I was at the cross road. Sakima’s training had come to a halt. De-sensitisation had taken him so far and I could pick up his feet and lead him and catch him. As time progressed he seemed to shut down and the last thing I wanted was a horse that shuts down when you work with your horse. I watched as his eyes glazed over and he became less willing to work with me. Being shut down is a coping mechanism some horse uses to handle situations, where they are not comfortable.

I felt I was digging an even bigger hole – and how could I stop the free fall that I was in? The only thing I knew for sure was I was not going to use the methods of pressure and force or negative reinforcement – despite the pressure to use these methods. I just could not do it to Sakima when I knew in my heart the methods were not right.

My positiveness and confidence began to wane. I needed to stop the free fall.

Eventually I made contact with the Assistant Professional at Sydney University, Paul McGreevy. True to the scientist, to the end, he gave me several ideas and contacts to continue the training journey. He mentioned Clicker training among other techniques. The photo he sent me of him working at liberty with his horse and target work piqued my interest. This was a person I could listen to as he was doing it himself and was a strong critic of the so called horse training methods based on force, pressure and negative reinforcement. The name of one of his books ‘Carrots and Sticks’ said it all.

Another chapter in my journey with horses was about to begin. I went in search of Clicker people here in Australia who could help me. Julie from the Clicker Centre was a persuasive advocate for the method.

At first it sent shivers through my bones as Clicker training amongst the horse world has a bad rap. I was not sure of my reaction but thought what have I to lose; let’s look at it and not listen to dismissive comments of others. I needed to base my reaction on objective measures not emotion and it is so easy to be disparaging about training methods little understood.

The dog world has been turned around by clicker work where the wrong reaction is ignored and only the right reaction rewarded. The words of a wise parent rang in my ears:

(It is easy to ignore good behaviour and impossible to ignore bad behaviour).

That is the trainers challenge in the snap shot. Humans react to the bad behaviour of their horse. Be it pressure, be it force, or be it by an action that the horse finds uncomfortable or unpleasant.

I had never heard of a technique that ignored bad behaviour and only rewarded good behaviour. My interest was piqued. I had to know more.

The biggest hurdle for me was the use of food rewards in the training. Parelli and others are so definitely against it and are highly critical of the horse that is fed food rewards as dangerous, asking for trouble – and who wants a horse that only works for you for cupboard love? I suspect there is a little bit of human ego tired up in the anti-food brigade. The truth is that a brumby does not just want to be with me. He has to have a strong reason to even come to me as what he most wants, is for me to go away. What better reason for Sakima to want to come to me than for food?

I had been using food to bring Sakima in to say hullo so it was not much of a jump to give him a reward when he did what I wanted.

…so started my Clicker journey…

I know that because my wild brumby has taken 10 long days to achieve what others would achieve in 2 days.

There is one big difference I have done it without violence and my brumby has had a choice. Most of my work has been done at liberty where no halter or rope constrained his responses.

I want my wild boy to enjoy his introduction to domestication, not endure it if he has no choice. My decision to take this non violent path is a lonely journey and there are only a few who believe and practice this path. So much tradition dictates the way we “break” a horse and this is what it is. The horses’ spirits are broken. They will comply but the rider or handler will never have a true bond.

For the doubters all I say is: “let your horse go and see whether it will come to you and work with you at liberty”. Then you truly know whether you have the trust and bond with the horse so many of us desire. No halter, no bridle and you will see the true nature of your relationship.

When I do ask Sakima to work with the halter and rope, the rope is usually hanging on the ground or loosely slung over my arm. He still has a choice even when I have a rope and halter on him. For me the rope and halter don’t represent a control mechanism but a communication method. I take up the slack in the rope and ask him to move forward or forequarter yield. It is not a control to stop a flight response. My hand is always open; I never use the death grip on him that I see other trainers use.

When I put too much pressure on or did not communicate effectively he rapidly left me fleeing as his natural instinct took over.

I knew I had made a poor communication call and simply went to him and restarted. This time taking care to communicate more softly. Horses are so forgiving and give us second, third and fourth chances. He understood I was learning as well as him and each time I made a move that set his flight response in motion I just had to rethink what I was doing.

