Zen Horse

Training Tip of the Week:
By Clinton Anderson
Respect and the Hula-Hoop Space

Respect is broken up into two categories, a safety category and a learning category. When I refer to the safety category of respect I’m talking about the personal hula hoop space. The personal hula hoop space is a four foot circle that surrounds you and serves as your safety zone. Whenever I’m working with a horse, I always imagine that there’s a four foot circle drawn around me—almost like an invisible electric fence. Unless I invite the horse into my personal hula hoop space, he should keep a respectful safe distance from me.

Think about all the times people get hurt by horses. The horse bites them, kicks them, strikes them, runs over the top of them, etc. Each time a person gets hurt, the horse is always inside their personal hula hoop space. You can’t be injured if the horse is kept outside of that four foot circle. Think about this—a horse can’t bite you if he is four feet away from you. He can’t kick you if his hind leg doesn’t get any closer than four feet to you.

Keep in mind that a disrespectful horse isn’t the only type of horse that will hurt you, because a fearful horse will hurt you just as fast. Have you ever noticed that when you’re leading a nervous or frightened horse that when something scares him he tries to jump on top of you? He pushes into you and invades your personal hula hoop space. He tries to jump in your top pocket doesn’t he? He’s looking to you for safety, but unfortunately, you’re a lot more fragile and smaller than he is. And eventually, you will get hurt. A fearful horse will hurt you just as fast as a disrespectful one will. I don’t care if my horse has a heart attack and gets scared; I just want him to do it outside of my personal hula hoop space.

The first part of respect is to teach the horse that you are fragile and that he needs to be careful around you. When a horse kicks another horse in the belly what does that horse do? He grunts, walks away, and starts eating grass again like nothing ever happened. It doesn’t really bother him. But, if we get kicked in the ribs by a horse, we’re in the hospital for a week with seven broken ribs. It’s the same kick, but it means a lot more to us because we’re smaller creatures. We’re 140 to 200 pounds and horses are 1000 to 1200 pounds. They’re a lot bigger than us. The safety part of respect is to say, “Listen, take care of me. I’m pretty fragile, so you can’t be biting me and kicking me or playing rough around me.” When a thousand pound animal tries to play with us we come out on the wron! g end of the deal.

Happy Trails,

Big Barrel Race this weekend at the Blackhawk Arena, hope to see you there!

Danna