07/04/2025
I have ALWAYS said that a rider needs to move WITH the horse. Become a part of them. The union between horse and rider is what brought the horse to the point that they were revered throughout history. From Bucephalon to Trigger the horse has symbolized a bond that defies logic. The importance of the connection, both physical and spiritual with the horse has never been matched by any other animal other than the canine. I fully believe in the human horse connection, and with it in place the pair can achieve greatness that neither could alone.
Is horsemanship dead? Has it been changed to peopleship? What I mean is, where is the focus today, on the horses or on the riders? I think it is now on the riders. My core post last week is still getting complaints from cutters and reiners telling me that the collapsed core "slouch" they use is a valid riding position. I tell them I worked on a ranch for a couple years and I never saw a ranch hand ride in a slouch. Still, they say things like "You couldn't ride a cutting horse unless you slouch."
It's all about the riders, and the horses are secondary. Instead of riding with the focus being on the horse's need for a balanced rider, the focus is on how to get a poor rider to stay on a cutting horse when they don't have the core strength to stay with the horse. So, the discipline gives the collapsed core the name "slouch" and the problem is solved. Never mind the horses.
As a rider who started riding in the 1950s, I have seen the shift in focus in riding instruction, show judging and general riding away from the horse and onto the riders. How did all this get started?
George Morris had a lot to do with it beginning in the 1970s. As Morris abandoned his training in the US Fort Riley Seat that he learned from Gordon Wright, a Fort Riley instructor, he invented Hunter Seat Equitation. His 1977 book departed from centuries of effective military principles of riding. He introduced new rider training methods like perching and the crest release as being "training wheels" for faster learning how to ride.
But more than that, he shifted the focus away from the horse's need for balance and shared movement with the rider. Instead, he placed almost all the attention on static rider forms that please judges. Before the Morris method, instructors constantly made students aware of how their riding aided or interfered with their horse. Unity of shared motion and balance between horse and rider was the goal, not pleasing a judge.
This is why we see so many riding lessons with instructors yelling instructions to students like "heels down", the classic chorus from George. We see student riders bouncing in the saddle at the canter, pounding their horse's back, and there is no intervention or instruction in how to sit in unity with the horse's canter movement. Apparently, today judges don't focus on riders pounding their horses' backs.
But I don't think horsemanship is dead. Based on the growth in the number of this page's followers, particularly the new younger riders, it appears to me that peopleship, may have peaked. The importance of poses, styles and shortcuts, rather than riding in unity, could be ending.
I think people are beginning to see the subtle and not so subtle abuse imposed on horses from poor riding is unacceptable. Instructors who know how to teach effective unified riding will increasingly be in demand. The horse world is waking up to the commercial Morris, Parelli, etc. fabricated methods that sounded so good for so long but didn't deliver.