Most importantly I would usually go and sit down and wait for him to come back to me as then I knew the communication was open again and we could start afresh. Horses don’t carry grudges but they never forget cruelty done to them. When he chose to come back he was ready to start over. I learnt to give him this recovery time and not to rush my desire to move onto the next training step.

My patience was well rewarded each time. The incredible thing was that the next time I tried the move that I had failed at he was responsive and we both celebrated the achievement of success. I had learnt to better communicate.

To have a wild horse come to you and nudge you and drop his head to accept the halter and then allow you to tie it gently around his head and then to clip a rope onto the halter is a moment that takes my breath away and I sit there in awe.

My brumby has a choice to not allow this as he is at liberty and at any point can leave and not allow me to halter him. If he makes this choice I accept that and don’t try to hold him. If I have taken the time and approached him politely each time he will accept my request to put the halter around his head. If I have not paid enough respect through the investment of time just sharing space, doing nothing then he will correct me and tell me, by leaving that I have been rude and that is not how horses behave.

My brumby is an equal participant in this journey with his own opinions and needs.

He needs to respect mine and I need to respect his. I have to respect that he will have a flight instinct that kicks in when he is fearful. I cannot correct him for this and I simply have to help him work it through. Traditional trainers would correct the flight instinct and usually with pressure or violence towards the horse. All that does in the horses mind is reinforce that he had the right response in the first place, be afraid very afraid.

Traditionally, compliance is only achieved through force and that is not true communication. The human will dominant by sheer force but that person will never have the heart of the horse. That person will never be a respected partner/ leader in the eye of the horse.

Today my manager, Clarrie came down to the yards to discuss an issue. Rather than rob Sakima of my time I said come into the yards and be with us both. He did and Sakima was accepting of another person in the training session.

When we finished on a high with Sakima doing everything that I asked Clarrie left the yard and I started to lead Sakima out. Clarrie moved too quickly in his blind spot and Sakima’s flight response took over. He was out of there as it could be a lion attacking from the back. My hands were open on the lead rope and I let him go. He went 15 feet stopped and swung around to see the danger.

I gave Sakima time to realise that is was only Clarrie and not real danger. I then went to him and I did not correct him. I simply asked that he return to the yard where he burst out of and we repeat the exit.

He calmly responded to my request leading back in and doing a hind quarter yield to turn around.

We both walked, halted, walked, halted and continued this until we were back in the holding paddock and all was calm and wonderful.

Clarrie was amazed. As a bushy he has seen many horses “broken”. Never has he seen such time and patience and choice given to a horse. He was incredulous as to what Sakima and I had achieved with no violence, no kicking, no bucking.

When he saw me pick up his feet and hold them and then tie Sakima and there was no reaction but agreement by what we both wanted Clarrie paid me the greatest compliment.

Remember this is a bushy talking: “I am not pissing in your pocket because you are the boss, you have done an outstanding job with that horse and I take my hat off to you for what you have achieved. You really are a country girl at heart. You can take the girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the girl”. Until now I had been a city slicker playing being a farmer.

Little did he know that one of the reasons that he and his wife got the farm manager position was that he was a gentle soul in the way he treated his dogs, cows and horses. He used no violence in working with the farm animals. I knew that they would fit into the way I wanted the animals on our farm respected and treated. I was right in my choice.

He only got one thing a-wire. It was Sakima and I that achieved it together. The old bushy habits die hard.

When Sakima, as a wild horse took his chance for freedom several weeks ago and then decided to return to our farm and our mob of horses I knew that he trusted me and had bonded with me. Having him follow me down the mountain will always bring a lump in my throat.

His trust to come home gave me the confidence to decide that it was time to start Sakima. Wow, was I apprehensive? Yes. Did I know what I was doing? No.

This is something Sakima and I will do together. We will learn what to do together. My work with my various coaches gave me the confidence that Sakima would show me when I made mistakes and when I got it right.

How right my thoughts proved to be! Sakima has been my best coach in this journey together. When I don’t do a request correctly he clearly tells me by leaving me or tensing up his muscles so much that I can’t help but observe his apprehension.

I have made mistakes and yes, listened to others when doubts crept into my human brain. One said I should try Join Up to move him into the yard where we would work together. Well, I did but I stopped it immediately, too much pressure and energy. Sakima sent me a clear message, “I will do this but I don’t need you to do it this way”.

