuck in the 1970s and 1980s, where is the innovation of new ideas and new approaches going to come from?
It is true to say that horses have barely changed in thousands of years. But it is equally fair to say that our knowledge and understanding of them and how they operate has evolved dramatically in the past few decades. First, we know more about their biomechanical function and the limits of their bodies. We also know much more about their care, whether it is dental, hoof, nutrition, disease, equipment fit, etc. But more importantly, we understand more about the psychology of the horse. We have a greater appreciation of their emotional needs in the training process and how the old-style master/slave relationship has no place in good horsemanship. Furthermore, there has been a global shift in attitude towards horses from being merely tools to get a job done to friends, partners, and playmates who deserve our passionate devotion and our best care.
Given our evolved understanding and attitude, where are the innovations of the future going to come from?
It appears to me we are slowly moving towards approaches that are designed to address the mind of a horse as a way of influencing the movement and our relationship. However, there is considerable resistance to this idea from those trainers still stuck in the 1980s when the notion of moving the feet was the way to influence the mind of the horse. It’s not that they outwardly disagree with this approach, it’s just that falsely believe they are already using it. It’s because they mistakenly believe this that they resist any change. For example, just go to any clinic today and you will see training that only initiates movement by using driving techniques. This is classic 1980’s style training that has not evolved for thousands of years and seems impervious to modernization. The move away from this approach is slow and largely resisted by those whose roots are entrenched in the 1980s because they don’t see the problem and refuse to examine their approach with a critical eye.
Even the innovation of adapting positive reinforcement training to the world of horses has not moved beyond its early inception in the training of sea mammals very many decades ago. It too has stagnated despite proving to be a less than perfect approach in my opinion.
So where else could the innovations of the future be sourced?
Some trainers claim that in 50 years everybody will be using Learning Theory and/or Equitation Science principles to work with horses. They believe behavioural scientists hold the key to the ultimate innovations in horse training and horsemanship. But at this early stage of the science, the evidence would appear to point to the opposite truth. In my view, the science of horsemanship has so far proved to be decades behind the horsemanship of good horse trainers. It is stuck even further back than the horsemanship of the 1970 and the 80s because it is all about the mechanics of training and has very little understanding of feel. Today’s science appears focused on explaining why some training methods work and not how to develop new and innovative approaches. It’s hard to see how equitation science will catch up with good horsemanship practices in the near future, let alone take a leading role in innovation. But we live in the hope that perhaps the next generation of behavioural scientists will be able to combine a theoretical understanding of how a horse works with practical application.
I am not blameless in the slow progress of new ideas. The limitations of my ability to experiment with weird and whacky ideas for training horses make me as much part of the problem as anyone else. I wish I could be more of an innovative thinker and trainer. But one thing I feel I don’t suffer from is contentment with the present situation. I feel eager for somebody with great innovative ideas to show me a better future for horses and horsemanship.
I truly hope that we have not reached the end of the evolution of horse training ideas. I choose to believe such great horsemen, as Tom Dorrance and Ray Hunt would agree with me on that. But at the moment the almost universal closed-door mentality on re-evaluating the work of training from the 1980s, make it appear that progress and innovation will be blocked instead of steady. Where will the next Xenophon, Berry, Jeffrey, or Dorrance come from?
Albert Einstein once said there are children in the playground today that could solve some of physics' biggest problems. Wouldn’t it be great if the next generation of horse people broke through the dormancy of today’s thinking?
L>R, Bill Dorrance, Ray Hunt, and Tom Dorrance