Carolyn Resnick - Dance with Horses
By Carol Storke

On a gloomy day in January, in an old dairy barn in Jalama, Carolyn Resnick and a horse are dancing. The horse lifts alternate front legs high in the Spanish walk, keeping time with the soft rock emanating from a cassette recorder. Then the horse follows Resnick along a serpentine path, matching the woman’s movements. As a grand finale, she rears on cue, then comes to Resnick for a thank you head rub and a bit of food.

“I like to use music because horses respond well and learn more quickly,” explained Resnick. She is helping Neda DeMayo, president of Return to Freedom Wild Horse Sanctuary; gentle some of the younger wild horses. Although DeMayo’s primary task is rescuing and re-releasing natural family groups together, she is seeking foster homes for the young “bachelor” stallions after gentling and gelding, because they have no place in the existing bands.

I watched fascinated as Resnick played with several young stallions in turn. “Notice how Maverick refuses to give me his nose?” she asked. “I approach him over and over until he reaches out his nose. See his body starting to wrap toward me and go with me, even though he still doesn’t trust me? This horse is potentially dangerous until you do get him to put his nose in your hand.”

Sun, a big strong stallion, took his turn. DeMayo hopes to use him in demonstrations to show visitors that you can develop a positive relationship with a mature wild horse. Sun is a challenge, however, “Sun is a bully,” noted Resnick. “A bully won’t survive in a natural environment. When he doesn’t follow herd community laws, he will be ostracized. This is a vulnerable position for a horse in the wild.” Sun rears aggressively to show his dominance. Resnick believes the habit should not be punished out of a horse. She takes aggression and changes it to a submissive behavior and a positive attitude. “There are many ways to redirect negative behavior, but the most effective is to not address the negative at all,” she said. “Basically, if the horse will respect your space, it gives up bad behavior.”

DeMayo told me, “I let the horses here at the sanctuary volunteer their desire for relationship. This is why Carolyn’s program works so well with wild horses. It has been my experience that this kind of two-way communication has only produced happy horses and happy relationships!”

Whether one wants to trail ride or to compete, Resnick believes one must develop companionship to have a two-way conversation. She begins developing a relationship when a horse is unconfined, when the horse can say no and go away. Open spaces promote two-way conversations, tack and confined areas do not, she said. “Probably the difference from other natural horsemanship methods is that the horse can leave,” she explained. “I may occasionally use round pens in training but never for the initial phases of developing relationship.” In a round pen, the horse runs to escape, trying to follow its instincts, but learns that it cannot trust its instinct and has to surrender. “This breaks the spirit of a horse,” Resnick said. “I want volunteers. I want the horse to believe that his instincts are serving him well and to enjoy every part of his training process.” She is committed to allowing the horse to express its natural talents. Through her work with Resnick, DeMayo discovered that her Arabian mare, Tajradda, loves to be in the air. She has volunteered many of the movements seen in the Spanish Riding School “Airs Above the Ground.” At the same time, she is a safe and enjoyable mount.

We can become afraid of horses from not knowing what they are going to do and why. Once we are familiar with the way horses express themselves, their actions are not frightening. "In her clinics, Resnick first addresses the habits of human beings in relationship to their horses. When someone comes to her with a problem, she will overlook the problem and help the person develop better communication, listening, and leadership skills, which result in a solution. “I can teach people how to behave around horses,” said Resnick. “Horses want to follow. There is nothing that a horse will not do fro you, but it must volunteer. Horses may appear difficult to manage, because if they do not pick you as a leader, they will take the role.”

Resnick was born and raised in Indio, California. At the age of two, she had her first horse, Strawberry, a 21-year old retired plough horse, her best friend and baby-sitter. At 10 years old, she began her connection with wild horses. She spent three summers with herds of wild horses near Hemet Lake in Southern California. The horses, used for filming westerns, were especially prone to running, Resnick spend the first summer observing and the next two years integrating herself into the herds. She befriended the various ranks of mares and won the friendship of the lead mare. Through her participation in mutual grooming, she developed relationships and was eventually able to mount many of the horses. The lead mare and the herd stallion remained dominant, but should still do things for her. “I learned that you do not have to dominate them,” Resnick said. “You can lead from any position.”

Growing up in the desert in the 1950’s, Resnick became adept at training without fences. “When I am training a horse, I am really developing a language we can use to communicate with each other. The interaction I share with a horse is like the natural process of language development horses use with horses they know well. Once I have established communication, little training is needed to ride a horse because of his natural desire to follow a leader and to take orders.”

She developed her method through her experience with the wild horses and from a two-year-old horse named Sunshine. Sunshine was too young to ride, so Resnick took her on picnics in the hills of her 50-acre pasture. She began by packing a lunch for herself, and hay and grain for Sunshine. Sunshine would follow her into the back where there were large shade trees. She would find a spot, then make Sunshine wait for her grain while she laid out a blanket and spread out their lunch.

“Her having to wait and listen to me was all I needed to be able to ride her,” Resnick recalled. “Through our lunches she learned what I was saying, how to cooperate with me, and how to have a good time in the process.” After a couple of months of lunches, Resnick jumped on Sunshine’s back with the lunch and directed her out to the trees, suggesting her wishes through body language, pointing and telling her in English. “I found that she responded to me as if I had ridden her for years. She was trained from the first time I rode her.”

“This information is important because it can get rid of unnecessary training methods,” noted Resnick. “We have come a long way training horses without abuse, and it isn’t much further to go to make the experience enjoyable for the horse as well. I train horses for competition, and the companionship process I have learned is invaluable in developing a championship performance.” Resnick has trained in most western and English disciplines. Her main interest is dressage, and she has developed her own training method, emphasizing lightness and expression without the use of spurs or dressage whip.