Regardless of the dream or discipline, whether cutting, reining, dressage, ranch roping, jumping, racing or pleasure riding the common denominator is always the horse. “Horsemanship” is the tool you use to develop the skills required for the particular discipline you are interested in. “Horsemanship” is what keeps you and the horse safe and gives both parties enjoyment. The more you understand the horse and work with their natural tendencies the more extraordinary the results can be. It is natural if you cause and allow learning to happen rather than make.

Considering the horse’s point of view first and then the best way to present your idea can all be learnt. If you get it right, everything else will be too! If you understand what is important to them, have the ability to read each as an individual and know the why, the how and the when to responding, the possibilities for what horse and human can achieve in a partnership are limitless.

Like many people, I had my own horse since I was old enough to ride. I grew up on a cattle ranch and started colts in my teenage years for the neighbours. My biggest learning curve came at seventeen; I went to work for a big game outfitter. His hunting area was 160 kilometers from the nearest road and everything was done with horses. For fifteen years I would go to the mountains at the end of July and come back into town at the end of October. My jobs consisted of skidding wood, starting colts, rounding up, trimming and shoeing the horses, and trailing the new horses in and old horses out over the hundred-mile trail to the highway. Back then my teachers were the Outfitters and Guides. Some of them had ten, twenty, thirty years experience before I showed up. Every year brought more challenges and experiences. The one consistent lesson taught was – no matter what the challenge was you had to get the job done. Quite often you were the only one within a twenty kilometer radius and the situation had to be dealt with immediately. And if you didn’t know how to deal with it, you did it anyway. When these situations involved a horse they often got a bad deal only because we ran out of horsemanship skills and knowledge.

Throughout the years I did some team roping, packhorse racing, moved and sorted cattle at every opportunity, continued starting colts, and went to college to get a farriers certificate. During the weekends at college we used to enter the wild cow race at all the college rodeos and the other favorite pastime was looking for and roping the wild horses that lived along the foothills of the Rockies. Once we had one roped, we had to halter and load the horse into a horse trailer which is easier to say than do, and then take them back and tame them so they could be used at Guest Ranches or for Outfitters.

Most of these experiences were exciting and educational in one way or another. Throughout all these experiences, I always had a lot of questions in my mind about what horses were thinking and why some of the things happened that did, and I knew there must be a lot more to the horse than what I was seeing at the time. I became very interested in Parelli’s system of helping people with horsemanship. At that time I had never seen such respect, understanding and confidence displayed between horses and humans, and I knew I had to learn more. I have since spent much time learning from many great horseman and horses and I will always be grateful our paths crossed and for what they taught me. Since the journey began many kilometers back, my eyes have opened to unending possibilities. Horses and horsemanship has and will continue to be a huge part of my life and I am thankful to them for what they have brought me. I now enjoy sharing what I have learnt with others.

Hopefully, in the future, I will get a chance to meet with some of you and we will be able to add more stories and learning to life’s journey.”

– Glenn Stewart