THROUGH THE EYES OF THE HORSE
I aspire to be like the Brumby because, to me, they represent integrity and purity of soul. That demands that I work hard on myself as a person, not simply as a trainer, if I want to be around them. It’s particularly humbling, as I have wanted to be like them since I was around nine years old. That’s why I would never take the ‘Brumby’ out of a Brumby and don’t equate ‘wild’ with being feral, dangerous or difficult. ‘Wild’ is really the ‘essence’ of the horse and is what makes Brumbies so intelligent.
When you get a Brumby, you don’t just get a wild horse; you get a horse with extreme intelligence. I think this is what people find most difficult to understand, and when they encounter it, they often blame the Brumby, labelling them useless, feral or just plain dumb instead of recognising that they themselves may lack a deeper understanding of what they’re about. Brumbies carry a special energy in themselves, a presence that domestic horses don’t have because it’s been taken out of them through generations of selective breeding and a standardised approach to training.
A domestic horse ‘reads’ you, as they say, ‘like a book’. But I say that a Brumby ‘downloads you like a Kindle’. A Brumby will have you read and indexed before you ever touch them. They know what chapter they are dealing with at any given time and whether or not you’re on the same page. They’re the most intelligent horses I’ve ever worked with and I work all over the world with Thoroughbreds, Sport horses, Warmbloods, Arabs, you name it. It is true with all horses, but with Brumbies in particular, that if you have infinite patience, you will get immediate results.
Brumbies, however, have caused me to search deeper into my horsemanship skills, to make myself even sharper, more patient and more resilient as a person. They aren’t ones to do anything halfway—they’re not fence sitters. You have to really pay attention if you’re going to be around them, and be a good leader.
If you’re a good leader, which is what a horse most wants, you’ll maybe get a tiny glimpse of that Brumby intelligence and then you’ve got a start. You can’t, however, override the sense of trust they extend or even try to bribe them somehow with a shortcut like food, because they’ll outsmart you. It’s never good to cheat any horse out of developing the understanding that is the foundation of a good relationship with you.
You can have a lot of horse knowledge but still not know horses, especially when it comes to Brumbies, because a relationship or connection is not something that can be forced on them. People adopt them for all the right reasons but they get them home and don’t realise how sensitive they are. It might take three weeks just to get them to come close enough to smell your hand.
Perhaps one of the most dramatic examples of my work with Brumbies involves a Brumby who was adopted in the Northern Territory. I met her at a time when she was trying to work out her place in the domestic situation in which she found herself, and the first question that I asked myself was, ‘What can I do for this horse?’ She was aggressive and dangerous and causing problems for the other horses, stock and people. Yet, if I was to gain the trust of this horse—or any horse—I had to trust my life on her feet because I was asking her to put her life in my hands. At the point when I was finally on her back, she could easily have killed me, riding as I was without a bridle and bareback in an open paddock. But it put me in the position of being accountable to answer, ‘Am I prepared to give what it is that I am asking?’ and because I was, she gave me 100 per cent loyalty. Both domestic horses and Brumbies will give you loyalty, but with a Brumby I find that it is loyalty in an incredibly pure sense.
Another client had a little Brumby up in Queensland and was making him run circles in the roundyard until he gave some perceived signal of trying to listen to him—and the bloke was getting nowhere. The Brumby immediately pinned his ears back and I could see he was going to strike out with his front legs. That horse was only one day out of the wild and putting him through that sort of exercise is not something that I would do. Just because a Brumby does not show signs of paying attention to you, you can’t demand it. The best advice I could give is to not get caught up in the exercise or approach. Just immerse yourself in the moment with the horse and think through the eyes of the horse.
The misinformation that’s out there gets people in trouble all the time because they take it as fact. Brumbies aren’t the romantic horses portrayed in movies and books like the Silver Brumby series and The Man from Snowy River. So often, when people hit a wall and run out of knowledge, they revert to force and start using the whips, spurs, bits and all the other tools to try to ‘control’ the horse. You might get them to ‘do’ something but you’ll never earn their trust or win their heart.
All horses appreciate kindness, but Brumbies thrive on it and retain good memories of the experience. They remember everything you do, good or bad, and when the time comes you’ll know it. That time is similar to the cultivation of Chinese Bamboo. For five years this bamboo seems stubborn and appears not to grow. But then in the sixth year, it grows to nearly 30 metres within a few short weeks as it now has the strength of its roots to support that growth. This does not mean that it will take a person six years to see any Brumby growth. What I am trying to say is that a Brumby may be generally small in stature, but when it grows from the inside out it takes over even the biggest sized horse I know.
Image 1: Carlos shows how he took Spinifex, a wild Brumby mare he started at age eight, from wild to mild with understanding and patient training.