Sakima was far more comfortable with no pressure, no huge energy I simply get up from my chair and start leading from behind and he does the rest. It does not give the instant results of other methods but the results are achieved with no stress and no flight response.

I still spend hours doing nothing and saying hullo and just being with him.

I threw away my diary and forgot work and yes it has taken 10 days to start to achieve what others would have done in one or two days. But now the progress is so rapid I come back from each session with him amazed

Now, while taking time with him I can rub the halter over his head and ask him to put his nose in the halter and he lets me tie it around his neck. Just doing this can take an hour but the exhilaration you feel when he drops his head into the halter and allows me to clip the lead rope proves time should not be considered when starting a horse.

Sakima adores the mutual grooming that we do together. Not the rubbing of his withers – but me untangling his mane. His entire mane was long dreadlocks. It takes 30 minutes to untangled each dreadlock. He stands head down and eyes drooped as his magnificent, long mane takes shape. Each day I brush what I have untangled to keep him looking the best horse in the paddock.

Today Sakima has given me the greatest trust a horse can give. I picked up his front feet, held them and picked them out with a hoof pick. No dramas, no kicking no fear. This is the ultimate statement of trust as a brumby has no life without his legs.

Sakima is such a clever boy and knows the pecking order of apples and carrots. When he has done something that I think is super hard for him he gets apples and the rest of the time it is carrots. Apples are his all time favourite and his tongue literally smothers my hand as he gets his apple. His success in allowing me to hold his front feet has earned him many apples. Next week the bare foot trimmer is coming so there will be a bag of apples after he has his feet trimmed.

Then I asked my brumby to tie and to accept that he would be tied to a post and no choice to move. For 15 minutes he stood motionless with head calmly relaxed. No dramas, no pull back just complete trust that what I asked him to do he knew it would not hurt him or endanger him. I repeated the exercise again today thinking yesterday was just a fluke. No, it was the same again, a quiet brumby standing tied with me beside him.

Sakima leads with the halter on and turns and it is the softness that I have always heard about but never thought I would have a horse so soft and responsive. I just have to give the slightest gesture and he responds.

It is an amazing experience to be trained by a brumby and it is truly a sharing learning experience. I lead and decide the moves but he is refining my horse skills to a level I have never achieved before.

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.

I was connecting not just with Sakima, but the hidden life on the farm. My first farm sighting of the notoriously shy lyre bird happened during one of these sessions. It was clamouring over the hill rocks and scratching through the leaf litter, gleaning worms and whatever it could find. Its tailed curved at the end-a drab female with the permanent curve of a nesting female. Nest real estate is tight and the long tail could only fit into the nest if it was curled around the nest – a lonely job incubating the eggs and then raising the chicks. I would see it many times after this. Just sitting had other rewards than just building trust with Sakima.

The male had long moved onto other conquests, singing his way through autumn attracting whatever female passed by – deserting his responsibilities after the act to pursue more females.

Now it was Spring and the males calls ricocheted around the valley. Not in courtship but in territorial disputes with the victor claiming the best display area. The mimicking competitions added music to the time Sakima and I spent just sitting together, just building our trust.

With our trust building each day Carolyn encouraged me to move on to building our bond. This would be more challenging as it meant me approaching him standing and stretching my hand for him to smell. Then if he took a step back I would back out of his space. He would learn that he could control me and that I would not approach him if he did not want me to.

Hardly the horsemanship method I could discuss with many of my horse friends. The accepted method is to keep the pressure on and move with the horse so that they eventually accept you.  I learnt quickly to not discuss Carolyn’s methods with too many people as everyone has a better, faster way. I had chosen a slow method and that was what I was determined to follow.

My major focus was never doing anything that would cause that hair trigger flight response. The last lesson I wanted to teach him was to flee from me and this would be an underpinning focus in all my work with my brumby. In his head, every time a flight response was triggered it simply reinforced that this was the right response. I would never be able to stop it when we would at last ride together and he became scared. If you have seen a brumbies flight response full-on it is over so fast you don’t even know what happened. There would be no way I could sit that out on his back. While I doubt my boy will ever buck, the flight response would not to be intentionally dislodge me but it would. The result would be the same and at my age – I don’t bounce.

