My friend and colleague, Dr. Robert Miller DVM, has written an amazingly wonderful book entitled “The Revolution in Horsemanship (and What It Means to Mankind).” I say amazing because it is a book that just everybody will find a real joy. It not only carries the story of a revolution but documents with before-and-after history, and takes you there with on-the-spot color pictures and captions.
I have known Bob for over 40 years and know his work very well. He is the discoverer and perfector of the birth imprinting of foals. He dries the brand-new life with noisy, crinkly paper, soothing the little one with both words and humming.
Bob is a #1 supporter of my Dog Master Learning System and its concepts: to build love and loyalty free of of coercion and and punishment by force. His objectives are much the same. If a foal came into this world with this positive introduction, he/she has a head start. Evidence is overwhelming that these foals become extra smart horses!
For anyone not familiar with this “revolution of horsemanship.” it simply means we no longer “break broncs.” The whole world has discovered that if we treat animals like we humans have been admonished to do– Do unto others as you have them do unto you– we come out way ahead.
When I read Bob’s wonderful book I galloped onto a passage about lariats of the past, back when handlers, cowboys used crude and tedious methods to “break horses.” It all started with roping and tying the horse (or cow) with the lariat. The term (from the Spanish words “la reata”) originates from the Mexican rancheros. When the Spanish conquistadors came to America they reintroduced horses to the New World. Mustangs are wild descendants of the conquistadors’ horses left behind to proliferate. And proliferate they did!
As a boy (a real young cowboy) growing up in the 1930’s I saw herds and herds of them near our homestead ranch, at first not dreaming of their potential for literally good income amidst the Great Depression, and certainly not in the great plains of Wyoming where there was little else but sagebrush, sage chickens, coyotes, and flash floods. That is, until Sakawa came upon the scene and changed everything.
Sakawa was a young Native American, most likely Chiricahua, not much older than I but schooled by his elders in superb horsemanship. As I often say he “taught” not “trained” wild mustangs to come without a rope (see The Wyoming Years in my website). What a magnificent sight to behold it was, almost mythical but all very real.
And Thank the Great Spirit he, in turn, taught me. Sakawa disappeared all too soon but not before I had learned from him how not only to teach a wild mustang to come without a rope, but to ride hard. A mustang soon learned how to jump the barbed wire and literally by itself cut a maverick from the herd for branding.
I demonstrated these “trained” mustangs, selling them for top prices I think not just because they were good but because a 12-year-old did the “training.” I later applied all this technique with dogs and thanks to Sakawa, since 1965 Dog Master Learning System has been showing masters how to have their dream dogs. The world’s dog masters are being shown, proven and taught. Looks like a revolution alright.
-DM
P.S. In my next blog, I will tell you all about the lariat that Sakawa gave me. It’s a story all in itself. Stay tuned!
Posted on November 2nd, 2007 by dogmaste
Filed under: Memoirs