Lessons from Thunder

During the time I was active on the NHE forum and in the online school, I became quite close with several people there, and got to know them and the horses in their lives through their postings,photos, and, particularly, the diaries we all kept. Through emails and phone calls we maintained and developed our friendships in the years since I left the school and forum, but we never met “in person.” That changed a bit this past week-end (October 1st - 3rd, 2010) when my long time, real-life friend, Karen, and I made the 6.5 hour drive to Saint Saveur, Quebec where the NHE seminar hosted by Michael Bevilacqua and Cloé Lacroix was held.

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog are already familiar with Thunder. (Those of you who are not can read here: Thunder stories). He and his person, Cloé, have long been an inspiration to me. Meeting them ‘in the flesh’ was my main reason for attending the seminar. An added attraction was the opportunity to meet Michael, (whom I knew only through his writing in Natural Horse Magazine and on the NHE forum), and to actually see him interact with horses.

Our two sessions with the horses, one on Saturday afternoon and one on Sunday afternoon (which I missed because we had to leave) took place at the facility where Thunder and his herd mates live. We were expecting to be joined by Thunder, Miss Cue, and Tiki -- the three horses whose person Cloé is -- as well as two other horses whose people had kindly given 15 strangers permission to spend time with them.

We came to the pasture, greeted the horses and made our way to the fenced arena where we would be working. Thunder, Miss Cue, and Tiki came with us to the arena. So, did Sybil, a lovely black mare. The fifth horse had a last-minute change of mind and chose to hang back. Instead, Taco, an unexpected arrival, made it clear he wanted to participate, so he came into the arena with us, too.

So, there we were -- 5 loose horses and 17 people (including Michael and Cloé) together in a large fenced paddock. Michael began working with one person and one horse at a time to teach the proper use of the "cordeo" and, more importantly, how to recognize and acknowledge when a horse is saying “no” or “not right now.” While he was doing that, the 4 other horses -- loose in the same arena with the 15 or so human attendees -- were teaching lessons of their own.

Tiki, shown below with Cate, was moving from person to person, testing each one’s skills at finding and scratching an itch. She reminded me of a wine connoisseur at a marathon wine-tasting. If a person found the right spot and had the right touch, Tiki would linger for a while in scratch heaven. If the scratching was not entirely to her liking or, if an otherwise good scratcher’s attention wandered, Tiki would walk off to the next person. In all fairness to Cate, Tiki had been with her for quite some time clearly enjoying Cate’s expertise at scratching itches. I didn’t get any photos of that -- just this last one as Tiki was about to walk away.

Thunder was teaching, too, and I managed to get photos of a few of his lessons.

In this first series, he is showing us a horse’s subtle “no.” Cloé asks him for a kiss ..... and you can see that he refuses. What is noteworthy is that the very obvious connection between horse and human is not broken off just because the horse says “no.”

Here is another example of “no.” Cloé asks Thunder to put his leg on the chair, something he learned to do long ago.... He refuses this request, too, but stays near Cloé and remains calm and attentive.

A bit later on, Cloé asks again for a kiss.

This time Thunder changes the subject.

He decides to practice his zipper-pulling skills. Notice how Cloé goes along with Thunder’s idea..

Thunder taught another very important lesson to anyone who happened to be paying attention at the time. Unfortunately, I did not get photos... but here's what happened:

Cloé was asking Thunder to "back to the hand" -- something he and she have done together for years. She was standing a few feet behind him with her hand raised, giving him the usual signal. Thunder did NOT BUDGE from the spot. He was attentive to Cloé (you could tell by his ears and his expression) and he knew what she was asking, but he did not move one millimeter rearward. What Cloe did not notice was that Taco was close behind her with his rear end pointing toward Thunder's rear end. If Thunder had gone along with Cloé's request just then and backed up, he would have been making a very aggressive move toward Taco, probably prompting a double barreled kick that would most likely have connected with Cloé !!!!

When Thunder didn't move after a couple of requests, Cloé went to his head to reassure him.

At the same time Taco walked away. After a few moments,Cloé went back to her position behind Thunder and tried again. This time he backed up beautifully. :-)

A bit later when Cloé came back to the sidelines, I asked her if she knew where Taco had been when she first asked Thunder to back up. No, she had no idea. When I told her, she realized that Thunder had likely saved her from serious injury. What a lesson in awareness those two horses gave us!

I do not know if anyone else at the seminar saw those few moments but I found that lesson very moving.... a wonderful illustration of the NHE maxim: “the horse is always right.”

Thunder says "yes" to a kiss.

To see some lovely photos of this event, photos taken by Catherine Scott (Cate), click here: Cate's photos