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September 2007 • VOLUME 25 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine
Freedom of Movement ..Truth or Fiction The churning hooves grip the desert floor as the horse, with mane whipping in the wind, dodges past rocks and vegetation.  The breathtaking height as the horse soars over the jump, fulfilling our desire to take flight. The black stallion rearing on the tiptoes of his back hooves as he neighs his challenge to the skies above.
All of these images represent in many ways what we love about horses. The incredible beauty of the ultimate in incredible power and freedom. So what do we do? We tie down, we hold, we tame? We change the very thing that we love and admire most about our horses. And in the process... In the process we subjugate, and take away what draws us to them in the first place. So like us humans. Humans are often a study of confusing opposites. Many of us sense this dichotomy either consciously or unconsciously, and we see this in the many different searches for an alternate reality in horsemanship. From the concept of natural horsemanship, where the word natural itself seems to indicate that we are going back to what comes naturally to the horse, to the concept of “Join-Up”, again seeming to indicate that we and the horse will join up joyfully and willingly, to the concept of dressage that states that we are trying to bring out the best in the horse from a biomechanical process, to what we see the proud stallion display when he is showing off. In essence, collection. All of these appeal to that which is in all of us. A realization that we do want to respect the natural and incredible beauty and power of the horse, and are looking for a partnership where we can join together and be with these amazing animals without creating marionettes that have had their incredible movement altered into something false and very wrong.
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