Читать книгу Finding the Missed Path. The Art of Restarting Horses онлайн

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After scanning his body with the camera three different times, the director said, “Cut,” and finally, Rusty’s day of filming was over. From start to finish, Rusty had stood unrestrained in the same place out in the middle of the desert without a fence for miles in any direction for nearly 45 minutes.

I mention this particular story because there was a time many years ago when I would have thought the only way to get a horse to comply with a situation like the one we had Rusty in was through hours of training and weeks or maybe even months of constant repetition. But as I’ve gotten older, I have come to understand that while training is indeed important, what is actually more important is that the horse physically feels good. When our horses feel good physically, it in turn allows them to feel good mentally. It is this mental soundness, if you will, that creates the springboard from which the relationship and connection between our horses and us is ultimately built.

As I mentioned earlier, when we first got Rusty our primary focus hadn’t really been on training, but rather on helping him feel better physically. We addressed the issues that seemed to be the most pressing: his teeth and his overall physical stiffness. Once these were taken care of, his overall demeanor and his unwillingness to be around us changed dramatically, which, in turn, allowed him to be comfortable enough to do something as foreign as standing unrestrained on a movie set in the middle of the desert at night for nearly an hour. And all this without him having any special “training.”