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Whip Free Month
CHANGE IS A CHALLENGE -are you ready to learn?
The whip or pressure halter free horsemanship for a month challenge
We all know equines are the best teachers, are you ready to listen to their lessons? Take the no whip for a month challenge and see what your horse, donkey or mule really feels about your ability as a trainer and how light you can really be.
This challenge is not about making a statement about the use of these items of equipment, it is about creating the opportunity for people to learn. When you take away equipment people have relied on and have become an unquestioned fixture of their horsemanship you create the opportunity to learn and in doing so we can discover better paths to lighter more empathetic horsemanship.
If at this moment you are vigorously mentally defending the use of a whip or rope halter because it makes you lighter or because in is not to inflict pain just guides, then you are demonstrating an attachment to a piece of equipment that may be limiting your learning and be damaging your relationship.
Dare to take the challenge and see the learning that occurs
Five steps to a safe, ethical, successful challenge
Create a plan on how you will replace the signals currently given by the whip or pressure halter. To start with focus on how you can use your body language to replace the whip or how a flat head collar can give lightness if you have lightness in your hand.
Plan to shape the behaviour, don’t just remove the whip and then expect your horse to understand what you want him to do straight away.
In order to succeed start with smaller easier exercises for couple of days and build up to more difficult behaviours. Be more understanding and accepting of any time the animal takes to think about things and through this begin to listen to your animals needs
Ask yourself why you use these “tools” if you claim it is because of safety, then remove these pieces of equipment in safe environments and create opportunities that are safe to work with out the whip or pressure halter. If your safety is based on a whip or pressure halter then question how safe you really are?
Write on a calendar when your month will be up and give your whip / halter to a friend and ask them not to return it to you until the set date and on that date you can decide if you want to return to using the whip or halter at all.
Tell me about your experiences