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California Riding Magazine • September, 2008 Ryan Gingerich by Kim F. Miller |
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Stephanie Baker was at wits’ end. Her 17.3 hh off-the-track Thoroughbred, Hugo, had always been hard to handle, but a traumatic incident had made him a monster. The lifelong horsewoman was working Hugo in an indoor arena as a bad storm swirled around the Missouri boarding facility. Snow and ice ripped the rain gutters and siding off the arena and Hugo “lost it,” Stephanie recounts. Hugo’s refusal to return to that ring became the least of his subsequent problems. “He would strike and charge me and he came after me on several occasions. He got to the point where no one could handle him.” She was looking for pasture situations where Hugo could live out his life with minimal human interaction when she came upon Ryan Gingerich. Based an hour north of St. Louis, Ryan was working with a few horses at the public stable where Hugo lived. In tears, Stephanie explained Hugo’s issues. No stranger to the worst in equine behavior, Ryan suggested he start working with the owner and her troubled horse. “It was really quite amazing to see the transition with Hugo,” Stephanie says. “He went from a horse that regularly tried to kill you to a horse that there is now nothing I can’t do with.” In the process, Stephanie, who maintains a small training business herself, became a disciple of Ryan’s Connective Horsemanship concepts. They are based on five simple principles: Basic Control, Lightness, Rhythm, Line and Connection, all of them built around the horse responding well to stop and go cues. Fear, round pens, special equipment and gimmicks are not part of the program.
CONNECTIVE HORSEMANSHIP In embracing Connective Horsemanship, Stephanie joins a following that is growing evenly among horse owners in all breeds and disciplines. Word has spread via Ryan’s appearances at horse expos throughout the country, his DVDs and, more recently, through his TV show, The Behaviorist, carried nationally on RFD-TV. In each episode, Ryan takes on a troubled horse. Rearers, biters, buckers, bolters, head shakers, kickers and more have all been stars of the show. Whatever their behavioral problems, the answer is always the same: eliminating confusion about what is expected from the horse. On the TV program and in his everyday work at his National Equine Behavior Center, Ryan teaches horses and their handlers the “language of exclusivity.” This technique requires that the horse need give only one response to one cue. When used correctly, this process leads to the “deletion” of incorrect behavior and establishes a foundation of crystal clear communication between horse and handler. “It’s straight forward training,” says Tim Wolfe, who is now in the midst of what he calls his “12 year apprenticeship” with Ryan. A staff trainer at Connective Horsemanship’s 27-acre NEBC in Moscow Mills, MO, Tim was originally drawn to Ryan’s claims of offering a unique approach to training. “Everything he has taught me has turned into proven results with my horses,” Tim continues. A lifelong horseman who had studied various training systems, Tim started Ryan’s program with a small, relatively manageable Arabian. He quickly found that Connective Horsemanship’s basics applied equally well to his 18.3 hh Belgian drafthorse. The 2,400-pounder retained many of his stallion tendencies after being gelded relatively late. In particular, he liked to lurch forward and shake his sizeable head. Through Ryan’s training, Tim learned to see the head shaking as a manifestation of the horse’s resistance to the “go” cue. The steps for modifying this behavior began with the rein pressure cue to stop. “I’d stop him, ask him to put his head down, his nose in and go backwards,” Tim explains. “I’d back him up until he stopped shaking his head, then immediately relieve the rein pressure and ask him to go forward.“ In the beginning, it took anywhere from three to 10 steps in reverse to stop the head shaking, but the big horse caught on quick and has retained the lesson nicely. “I knew that it was working because the pressure I had to apply got lighter and lighter with repetition,” Tim notes. After learning that the go cue means walk forward with his head down and nose slightly tucked, the horse became lighter and more balanced in his entire frame. Under saddle, in hand or behind a cart or wagon, “I can do anything with this horse that you could do with a light horse,” Tim reports. Handling him in public, Tim needs just a web halter and a lead line, standard issue equipment for all equine graduates of the Connective Horsemanship school.
