Normally, if we turn a horse out in a big field and just leave him for a week or maybe a month and then bring him back to ride, he will often be just wild. Most horses need to be worked on a daily basis, five days a week so that we can depend on them not to be too out of control. I find that interesting because horses we train with the Waterhole Rituals do not have that problem.

We can turn them loose for a week, a month or a year, bring them back, jump on them and we don’t have to go through the process of getting them accustomed to being ridden again. The reason for this is because the training was put on the horse in a joyful way and the connection is so beautiful that you do not have to take the edge off them because there isn’t any edge. They have had their social behavior shaped so they know how to fit in with you if you’ve been away for a short time or even a long time.

What made me think about this is I went to see a horse that you guys have all seen on my DVDs. He is an Andalusian stallion that I’ve really not worked with for maybe 3 months or more. In fact, he had hardly been worked at all and had been housed in a stall. Now you would think that a horse that had been housed in a stall with no interaction with people would be out of control. Well, I worked with him and it was like he had been in training every single day. He was perfect.

When we stopped working together, he didn’t really have the Spanish walk on him. He could maybe do 25 feet at liberty when I asked him. However, the day I worked him he was so excited to do the Spanish walk again, he did it for 100 feet and would have kept going except he ran out of room in the arena. It was just so beautiful and everybody thought it was great.

So if you focus on Waterhole Rituals and you are focussed on developing manners and the quality of connection, when you next go visit your horse you will have a horse that is as perfect as Panadero was that day.

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