Each day after small success I would come back to home to excitedly tell my husband Ron of the days events. I learnt to treasure the smallest step from Sakima.

The day that Sakima allowed me to put my hand on his face without using his feed bucket was a big day of excitement and I think I drove Ron mad that night retelling the story many times.  It had taken months to achieve this tiny step for me but huge step for Sakima. He had made a choice to allow this level of contact as no fences; no ropes or halter constrained him.

Progress became more rapid after this milestone. When I went into the paddock he would choose to come to me after I had removed the other horses. We would spend time together and only after 40 or so minutes would I say hullo. The day I arrived with the dog dishes and purple exercise ball created all sorts of questions from my neighbours who had watched the slow progress with the constant question ‘have you caught that brumby yet?’

I filled each dog dish with feed and placed them in a row and as Sakima moved to one I would move to the next. After a few weeks he had the routing down pat and he accepted me walking by his head to the next bowl.

The next big milestone was being able to place my hand on his neck as we walked together to the next bowl. (Wow I thought this is wonderful!).

Next was the purple ball – a technique to start teaching him to drop his head. Brumbies have huge neck muscles and are often thought to have ewe necks, not a pretty look in most people’s eyes. It is an optical illusion created by the huge muscle built up over time as the brumby spends so much time with the head high in the air sensing danger. Sakima was on the way to a big neck muscle and I had learnt when his head went up and eyes rolled back it would be only seconds from a flight response.

Using treats I taught him to drop his head and push the ball with his lips. Brumbies are very bright and before long when the ball appeared he would walk up and start pushing the ball in anticipation of his reward. He seemed to delight in the game.

Our trust and bond were growing each time we worked together. In the next instalment you will read why these steps were to become so important in my brumbies life.

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.

The key was expecting nothing and having no time constraints or agendas when you went to work with your horse. This was not going to be easy as we humans are so time bound and goals oriented and prefer to work on plans and agendas.

Talking with Carolyn was even more confronting on the issue of time and expectations. She bluntly said “I don’t think that my method will work for you, it will take a very long time from what you have described for your wild boy to accept human interaction. Do you have the time that it will take”?

I had to think about this as my life suffers from the human condition of too many pressures for the time available and now I was going to add one more time demand. Certainly other methods would be faster if it was results I was wanting.

I pondered for several days and came to the conclusion it was not results I wanted. What mattered was that Sakima would willingly give up his desire for freedom and want to be with me and other people. The focus for me was willing and choice.

Working at liberty with your horse from the start clearly tells you what type of relationship you have with your horse. They are in control, not you. It is an interesting challenge for all horse people to see the level of interaction that a horse chooses when you just sit in the paddock and do nothing and don’t approach your horse.

This is what I did with Sakima I just sat in the paddock. After a few days my other boys would willingly come up and say hullo and hang around. When Sakima even came near the others would send him off.

If I was to have a relationship with him I had to remove the others for my long sessions in the paddock. I did and then took my chair and book to just sit in the paddock with Sakima for an hour at least a day. My other horses hung over the fence wanting to be with us.

So it went on for weeks and he gradually came to accept that there was this crazy human sitting in the paddock as he grazed. I expected nothing and never tried to approach him and I just gave him time and space.

Weeks on it happened… Sakima came over to me and stood several feet away and just hung around me for the rest of the hour I would spend with him. Each day the distance that he stood away lessened. Then I introduced a food reward and he would come in for his reward and then back away.

Under Carolyn’s instructions I then began to put his evening food bin between my legs and my arms around the bin. His desire for the goodies was bigger than his fear of the human touch and he would tentatively come in, take his mouth full and back away to a safe distance. The human need to reach out and touch him was held in check as he became used to closer, gentle contact with a person.

The next step was for me to try and put my hand on Sakima’s face before he grabbed his food. His level of acceptance was amazing and within days I could put my hand on his star and hold it there for a few seconds. This was a magical moment as every milestone in his journey into the human world would be.

The next steps in his journey would be just as exciting for me but for most, the progress would be too slow. I kept reminding myself this would take the time it took.