Carrot Sticks—They Really Are Magic

19 March 2011 4 Comments

I try to live and let live as far as natural horsemanship is concerned.

Over time, I’ve come to realize that it’s just another discipline, at this point, and like most disciplines it has its valid points and it has its points that makes outsiders wonder WTF is wrong with the people who ride in it.

You can say WTF about the Horsenality Charts. You can say WTF about rolkur in dressage. You can say WTF about hunters and over lunging. Or the peanut rolling in western pleasure. And on and on and on. Every discipline has crazy lemmings. Every single one of them.

So I live and let live. I can’t even begrudge the big NH names their brand-name equipment, because Anky has a line of saddles, Pessoa has a line of everything, etc etc etc.

I do roll my eyes at the “carrot stick,” but hey… I’ve also seen hunter people arguing passionately about types of lunge lines and how they are very different. So what do I know, anyway?

Well, today Ro demonstrated the power of the carrot stick. I now believe in it thoroughly.

I’d turned her out on the grass to graze for a bit. It’s nice spring grass. She resents being brought in from the nice spring grass, so when she sees me coming, she’s started to walk away. I’ve been working on this; I walk out to her several times and just pat her, then let her go back to grazing.

Today, I happened to have carrots with me. Ro never gets carrots, because I am a mean owner who never remembers to bring them from home, assuming I even have them in the house.

So when I had to go out to my truck to get something, I grabbed a carrot. I’d feed it to her and let her go back to grazing. People approaching = good things happening. Maybe I’d be able to catch her later.

She walked away half-heartedly, but I caught up and gave her the carrot. It was a big carrot.

Then I walked over to my truck. She followed me.

I grabbed what I needed and walked into the barn.

She followed me.

I stopped by her stall, where I had the other carrots stashed. She walked in her stall, turned around, and pricked her ears at me.

I showed her a carrot and headed out to her paddock.

She followed me.

They were all awfully big carrots. Not those baby carrots, but real carrots. Stick-like carrots, you could say.

And their magic is such that a pony will leave spring grass and follow me around the barn, just in case I have more on me.

I will never doubt the power of carrot sticks again.

Horses and Riding, Generally Horse Related, Horses I Have Known, Ro

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