Chapter 5 - Beware the Cult of the Wavy White Rope
Did I say 'cult'? I meant to say online 'community' 🤣🤦♀️
What happened over the next 18 months was pretty amazing from a human psychology perspective.
There are a lot of people still quite entrenched in this world and I can feel the angry comments brewing… so please remember that what I’m about to share is just my experience.
Your mileage may vary.
The night of the doomed Pub Ride I took myself off to bed with my iPad and signed up for an online horsemanship community.
And over the following few months, I truly believed that I was gaining a deep and enlightened insight into the equine psyche.
Furthermore, I felt that because I committed to a recurring monthly payment to watch a guru’s videos and be part of a private community - that these magical skills would transfer themselves unto me.
But sadly only the very basics eventuated.
And when I say basics, please don’t confuse them for tangible, useful horse management skills.
I’m talking about the most rudimentary way I could spend time with my horse, in order to feel a sense of accomplishment.
Like, say sitting in the paddock and thinking peaceful thoughts?
✅ Tick.
Or timing my foot-falls to land with his, as we walked around the yard?
✅ No problem.
Or breathing myself into a meditative state until my big hunk o’ horse yawned until his eyes rolled back?
Yeah baby... nailed it 🧘♀️💪
Only, it wasn’t useful… And as much as old matey in his cowboy hat would tell me this was ‘the foundation’ - it gave me no real way to do anything else 🤷♀️
And sometimes in the private group, I’d see people ask when they could expect to do something more…
But instead of getting an encouraging word of advice, they’d be passively shamed for daring to have an ambition that went beyond the round yard.
Because to those in deep and drinking the Kool-Aid, having ambition with horses was a crime akin to cruelty.
It seemed that if someone expressed a wish to one day do more… You know, to ride in a group or to perhaps enter a competition, it was selfishly seen as ‘putting your own needs before the horse’ and the pitchforks would come out.
A note about equestrian ethics.
And competition
And ambition.
When it comes to reasonable expectations, everyone’s yardstick is different.
For me, I regularly change my mind - depending on where I’m at at the time.
Take for example, one day last year when I clumsily careered around a showjumping course, with Shady’s mouth wide open mouth and tongue poking out the side. His steering was negligible and when he stopped at a combination, I got whacky with a whip.
That my friends, was not ok.
To me, that kind of competition experience was adjacent to cruelty and it caused me to pause and regroup while I put my ethical equestrian ducks in a row.
But when we returned to the scene 6 months later, Shades spent the day happily tied to the float munching his hay. When it was time to ride he walked around the warm up on a loose rein and cantered around the showjumping course with a soft frame and rhythmical breathing.
And if that’s the stress of a ‘competitive environment’ - then this gal’s got no problem with that 🤷♀️
So what was it about the weird and wonderful rope wiggling world of Horsemanship that tickled my fancy in the first place?
Well mainly…I guess, because I’d run out of other options.
Group lessons had proven to be disastrous and my dreams of cross country had taken themselves off to die.
I’d also finally realised that the confident, teenage version of myself bore exactly zero relevance to my current situation as a middle aged woman….and that I had nowhere else to go, except back to the very beginning.
And let’s be real…from a practical perspective, here’s why else this online Natural Horsemanship appealed:
1.) Actual riding was rarely (if ever) required.
2.) There were plenty of resources online for me to learn at home. This meant I could fuck around with the fundamentals, knowing that no one could see (or judge) me.
3.) Conveniently there were also lots of clinics being advertised locally. This appealed because I could still head off for the day; feeling for all intents like I was doing something purposeful - but secretly safe in the knowledge that I’d never be expected to ride 😎👍
What exactly is this method of horse mastery?
Well these ‘gurus’ know when to wave flags and how to wiggle ropes… but mostly they talk about ‘relaxation’ and ‘connection’.
And realistically, in the whole 18 months of being a disciple…this is what I came away with:
You may pass GO if your equid remains motionless like a standy-uppy horse corpse.
And collect $200 if they lick their lips, chew or yawn.
That’s it.
And I’m not even joking.
And of course, this system suited me beautifully.
Because if I wanted a successful session with Shades, I’d just breathe at him like a psychopath and wait for him to yawn.
