|
I hadn't been a few hours in wild horse country my first day out (1982) when I realized that boarding conditions back in civilization bore no resemblance at all to what lie before me. Even in the largest pastures afforded by well-intentioned horse owners, the horses simply did not move as they do in the wild. I also realized over the next several years that healthy (and powerful hooves) followed directly from behavior driven movement. Domestic horses, it was apparent, had no motivation to move like their wild cousins. Consequently, their bodies and mental states were compromised in comparison to the wild ones. The challenge was to find a way to "motivate" domestic horses to "behave" and thus "move" as they would in the wild -- or at least more so -- to create healthier bodies with better feet attached to them. The "breakthrough", as I think of it, came when I realized -- in concrete terms-- that horses perceive their world much different than we humans do. The world we create for them "dulls" their perceptions and behaviors. Paddock Paradise provides a new paradigm for managing the spaces we lock horses into. It's not so much the "space" provided, per se, as how we arrange and manage that space to "trigger" behavioral responses in the horse's mind. Since the book's release, I've received hundreds, more like thousands, of responses from horse owners around the world saying that "PP" is the way "into" the horse's mind, if not his instincts. The "pressure" on me to host a Paddock Paradise conference, so horse owners can share their insights and successes, is steadily mounting. And no doubt, around the corner . . . |
||