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“I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy…and to deal with those, we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.” (Gus Speth)

We do; we walk as we graze knowing that grazing at the same place would destroy the grass. You instead, believe that you can gain from destroying the planet. We work a social order for the stability of the herd. You destabilize your family, neighborhood or community for profit and ego. We protect each other for the survival of our species. You destroy all species around you including yours. We guess what you want in spite of the gross inaccuracy of your “correct aids.” You accuse us of behavior instead of questioning the scantiness of your language.   

Ray hunt says, “a horse does two things, what he thinks you want and what he thinks he needs to do to survive.” We do both at the same time. We try to please but we protect our actual muscle imbalance or other issues. We explore compromises combining both imperatives, but you don’t understand nor respect our view. You judge our reaction in respect of the response that you expect. In many instances we could perform the move if you were more knowledgeable and willing to converse with us. The first awareness that you are lacking is the athletic demand of the move. You know the form but you have very confused ideas about the function; how our physique needs to be coordinated for the performance. You are blinded in your myopic lens of self-importance and you demean our involvement to an exercise of obedience. We complete the many blanks of your approximate directives and you take the credit when we succeed. You also punish us when we don’t. 

“Society is collapsing, and people are starting to recognize that the reason they feel like they’re mentally ill is that they’re living in a system that’s not designed to suit the human spirit.” (Jim Carrey)

We are the line out of your unfit system. We can reconnect you with value, ethic, empathy, consciousness.  Instead of submitting us to your decadent society, we can be your oasis of sanity. You just have to learn how our physique effectively functions and respect our mental processing. You would then take conscience of our willingness and creative mental processing. All along, your society has betrayed us as you have betrayed yourself as well as all other species. You believe that you have dominated us when in fact, we have completed your incapacity to communicate and provide adequate directives. You would gain working with us as your partner instead of dominating us as your slave. 

We have to survive and we have understood that working with you was part of our survival. We try to understand what you say but your “aids’ language is gross and unclear. Your training philosophy is based on a lie, “dressage performances are the outcome of natural reflexes.” Thinking in those terms, you expect us to know what we really don’t know. I am qualified to talk about both worlds because I know both worlds. I come from the race track. There is not much education going on in the racing industry beside running out of the starting gate and beating us to go faster. However, good trainers know the danger of the rapid acceleration that we have to achieve to reach speed. We are not, during this intense acceleration, at a real gait. We are not at a true canter and therefore our limbs and body are under the stress of kinematics abnormalities. This is where and when we are at risk of bones fractures and other damages. Pathological damages occur to dressage and jumper horses for the same reason. James Rooney’s famous statement, “A major cause of lameness is lameness” summarizes the problem. The kinematic abnormality is there first. Out of the starting gate, the intensity of the acceleration combined with the kinematic abnormality overwhelm the integrity of our structures and fractures occur. Dressage and jumping trainings don’t have the same level of intensity but create damages through the repetition of abnormal stress. An education teaching us the move without teaching us first, how to coordinate our physique for the athletic demand of the move, exposes us to pathological damages but also alters our ability to perform at our utmost potential.

We need to learn how to coordinate our physique for the movement and this education cannot be done repeating the movement. This education demands your knowledge and our mental processing. Your knowledge is a sound understanding of the underlying biomechanics factors. Your skill is your ability to explain to us how to do it. As long as you limit your equitation to the correct aids, you shout a few words and expect us to fill the blanks. We do, but we fill the blanks protecting our actual body state, muscle imbalance or other issue.  As long as you do not elevate your equitation to actual knowledge, tensegrity, integrity, elastic energy, force transport, you might be skilled but your language is confused and unprecise.

With actual knowledge, you can help us to prepare our body for the performance, from molecular level to gross anatomy. Like you, we are built of systems, within a system within a system. The subtle and precise orchestration of all the systems is the essence of soundness and superior performance. We are interested in coordinating the systems that you cannot reach because it is for us efficiency and therefore less effort, but you have to create the conditions allowing us to process ahead, and I mean far ahead our natural reflexes.

Chazot....

Edited by Susan Hopf