For anybody who has a horse, anyone who ever had a horse, and all those who dream of having an equine companion, Playing With Lukas is a must read. Karen Murdock’s account of her journey through life before and after finding her horse, Lukas, is nothing short of a modern day fairytale.
It is Murdock’s own family life filled with emotional abuse and violence that would lend her the sensitivity to recognize both the hurt and the potential of the renegade Thoroughbred who had failed as race horse and was a misfit as a jumper and as a dressage horse.
Together, these two “unwanted” souls would embark upon a mystical journey, surviving the sneers ofon-lookers at a series of stables and emerging as one of today’s most sought after trainers and “The World’s Smartest Horse”.
The temptation is there to refer to what Murdock does with Lukas as “trick training”, but the truth of the matter is much deeper than that. Trick training is the thing of circus and rodeo acts. The tools used in this pursuit are whips, ropes, chains, and virtually anything which could be used to force a horse to perform. The results are wild-eyed creatures with broken spirits and, all too often, just plain old broken down horses.
Murdock’s approach, on the contrary, harkens back to the days of Karl Krall and the Elberfeld Horses, and Doctor William Key and his horse, Beautiful Jim Key. I prefer to call this approach the education of the horse as opposed to trick training. Based upon a bond of mutual trust, it is a technique in which the roles of student and teacher are fluid and ever changing between horse and human. Gone are the tools of torture and force, replaced by kindness, praise, patience, and reward. The primary tool of communication is listening on the part of both parties involved. With this approach, horses become more vibrant, more willing to participate in the training, more willing and able to communicate, and more willing to reveal just who they really are. The rewards for the human involved in this process are of mythical proportions but largely go unspoken. Why unspoken? Because those who travel this road know most would scoff in disbelief if they were told of the rewards, lest they be deemed mad for the truths discovered, and the realization that the journey is one each must take to fully understand and appreciate the treasure they discover along the way.
If you’re up for it and chose to follow Murdock down this magical path, trust me, you will never be the same again!
~ Linda J. Cutshaw
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