And when that happened, I’d give myself a gold star and go inside to gloat about my progress.
On other days, I’d do ‘desensitisation’ by wiggling him over tarps and obstacles - which made exactly zero difference to his sensitivities but made me feel quite advanced 💪
And, of course, those sessions gave me some cute social media content to contribute to the cult 📸
And remember all those matchy things I bought?
Well every day I’d dress him up like a colour coordinated goalkeeper…
Because in my opinion, the cutesy and entirely unneccessary leg protection proved how serious I was about this horse training business.
Also, let’s be honest…I had to reduce the cost per use for all the stupid shit I’d bought 🤷♀️😳
Anyway, the weird thing is… as I look back on that time now, I think those wiggly rope gurus have a bit to answer for.
I see myself going round and round in circles, desperate to enjoy my horse but instead, pretending to be satisfied with endless groundwork and a couple of yawns.
Meanwhile they charge a pretty penny for clinics and online subscriptions - but all the breathing and rope wiggling just seems to be a stepping stone to…well… just more groundwork 🤷♀️
And while I’m the first to admit I felt safer with my feet firmly planted on the ground, the guru’s promotional videos had led me to believe that actually riding my horse was the end goal.
But while I yearned to ride, it turned out that I joined a community that didn’t only justify the avoidance of riding, they celebrated it.
I also noted that during my time in the cult, trauma was a great thing to explore.
It was on my side because trauma helped justify having a horse that I couldn’t ride.
And every time Shades would try and trample me because a twig snapped behind him, I’d bring it back to the torturous experience of his ‘breaking in’.
I’d soothe him with my weird heavy breathing and by asking his legs to step sideways - all the while assuring myself that a traumatised horse could not be expected to function.
And once the terror had subsided, I would scratch him and attempt to telepathically communicate that I was there to protect him from this cruel, terrifying, twig snapping world.
So while I was hanging out at the horsemanship trauma-party and guzzling Kool Aid by the gallon, I had plenty of time to develop his trauma story.
So I decided that it must have been the ‘colt start’ experience in Tamworth that had cooked poor Shady’s brain.
Of course, it didn’t matter that I hadn’t been there… or even met the horse until months afterwards - I had seen photos and just KNEW he’d been upset by the process.
Under no circumstances could I consider that I was being a substandard leader, filling his fear cup and confirming that the world was, indeed - a terrifying place 🙄🤦♀️
Oh no 🙅♀️
Uh uh…
It was absolutely his experience in Tamworth that did that.
And despite being trained by one of the world’s greatest horsemen, and with photos that clearly showed a relaxed and happy horse - I needed something to blame…. so I chose that 👍
To help it along, I also did a lot of hand wringing about him being a prey animal, living under a cruel human dictatorship - because that was another rock-solid reason to expect nothing from the partnership.
And all the while Shady got fatter, unhealthier and less able to deal with the world.
I shit you not, after a few months of this I couldn’t even lead him down a quiet dirt road without his knees literally trembling with fear.
He became (and still is) the spookiest horse I’ve ever met, to the point where it was often pretty dangerous.
And then I realised that after more than a year of seeking ‘connection’ and ‘relaxation’ - riding was even more out of reach than it was at the start.
And as a result, I began to have my doubts about the cult.
See, when I’d log into the Kool-Aid Community, we’d all pat each other on the back for being such empathetic horse people.
We’d try and out-do each other with tales of trauma and start every post with sixteen paragraphs about the hardship our poor horses had endured before explaining there was one part of the yard they were scared of and asking for help to get them past it.
Meanwhile I knew there were horses all around me that just…well… got on with life 🤷♀️
They were ridden kindly, taken to new places and seemed very well adjusted to this human world.
Never once did I see anyone on The Pub Ride breathe heavily at their horse when a twig snapped, a bird flew past or a car appeared in the distance…
Yet, these are the very things that gifted me near death experiences for months and months on end.
And deflatingly, the feedback from the Guru was simply that my horse didn’t have a connection with me…. and that I needed to go back to the beginning and do better this time.
And after he offered the same solution time and time again, I had a tiny spark of realisation that perhaps the Guru was a little bit gaslighty.
And then I couldn’t un-see it.
