EDUCATION MODELS AND EQUINES – WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THERE IS A CHOICE?
Unschooling is a style of homeschooling that I was never quite brave enough to take the leap on in the years of forging educational paths with my kids. I tell myself it was because I knew there were testing benchmarks that my kids would need to hit if they chose to dip in and out of traditional education because of friends/sports or personal goals, but honestly, it requires a level of commitment and trust in the concept of small humans as inherently curious beings that I was never sure I possessed.
Grossly oversimplified for the sake of this essay, the concept of ‘unschooling’ is where parents create an environment that supports independent learning and discovery, but provide no structure or Have To--no carrots or sticks. The premise says that without instructional guardrails, the young mind will indulge in nothing but “Cheezits and video games” for approximately four months. However, sometime around the five month mark, just as the young body might crave an apple instead of MSG-laden chips, the young brain will also become bored of video games, and might say to a parent, “Hey, there’s a volcano in my favorite level of my video game. Do we have any books about volcanos around here?” And voila, an unschooled child begins their fully independent quest for knowledge.
As I’ve said, I never fully embraced this homeschooling style because I wasn’t brave enough, but as a college professor, I have met students who are the product of this education, and their zest for learning, capacity for critical thought and analysis outpaced their peers from the most rigorous academic prep programs. So I do believe there is something to it.
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH HORSES?
As in my parenting/educational life, in my equine experience, I lean towards the natural and less structured. I am attracted to modalities and programs that emphasize the inherent agency of the horse and stress looking to their innate behaviors and communication styles to create a partnership between human and horse from the ground up. I have long-loved the fathers of natural horsemanship, Monty Roberts or Buck Brannaman, and more recently, have studied Connection Training, positive reinforcement/clicker training and participated in and hosted aspects of both Eponaquest and Horsespeak.
But one of the burning questions in my seven year journey with Phoenix has always been DOES WHAT WE DO TOGETHER BRING HIM JOY? I take comfort in the fact that he runs to meet me at the fence, and if I linger too long on my phone when arriving at the barn, he will lean over his stall door, grab the halter hanging on the hook in his mouth and fling it at me like an impatient toddler. But I wonder if given the choice, would Phoenix choose to be with me?
Two weekends ago, I traveled to New Jersey to audit a clinic with a woman who had been described as a ‘wild Danish woodland sprite of a horse whisperer’, who believes firmly in a purist type of free horsemanship and whose social media tagline is “When Horses Choose.”
(Check out Mia’s YouTube channel for a deeper dive in her training method.)
photo Sarafina Photography
Just before attending the clinic, I had switched to riding Phoenix in a bitless bridle—meaning there was no metal in my horse’s mouth to ‘control’, steer or stop him. Phoenix came to me years ago with a lot of mouthiness and some jaw issues, and when I first posed the idea of bitless with my young horse, a trainer cautioned me about his stubborn nature and his strength, and warned I would never be able to stop him. So for most of his life, we have ridden in a loose ring snaffle. Leading up to this clinic, thinking I was going to learn about ‘letting my horse choose whatever he wanted to do’, I switched to a bitless bridle and started riding him around the property with zero contact with the reins, going with the flow of when he chose to walk, trot or canter around, wherever he wanted to go.
What it turns out my horse wants to do with me on his back and zero input from me?
Plunge his head down and eat the last of the autumn grass.
So I could not wait to watch my friend and trainer Lisa take her super-independent, 16.2, strong, green six-year-old Dutch harness horse to this clinic which said it was about letting horses choose, with no saddle or bridle, and see what the heck was going to happen. Honestly, it sounded as dangerous as handing your seven-year-old a jumbo bag of gummy bears and a Playstation controller, and walking away until dinner time, or even next Spring.
I was also excited to hear that another participant, Sarah, was bringing her four-year-old unbroken Standardbred to the clinic, for his very first time to see how he felt about a human on his back. To call what I watched that day “breaking” a horse would be a misnomer.
What I learned from auditing is that Mia’s method is one of the most pure, equitable, safe and joyful types of horsemanship I have ever experienced. Capitalizing on her years spent living with different wild herds of horses (both Icelandic and mustangs), Mia has developed a technique that uses the natural language and hierarchy of herd behavior to communicate and create an invitation to a horse-human connection that’s simply magic.
The horse is free from accoutrements—no saddle, no rope, no halter or bridle, and loose in a space with a human who is inviting them cheerfully into partnership with a human guide. The horse is absolutely allowed to say ‘no thank you’, and Mia respects that choice and creates what would happen in the horse world—a NO Zone. You don’t want to join up with the herd after being invited by the leader to come play our reindeer games? You’re free to say no, but then your space is a corner when you can sit there and say no all day along. Enjoy your Prisoner of Zelda and Cool Ranch Doritos by yourself, pal.
But Mia’s energy and magnetism, as she walks away had all of the horses turning their head and saying, wait, I might have changed my mind. And when they do, they’re welcomed to come back to try join up/partnership again.
Photo Sarafina Photography
There are mountains of praise, full body scratches in all the places a horse loves best, and a woman after my own heart, she sings to them!
[For a more detailed explanation of Mia Lykke Nielsen’s methodology, read this]
When the horses have bought into this highly engaging, affirming dynamic, Mia says this is them choosing to be part of your herd, trusting you to be their benevolent leader, and from there, the conversation can move to whether or not they accept you on their back and pledge to carry you safely and trust that you won’t ask things of them they can’t do. From that point on, riding is somewhat traditional, albeit without the guardrails of all the things that we have always believed make a rider in charge and safe—tack.
Clarissa tries Mia’s method with Duchess today
Clearing up my previous misconception that the horse could choose anything (gorge on grass, jump a 3’6” oxer or gallop around breakneck with rider clinging to mane,) this is not that. The choice is the horse committing to the partnership. Mia’s assertion is that she feels safest without tack because she can feel the back tense, the head go high, all the signals a horse gives that their fight or flight has been triggered, and that we are at risk of missing with layers of tack between us.
In that instance, she slips off with a litheness I can only hope to replicate, addresses the disconnect, perhaps backing the horse a step or two the way a boss mare would, and then the partnership returns the mounting block and continues. It is fascinating to me that the horses, including mine, move better, more balanced, even in a frame, with nothing but perhaps a circle of rope (Mia’s cordeo) for communication.
Just as I balked at the unschooling journey, inherent in this conversation is the quiet fear of the horse owner—if given free choice, what if my horse doesn’t choose to be with me? What if what we do together does not bring them joy?
Mia came back to Dalla Pasche on Tuesday and Phoenix and I got to join in a clinic/demo and I wondered—would he run away from me, in favor of greener grass?
But instead, inspired by her enthusiasm and she says the history of the years we have built together, Phoenix joined right in the fun. Stay tuned for more on our bareback/bit-less journey, and for an announcement of when Mia will be back in the US if you want to come see this for yourself.
