Intuitive Horsemanship
This photograph is of Ruby, our eye-catching black Arab/Standardbred filly. Ruby since foaling has been carefully handled and educated to enhance communication and understanding between the handler and rider. Corey Ryan of Crackerjack Intuitive Horsemanship has educated Ruby to be engaged with humans and her environment in an aware, receptive and positive way.
The principles of intuitive horsemanship are explained by Suzi Deryk.
Natural Horsemanship is a philosophy based on knowledge and wisdom of how to get along better with the horse. It requires a means of communication in a way that the horse understands, a two-way conversation, if you like. This conversation consists of giving and receiving and requires the person to give something of itself as well as that of the horse. The horse is a sentient being, meaning it has senses and perception. Most importantly a horse 'Feels'. The horse is driven by feelings and instincts. Every choice a horse makes in its life is based on whether it is a feeling of FEAR or an OK feeling. When we interact with the horse it reads our feelings and intentions and bases its decision on how it feels about what we are suggesting. It will either react (Fear based) or respond (OK feeling).
Keeping this in mind, we need to ensure that when interacting with the horse we need to keep our intentions truthful and pure if we are to obtain a happy, willing partnership with our horse. All training needs to consider the horse’s emotional state, we need to be compassionate and understanding of the horse’s natural instincts. In our training, if we can persuade them that what we are asking will cause them no discomfort or fear but in fact will lead to comfort and be in their best interest they will be more inclined to be a willing partner, happy to try and happy to please. This should be the goal of every horseman and horsewoman.