Mounted search and rescue

["Irvin Lichtenstein " <ilichten1@verizon.net>]

Most people, and most “horse requirements” are desirous of a horse that doesn’t react to anything on the trail. If you look at what is advertised as bomb proofing  clinics,. they involve, literally, bombs (fireworks, smoke, flapping objects, crazy people, dogs) with the object of teaching the horse to ignore these.  This is fine for a trail horse that never leaves the park, or maybe a police crowd control mount.

 

But as I have been writing about and advocating since the late 1980’s you must use your horse’s senses and brains to partner with you on a search.  There are some things your horse should react to and some things he should alert you to.  Mine knows about shotguns and stops dead in his tracks if he hears one. He also tenses up because he knows shotguns are bad.  He doesn’t like the noise small motorcycle engines make because the people who ride them often don’t know what they are doing and shouldn’t be in the park anyway.  But once he identified the engine as not moving towards him he tolerated it.  He will move around farm machinery, but not heavy construction equipment because he knows dozer operators can’t see or hear him.   

 

And he tells me what is ahead often minutes before we get there or it gets to us.  Horses are really smart. They can learn to trust their rider and when not to. They will learn what is dangerous to them and what is not, partly by how you react and partly by how others on the trail react. If you keep your horse in an environment where he is never exposed to the real world of farm machinery, vehicles, other horses you need to train him how to be a social animal.  If the opposite is true they will just learn on their own for the most part.   

 

Irv Lichtenstein

SE PA SAR

 

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From: msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Karen Nesbitt
Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2010 6:53 PM
To: MSAR
Subject: [MSAR] Definition of bombproof...and Johns list...