He Thought He Knew Horses. Then He Learned to Really Listen.

LESSONS FROM THE ANIMAL KINGDOM –

Nov. 12, 2024 – In the roughly 5,500 years since their domestication, horses have continuously been in our service, whether it’s to charge into battle; race chariots; hunt buffalo; bust sod; carry the mail; run, leap and pull at our bidding; treat addiction or, more recently and mundanely, tote kids around a ring in a county 4-H show. Despite this long and intimate association, interspecies communication can be tricky, and things between horses and people don’t always go so well. Horses can shy or bolt. They can buck, bite or plant their feet and refuse to go forward. Frustration, for both horse and owner, can begin to build, and with it grows the possibility for getting hurt.

That’s where trainers like Warwick Schiller come in, bridging the knowledge gap between people and their mounts. His methods for improving steering or loading a reluctant horse into a trailer weren’t too different from those of the rest of the horse world. Lots of folks can teach an anxious horse to achieve a more relaxed state of mind by circling to a stop, or to keep a steady pace within a gait. And horses, they’re the same everywhere, generally willing to try to do what a person demands, even if the request is clumsy.