TRAIL LESS TRAVELED Ryan worked as a trail guide in his late teens, but was otherwise a casual horse guy. An epiphany while out trail riding one day inspired him to pursue a career teaching horses and their owners. The notion took him by surprise, but eventually led him to well-known natural horseman John Lyons. Ryan worked as an apprentice and then became a certified John Lyons instructor, returning to his Missouri ranch to set up shop for himself. Several years down the line, Ryan was injured seriously while training a horse. Noted horseman Richard Shrake helped Ryan with his riding technique in the aftermath, and the two became close friends. Also during his recovery, Ryan became intrigued by the work of Dr. Andrew McLean, director of the Australian Equine Behavior Center. Here, Ryan’s path diverged for good from that of many of America’s familiar general horsemanship teachers. Along with riding competitively at the top levels in eventing, dressage and show jumping, McLean is internationally regarded for studying and applying the science of equine behavior. The idea of exclusivity in a training context is one of eight tenets in McLean’s training principles. “Each response should be trained and elicited separately,” McLean explains on his website, www.aebc.com.au. “Don’t pull on the reins (stop) and kick with the legs (go) at the same time.” Although many of McLean’s principles were total turnabouts from what Ryan had been taught as a horseman, the logic, clarity and simplicity of McLain’s ideas made sense. “I came to it after 10 years of the round-pen type training,” says Ryan. “Believe me, I was the most confused person on the face of this earth because I realized I’d been doing so much of the wrong stuff: using techniques that, though they are still sought out today, I honestly don’t think are productive for the horse.” He discounts the usefulness of appropriating herd behavior, a core concept for many natural horsemanship techniques. “Yes, technically, I am a predator and the horse is prey, but after so many years of domestication, the horse does not really see me as a predator, nor as a member of its herd.” Understanding the mechanics of the horse’s fear and flight instincts is essential, Ryan emphasizes. Confusion is the source of much equine fear, he continues. The clear language of simple cues that are the foundation of Connective Horsemanship best addresses it. Some of the most extreme behavioral problems that Ryan has seen exist in horses with the highest level of conventional training. “The more training they have, the more likelihood for confusion and for behavioral problems that surface as a result,” he observes.
THE RIGHT START Ideally and increasingly, Ryan starts his work when a client’s horse is in the beginning phases of training. The cues, given with consistency from the ground or the saddle, establish a great base for horses headed to any discipline. In six months working with Ryan, Dana Manar has become a firm believer in this point. A hunt seat and eventing rider who dabbled in western while earning her equine science degree at Southwest Missouri State, Dana found Ryan when she became interested in working with off-the-track Thoroughbreds. She is starting just such a 3-year-old, named Beckham, now at NEBC. Atypically for a racehorse, Beckham’s issues include an unwillingness to go forward. Addressing this issue, and as part of attaining Basic Control, Dana first worked with Beckham from the ground and with a dressage whip that, in Connective Horsemanship, is used as an extension of the hand. “I cue him on the left side, on the girth line where my leg would lie if I was in the saddle,” Dana explains. “I do this until he moves forward with the left foot. If he moves the right foot, I back him up and ‘delete’ that response, then start over.” Compared to the combinations of cues that comprise traditional aids for prompting a horse in most disciplines, Ryan’s system takes a fair amount of untraining for the rider. “I struggle with it all the time,” Dana admits. “But it is very simple for the horse.” Her aim is to become both a representative of Ryan’s techniques and a successful competitor in the mainstream hunter/jumper and eventing worlds. Recent gallops with Beckham on an exercise track give her high hopes. The youngster was moving forward freely, maintaining his own rhythm, and responding to her stop cues without his initial response of pulling into the bit. Through his TV show, DVDs and an online forum on Connective Horsemanship’s website, Ryan makes his training techniques available to horse owners everywhere. He hopes to make a return appearance at the Western States Horse Expo in Sacramento next June, and predicts that filming The Behaviorist may bring him West in the interim.
For more information on Ryan Gingerich’s Connective Horsemanship, visit the www.connectivehorsemanship.com.
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