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03/05/08: What was the reason for developing your 'Join-Up' method?

03/12/08: You have been working with horses for more than fifty years now. Have there been important revisions?

03/19/08: Patience is NOT a strong attribute of mine.  However, I have all the patience in the world when it comes to my horse or any other horse.  I never lose my cool and I never resort to force.  If it takes months to teach something to a horse, then so be it.  How can I pass this trait along to other aspects of my life?  And is there any reason for this patience coming to the fore when dealing with horses? Sorry if this question seems off the wall but this really puzzles me at times.

Sincerely,     Olga Musson-Zepke (Johor, Malaysia)

03/26/08: Is this method suitable to every horse?

Monty's Answers to March 2008 Questions

Question:
What was the reason for developing your 'Join-Up' method?

Monty's Answer:
The reason that I ultimately observed the language Equus which led me to Join-Up® was the violence that I observed in the training of horses in the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s.

DID YOU KNOW? While tracking wild mustangs in Nevada as a boy, Monty observed a nonverbal communication between the horses, a silent language he would later call "Equus." Monty incorporates "Equus" into his nonviolent training approach called Join-Up®. CLICK HERE for more information.

Question:
You have been working with horses for more than fifty years now. Have there been important revisions?

Monty's Answer:
Each day that I work with a horse it seems that I learn something. The basic concepts of Join-Up® belong to Equus the specie. Their understanding of how to live and survive dates back as many as 50 million years. Therefore, my discovery of what I call Join-Up belongs to the horses and they have not changed what they believe in the short span of 60 years or so that I have dealt with their language.

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Question:
Patience is NOT a strong attribute of mine.  However, I have all the patience in the world when it comes to my horse or any other horse.  I never lose my cool and I never resort to force.  If it takes months to teach something to a horse, then so be it.  How can I pass this trait along to other aspects of my life?  And is there any reason for this patience coming to the fore when dealing with horses? Sorry if this question seems off the wall but this really puzzles me at times.

Sincerely,     Olga Musson-Zepke (Johor, Malaysia)

Monty's Answer:
Thank you very much for this unique question. Horses, without any question, are our best teachers. They are consistent in their effort to charge us a significant price for making a mistake. Consequently, we learn more quickly from our horses than we do from our human friends. People vary a great deal in their personalities and are quite inconsistent with their responses to our actions.

It is my opinion that we should strive to become good horsemen by consistently responding to their educational efforts. Furthermore, I believe that we should strive to bring what the horses teach us to our relationships human to human. I sincerely believe that we are more effective utilizing calm and patient methods whether we are dealing with horses or people.

My recommendation to you is that you seek assistance in learning breathing techniques that are consistent with those utilized by practitioners of yoga, acting singing and public speaking. The science of breathing is critically important to successfully maintaining low adrenalin levels. When we learn to breathe properly many physiological factors occur that increase our chances to stay calm, be patient, and assess any given situation with a cool analytical approach.

It sounds to me like your horse has taught you to subliminally accomplish my recommendations. I would like you to move these efforts into your conscious thinking. I am consistently working with professional horsemen and professional teachers of people in those efforts. I suggest that breathing, staying calm and achieving cool analysis is critical to high performance.

Seek out an acting coach or a yoga teacher, have them read your question and my response and you will probably get the desired instruction. Advise them that you wish to learn diaphragmatic breathing. If they are not familiar with that art form seek out someone who is. When one accomplishes these recommendations, remaining calm and patient under fire will be far easier.

Question: Is this method suitable to every horse?

Monty's Answer:
The method belongs to the horses and so therefore could not be incompatible with any one of them. In the orphan we find that some of the inherited understanding of Equus the language has not been passed on. Under these conditions one might find horses that understand less of their language then they would under normal circumstances, otherwise I have never met a horse that failed to understand his own language.

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