The dark side of Natural Horsemanship

I wrote this article a while ago and hit the pause button because I thought it might be too controversial.  Today I realized that ‘fessing up that I used to walk on the dark side and that it was also a perfect part of my horsemanship journey, might actually help others find the healing that they want for their horse and the joy they want for each other. 

The dark side of natural horsemanship is when techniques and knowhow and horse psychology are used to shut a horse up and make them obedient without consideration for their fear, confusion or unhappiness.

The biggest bummer about this dark side of natural horsemanship is that back in the days when I used it myself, I didn’t know how much physical harm I was doing to my horse.  Lucky we figured out how to change it.

Mannn… Bobby became the master of resistance and back in those days I blamed him for being such a difficult horse and I thought his injuries were coincidence.  (Spoiler alert:  they weren’t.)

For those new to this site, Bobby is the same horse who taught me the communication, the inner guidance system, the Feel for my horse that has now rippled out into the world – bringing confidence and competence and joy not just to my life and his, but to thousands of other horses and people as well.

The hindquarter yield has a big fat dark side

The hindquarter yield is one of those techniques that has a big fat dark side. 

When you take away a horse’s ability to say “no” politely, you risk some of the more impolite ways that a desperate horse says “no!”  And then we blame them for that terrible and even dangerous behavior – when all along, the source of the problem was their fear or confusion.  The good news is – just like Bobby showed me – when we go back and address that fear and or confusion, the behavior changes too.

Gee whizz, they exploded?

When a rider or a trainer systematically shuts a horse down, sooner or later it’s going to bite us on the butt.  Some horses are going to explode.  It could be a big deal thing that they get desperate enough to explode over, or it could be a “straw that broke the camel’s back” much smaller thing.  It could be a big athletic explosion that puts the person at serious risk or it could be a small one where they’re just trying to get away from what you’re doing.

Let’s think about it hey.   Until we have Feel for our horse – which is our ability to “listen” to them – they have limited ways of communicating they have a problem.  Their behavior IS their communication.  So when we shut down that behavior with any technique – we’re actually ADDING to the problem.  And if we add to the problem often enough, then an explosion of some sort becomes a serious possibility.

Our lead mare Sunny experienced a hindquarter yield being used to take away her ability to say “no” politely.  Her explosions – she was considered a very difficult horse – were punished with even more drastic techniques to teach her to submit to the trainer’s will.  She had her leg tied up and was sent around the round pen on three legs until in utter anguish she thought she was dead and gave up.   That’s a tear jerking story I’ll tell you another day and mannn it caused a lot of physical problems for her.  But all along, the cause of her behavior was just fear and confusion that wasn’t being listened to and acted on.  He simply didn’t understand how to help her to feel confident about what he was asking her to do.

Or they get sick or suffer injuries caused by tension.

Let’s stick with the hindquarter yield again.  It’s not the only technique used to shut a horse down (sending them around a round yard until they get tired or sore and want to stop is another one) but the hindquarter yield is a common natural horsemanship coercion. “Cause them to want to change their mind” is an oft used expression.   When a horse is trying to tell us that they’re afraid or confused and the hindquarter yield is used to shut them up, then each time that happens there’s another tension built into their bodies.  I’m not talking about a “oh shit I’m dead” reaction that you have to get control of to be safe together, I’m talking about the hindquarter yield being used to systematically shut down any expression of fear or confusion.

Each stress from not being listened to, adds on to the next stress, creating more and more stress.  Each tension from each stress builds onto the next tension, until you’ve got bodies that are so tight and tense they aren’t working as well as they can be.  I can see it in horse’s movement.  Like Sunny, illness and even injuries are eventually the result. 

Luckily all of this stress and tension is reversible.

Not only are the stresses and tensions reversible by listening to our horses, so is the behavior caused by those stresses and tensions, so is the illness and very often even the injuries are reversed by what I call active listening.

And active listening is what we do here.

Browse around the sidebar for the freebies and the programs that have brought so much confidence and competence, healing and happiness to so many people and horses.  On mobiles you’ll find the sidebar underneath this article.

Let’s have a conversation in the comments about the “good” ways to use the hindquarter yield.

Today’s photo is Sunny who used to be such a demon with her feet.  Now she walks up to the feet trimmer and parks herself beside their tools. <3