Archive for January, 2010
Sakima the Brumby’s First Months – Part 2
As the weeks passed into the months and the progress with Sakima was measured in micro steps, I began to cherish our time together. No phones, no emails, no demands just he and I and the wind and the birds and wallabies that share our farm.
It was now Spring and this day the wind was blowing in my hair, hot and intense. Does this mean a hot summer?
The cows would come running when they saw me, hoping for a free hand out. Their bubs, the first Speckle Parks growing up in Australia so far from their Canadian home.
Sakima would push them away with his ears flattened and if the calves ignored him he would lunge at them with great intent, scattering them. Then he would approach me and just stand spending time. Waiting for nothing, doing nothing was good for my soul and fabulous for the trust that we were building together. Winding down, switching off and forgetting work and the hecticness of life.
Sakima the Brumby’s Journey
Sakima had joined the herd and gradually gained acceptance with the other horses. He was not so welcoming to human approaches. He had learnt that people meant food and would follow the other horses in for a nightly free hand out, but his extreme fear of people dictated the level of contact – standing off and coming in when he felt I had safely retreated.
I frankly did not know what to do. I knew that I did not want to start him in the traditional manner or put him in the round yard and push him through Join Up and other pressure moves to make him submit to human control. I felt there had to be a fairer, gentler way to bring Sakima into the human world and for him to accept his loss of freedom.
I went in search and found Carolyn Resnick in the USA who had grown up with the mustangs and offered a method that involves working with your horse at total liberty in the paddock so the horse has a free choice as to the level and extent of the communication. The foundation of her method was how horses communicate in the wild as a herd and involved hours of just being with your horse doing nothing, as horses do.
