Susie Kockerscheidt
Wolff Knipping laughs with Hennessey as he relaxes and yawns.
North of the City
May 05, 2008 09:43 AM
By: Wanda Kowalski
“I had the stuffing knocked out of me, but I got back on the horse and finished the lesson,” Wolff Knipping says. She was dazed, thankfully not injured, but that was the last horseback-riding lesson she took for awhile. “Each time I even thought about riding, my legs would turn to Jell-O and my heart started pounding.” She no longer trusted her beloved Hennessey, a purebred, pale grey Irish draft who stands a whisker over 17 hands. “Worse,” she says, “I lost confidence in my ability to handle him.”
But for this transplanted city slicker, who along with her husband and four children moved from the city to a 125-acre farm near Orangeville over four years ago, giving up riding was not an option. “I needed something but I didn’t know what,” she explains of her desire to overcome her fears.
From Hennessey’s point of view, he was only doing what horses do: react, act, no questions asked. Mrs. Knipping later learned that his behaviour would have been fairly easy to understand if she knew how to speak horse. And that’s just what she did when she attended her first Chris Irwin clinic early last year.
Hailed as a magician with “difficult” horses, Mr. Irwin has channelled 30 years of working with these magnificent animals and achieved an international following for a technique that might be called “horse whispering” popularized in the 1990s in the Robert Redford movie, based on natural horsemanship practioner Buck Brannaman. Although, in the movie, some of the techniques shown, such as hobbling the horse’s leg in a chain, are not part of natural horsemanship.
“When I watched Chris in the ring, I was mesmerized,” Mrs. Knipping says of Mr. Irwin. She learned from him that horses are prey and consider every other thing, living or inanimate, as a predator. A flutter caught in the animal’s nearly 360-degree peripheral vision or a suddenly opened umbrella could result in what could appear to be bad behaviour, but in reality is just the horse’s instinct to flee and survive.
After a short time working with the silver certified Chris Irwin instructor Anne Gage in the ring with Hennessey, Mrs. Knipping has conquered her fear. “We’ve been hacking in the woods — I’m not afraid anymore of going into the field, pushing horses out of the way to bring them in.” What she learned not only about her horse and about herself in this process inspired her to form a partnership with Ms Gage to share the experience with other women in one-day clinics called Women in the Company of Horses.
Ms Gage had an epiphany of sorts of her own about eight years ago. Her two decades of experience with horses had little effect on a flighty, unpredictable animal she was trying to “break”. None of the traditional methods including “shank and yank”, which is putting a chain around the horse’s nose and pulling when the horse rears up, worked. “You kick harder, apply whip or spur and keep increasing the force until you get what you want or the horse bucks you off,” Ms Gage says, shaking her head. She went to work with Mr. Irwin to earn the certification but it wasn’t easy “forgetting 20 years” of horse handling that was pinned on the idea that “I needed to break the horse’s spirit”, she says.
The five women attending the day-long clinic at Amaranth Farms, set on a tranquil 125 acre spread west of Orangeville, all have their own reasons for attending. For Val, it’s a neighbour’s horse she would love to ride but who “bares his teeth and flattens his ears” when she approaches. “She’s clearly telling me to get out of her space.”
Janice’s daughter had three falls and the coach advised her to get rid of the horse: but they decided to get rid of the coach instead and try something different.
It’s the same with Karen, who boards horses, and wonders what’s up with a yearling that intimidates her and kicks his stall most of the time.
Nadia has dreamed of going on a cattle drive in Alberta and she just wants to know more about these animals.
After home-made rhubarb and chocolate chip muffins and tea in the century-old farmhouse Mrs. Knipping is lovingly restoring (she is a faux-finishing artisan), the women head out to the paddock. Ms Gage has a bunch of carrots and they will illustrate some significant horse psychology. The three horses eye us as we approach while feeding, but soon, Charlie smells the carrots. He starts whipping his head around and the message to the other horses is: “These carrots are mine.” Charlie is what Ms Gage calls the alpha horse. If there’s an unruly horse in the herd, the alpha horse will push it out of the group.
“Humans understand cats and dogs better,” Ms Gage says, because it’s a predator-to-predator relationship. They have eyes on the front of the face, as do we, so we interact face to face.” But horses, she explains, have eyes on the side of their heads and that means they have an entirely different visual perspective of life. “That’s why it’s important not to approach the horse face on,” Ms Gage explains. Its head and neck are its most vulnerable spot, so if you approach the animal and it bobs its head up and down, it’s not saying, “Hi, how are ya?” Ms Gage says laughing. “Horses are 100 per cent body language,” she says but there are ways to “read them”.
She demonstrates by entering the paddock and approaching Lyric. He’s happily munching on hay. He raises his head over her shoulder. “Aw,” we all say, “isn’t that cute … he likes her.” Wrong. Lyric is showing his domination over Ms Gage.
She corrects this by “blocking” his energy by putting her hand to the corner of his mouth. It’s important to establish who is boss and that does not mean using whips and chains. In the herd, that’s just good social behaviour.
Lyric comes up to Karen and gently pushes her with the side of his body. This is one of the ways horses communicate — the others are biting and kicking.
Positioning your body in three ways can gently change these behaviours: drawing, pushing and blocking. “It’s meeting energy with energy,” Ms Gage explains, “these horses are always alert and react to the energy humans give off.”
In the arena, the women try to walk Chuck. He’s not too happy and is raising his head and whinnying to his abandoned stall mate. Clearly, he’d rather be next to his friend eating than being led around by a bunch of neophytes.
Everything, from the way you hold the halter rope with pinky facing the animal’s body, to the way you time your step to the horse’s, will make an impact on its reaction. To illustrate this, Val and Nadia stand on either side of Hennessey holding cotton halter ropes. He swings his head right toward Val, the left side of his body “pushes” toward Nadia. She pokes him gently at the girth and his body straightens. He swings his head left toward Nadia, pushing out right toward Karen and she repeats the movement.
Chuck pulls his head in close toward Nadia, and she puts up her hand, palm up in the stop position. Miraculously, he straightens out. It’s not too exciting for these type A personality types. And as Ms Gage explains, “To understand them, you have to slow down and be in their moment.”
But something is happening to Hennessey. He starts licking his lips, lets out a huge yawn and lowers his head; his eyelids look a little heavy.
The women all smile and are a little teary. “What he’s telling you,” Ms Gage quietly explains, “is that ‘I am relaxed enough and trust both of you enough to lower my head and chill out’.”
There is a strange and beautiful chemistry among women and horses and while that language may be silent, we have all learned of the quiet ways of equus.
For more information on clinics offered by Amaranth Farms: Wolff Knipping, 519-943-1407.