Why do Girls Love Horses?

For starters, they're beautiful and graceful and a bit mysterious. But there's more to it than that.

Riding a horse is freedom, power, and speed. It's sitting high above the world, looking down. And when a girl has a special horse who thinks she's special too, it?s a friendship and a bond that no human relationship can match.

Some people feel power and freedom by driving a fast car - or a huge truck. But to control a powerful animal who has a mind of its own and can choose to obey or not obey, is a feeling beyond description. You know that the key to success is your trust in the horse, and his trust in you.

When you learn to communicate with a horse and gain his willing cooperating, you've accomplished something not everyone can do.

Not all girls will want to admit to another, somewhat hidden reason, and that is this: Sometimes it's also the joy of being able to do something better than the boys. It's having "one up" on the boys - because horses respond to kindness, gentleness, slow movements and soft speech. Some boys can master that, but only some. Usually it?s the girls who can calm a frightened horse or teach him to respond to subtle commands.

This is a sport where size and muscle don't really matter, so girls can beat boys and young people can beat adults. It all depends on the individual person and their love of horses.

You may watch old Western Movies and think that horses are trained by tying them down, putting on a saddle, and riding until the horse gives up the fight. It used to be. I'm sure plenty of cowboys suffered broken bones in the process, and breaking horses became a task for only the big, the strong, and the brave. Or maybe the dumb, I'm not sure.

Maybe because we're not in such a hurry any more, and maybe because we don't generally capture our horses from wild herds, already grown, but that's not how horses are usually trained any more. If you've read the "Horse Whisperer" you know that some of the old time horsemen resisted the change from "breaking" to gentling a horse, and you also learned that the new way is better.

Now, a young horse is trained almost from birth. He or she is handled by humans, taught to wear a halter and walk quietly alongside a person. Later, training includes working on a long line and learning to walk, trot, gallop, and stop on voice commands. Patience and persistence have become more important than brute force in horse training.

When the horse is old enough, he's taught to carry a saddle and wear a bridle. Some people use ground driving to teach the horse to respond to commands from the reins before anyone ever gets on its back. To do this, long reins are attached to the bridle and run through stirrups or a special apparatus around the horse's barrel. That keeps the reins up closer to where a riders hands will be once he is ridden.

So, before the horse ever carries a rider, he is used to the equipment, knows something about what's expected, and has no fear of humans - as long as he's been treated gently and calmly.

Once the horse is being ridden, the fine points of training begin, and that's where gentleness and patience really pay off. Sometimes you have to repeat a lesson dozens of times before the horse "gets it." No amount of yelling or brute force will make him learn any faster.

I'm not trying to say that boys can't do this - I'm saying that what really counts in horsemanship is your attitude - not your gender, age, or size. If you can be patient, and gentle, and soft spoken, and persistent - you can learn to train a horse so that he will trust you, and you can trust him.

And then you can ride like the wind!

This article courtesy of  http://www.horsegift-hq.com.
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