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theprissythumbelina · 10 months ago

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Heyo~ how are you doing? :D

I have a question for the horse series: how did riders keep their horses from getting too much distressed while on the battlefield? Especially when gunpowder became a thing, warzones must have been a sensory hell for horses, was there some kind of special training to get them used to the loud noises/sudden movements?

No rush to answer :>

Heyo

I wanted to give you a quick answer, because there actually is a short one, and I will have a much longer answer to come down the line.

Short answer: Yes, its called desensitization, and just about all horse owners/riders do it on some level when working with their horses. In a lot of cases, it can be as simple as presenting the horse with something scary (plastic bag, funny shaped rock, leaf on ground, man-eating shadow, ect.) and giving them a treat for looking at it. The horse learns scary thing = treat, and therefore is less scared of whatever it is. Do this enough, and most* horses not only learn that that specific thing is not dangerous, but that other things that may be scary could also not be dangerous. The horse also learns to look to the handler to check if things are okay or not, and will ignore things if the handler tells them it's safe. Sometimes this can backfire somewhat, as it has with a horse I work with, because she is so smart that she has learned that she can pretend to be scared of something, touch it with her nose, and then get a treat. I've mostly managed to break her of this, but now she just pokes things in the hopes I'll give her a treat for it.

*Most, because some horses are...not unintelligent, but they struggle with the concept of things not being scary. No matter the training or the style of training, they have a capacity of tolerance and cannot go past it. Spooky, is the term, as a horse panicking is called a 'spook'.

#asks #about horses

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toomanymessythoughts · 2 years ago

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Spirit Stallion of the Cimarron is often praised for its breath-taking visuals, great soundtrack and its anti-colonialist and anti-military themes and messages (all things I too absolutely love about this movie). But one aspect that I rarely see discussed is its messages concerning horse riding which is what I’d like to talk about here. During Spirit’s time with the military, the Colonel rides him to the point of exhaustion. Thinking that he had broken Spirit he holds a speech:

“You see gentlemen, any horse can be broken. There are those in Washington who believe the West will never be settled. The Northern Pacific Railroad will never reach Nebraska. A hostile Lakota will never submit to Providence, and it is this manner of small thinking that would say this horse could never be broken. Discipline, time and patience are the three great levellers.”

The purpose of this speech is mainly political and serves as the Colonel’s villain monologue, but I’d like to focus on the last line for a bit. This line shows the dissonance between what the Colonel says versus what he does. He says that time patience and discipline are his founding principles when in reality, he only relies on brute force. His goal is to push a horse to its limits and to a point where it has accepted its fate and listens to him because it knows that resistance is futile. As an equestrian, this method sounds all too familiar to me. Because unfortunately similar methods are still used to train horses today, by popular and successful trainers at that. Some will not like to hear this but trainers who use “dominance theory” go by the same logic as the Colonel. Their methods may be less brutal but their goal is the same. They want the horse to submit to them and abide their every order. They don’t want a partner; they want a puppet. What bothers me most about those methods, is that many people who use them will very rarely listen to their horses. They will expose their horses to high levels of pressure, stress and sometimes pain, but then call them “dominant”, “disrespectful”, “moody” or “mean” when in actuality, they are just tired, uncomfortable and in pain and have no other way of telling their owners to stop and leave them alone.

Later, when Spirit lives with the Lakota, we get to see an alternative to these methods. What I really love about this part of the movie, is that Little Creek’s methods are not perfect from the get-go. He too first tries to overpower Spirit and force him to abide by his rules. But when he realises that it won’t work, instead of stubbornly moving forward, he reflects, he admits failure and decides that he will never ride Spirit and that no one ever should and lets him go. I love this moment so much because it depicts a lesson that I too had to learn and that I think many more people should take to heart: Some horses do not want to or simply cannot be ridden and we, as their guardians and partners, need to listen to them.

Of course, you could say that what I’ve written above kind of falls apart at the end because Spirit does let Little Creek onto his back, but I’d beg the differ. First because they were in a life-or-death situation and second because I think that Spirit allowing Little Creek onto his back only adds to the message, since it shows us that when we listen to our horses and give them the time that they need, they might eventually allow us to ride them.

All in all, this is one of the best depictions of equestrianism that I have seen in film and I will never stop appreciating it.

#spirit stallion of the cimarron #equestrian #about horses

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river--ghost · 10 days ago

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