Here we were….all these dedicated but mostly hopeless horsewomen, who according to him just weren’t trying hard enough.
And if we ever dared to ask for clarification, we were sent away in disgrace to lower our expectations and do some heavy breathing…
The final straw came when I made the often unhelpful association between horses and humans.
I realised that if Shady was a human he would never get a job.
He would also never be part of a team or go traveling with friends - instead, he’d be too fearful to do anything other than eat, sleep and watch TikTok in his bedroom.
Meanwhile, I was perpetuating this fear and being a really shitty parent.
As his responsible human, I wasn’t teaching him any problem solving skills - I was treating him like a victim and making mountains out of molehills because it was easier than teaching him how to ‘get on with it’ 🤦♀️
From a physical perspective it was shameful too.
I was barely exercising him because ‘work’ was mostly standing still with maybe a circle or two of walking thrown in… yet I was feeding him, rugging him and treating him like an elite athlete.
Yes folks, in order to recover from his 30 minutes of standing and slow walking - he would regularly receive bodywork and whatever other kind of cool therapy I could think of - in the hopes it would make him like me better 😳
So with the realisation that those 18 months shlurping the Kool-Aid had created nothing more than an obese and maladjusted horse - I cancelled my subscription, reinstated those goals to ride my horse and set about searching for my Big Girl pants.
***********
I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter of my book, ‘Tales of A Terrible Equestrian’ - it’s available to subscribers with new content being released every few days.
Further chapters are now available and if you’d like to read it from the start, you can do so here - Tales of A Terrible Equestrian’
Post Script - Spoiler Alert:
I don’t know who needs to hear this today but you are allowed to hope for more.
It’s ok to want to ride your horse.
It’s entirely possible to have a perfectly functioning and enjoyable horse without doing decades of heavy breathing and flag waving first.
If breathing and relaxing is your thing, then by all means spark up a joint 🚬 or do a guided meditation but just know that horses can be so much more than that.
These days I work through a system that starts with the groundwork, establishes communication and then methodically progresses to have a calm, willing and confident horse under saddle.
I still use my wavy white rope… but when it’s done it’s job it goes back on the hook so we can ‘get on with it’.
This system seems to work equally well with my recently captured wild horses and off the track thoroughbreds.
And, I can 100% vouch for the fact that - with the more training they receive, the happier they are.
And make no mistake, I am by no means great… but I do have confidence in my ability to train a well adjusted horse.
For what it’s worth, Dr Shelley Appleton’s clinics, podcast and online program were a game changer for me - and I reckon Tristan Tucker’s system & Andrew McLean’s Equitation Science is pretty rad too.
For clarity, these guys 👆 absolutely sing the praises of working in-hand. However, unlike the culty version, they use groundwork as a way to install some very useful ‘buttons’ that can be used under saddle.
For comparison, these systems are a bit like training ladders…By that I mean that each step builds on the one before - as opposed to a big, black hole of slow blinks and sideways steps 🤷♀️
(Weirdly, I combine a mish mash of these methods with positive reinforcement and clicker training, which is a thing I taught myself through trial and error….but that’s a story for another day)
In closing, online learning has been a very very effective way for me to improve my horsemanship skills but it pays to choose wisely.
If you’re slightly apprehensive about whether you’re joining a community or a cult…and whether you’re about to serve yourself a big fat bunch of excuses with a side serve of Kool-Aid - then look to graduates of the program.
There’s no point looking to the Guru themselves because, well - they all look pretty good and do some pretty impressive shit 🤷♀️
Instead have a chat (or stalk) the people that have been through the program and decide for yourself which way you want to go.
Most importantly see that they have ‘graduated’ and are not still circling around with a yawny, corpse horse - because that, right there is a wavy red flag that I wish I had seen 🙅♀️🚩
I’ve gotten very wary of “Gurus,” and have learned to question everything. I am curious though which program/guru you’re referencing here.
This was a great read. The Mr says there are none more gullible than some horse people. 🤣During the 60 years plus of riding and still going, things have certainly changed. Some for the better and others? Not so much.
I wonder what the Dorrance Brothers would say.
Even Buck Brannigan talks about the good deal when the horse gives you a good response and the not so good deal when the horse does not comply.
Wear your tin hat with pride.