BERNE — The owners of Shadowbrook Farms Equine Facility are trying to get horses and people to think. 

They have developed a three-part program to create a mutual trusting relationship between horses and their owners by establishing leadership, building communication, and desensitizing horses to frightening obstacles. 

“What kicked it off was a need — too many people getting hurt, too many good horses being sold for no good reason other than people just didn’t understand what they needed,” said Cherie Pettit, who, with her husband, owns Shadowbrook Farms. 

“Horses are individuals.  Every single one has a different need.  You just need to figure out what that need is,” she said. 

The Pettits’ farm on Canaday Hill Road in Berne is now in its seventh year.  Cherie Pettit has been “living and breathing” horses for as long as she can remember.  Her team of instructors in the Think Your Ride series are Chris Paradiso, Debbie Munn, Elaine Bouvier, and her husband, Brian Pettit. 

This week, the Pettits and their instructors will meet with 4-H’s board of directors.

“We’ve talked to people at 4-H extensively because they do a lot of horse shows,” Brian Pettit said.  4-H, he said, wants to put its efforts toward safety and control.

“They’re looking at working with us…to have the hundreds of their students that take care of horses and come to the horse shows to come through this program first before they can go to a horse show,” Brian Pettit said.

“From the industry as a whole,” he said, “you’re going to see more and more of this becoming part of the training programs.  Not because of us but because the mentality is going toward safety.”

Everyone has a gimmick to mount a horse, he said.  “Well, just getting in a saddle isn’t always the ultimate goal ’cause once you’re on there, you want to make sure you stay there,” Pettit said. 

In the first program — round-penning — instructors work with horse-owners and horses to establish leadership and respect in a 50-foot round pen.

“Because horses are either looking for a leader or they’re going to be the leader,” said Cherie Pettit.

In the second program, riders lead their horses near, through, around, and over scary obstacles in the Pettits’ 60-by-180-foot barn.   Horses are led through a large sand-box filled with balloons and through a small room made of tarps, which is filled with flashing lights and streaming, loud strips of paper.  They walk over tarps and between fans that blow air on their legs. 

As instructors rode their horses in the barn on Monday, Cherie Pettit walked in front of them, dragging aluminum cans behind her.  Because horses’ ears are seven times more sensitive than people’s, and horses are most finicky about their legs, the sounds and feelings are, at first, frightening. 

The goal of the second program is to desensitize them. 

“Because, if you take a horse to a trail or a show ring, especially a show ring, if this flag flaps or this door slams or an awning goes like this, the horse goes this way and a 7-year-old kid goes that way,” said Cherie Pettit.  “If I can prevent that from happening, I’m going to.”

“We want them to be curious and not fearful,” she said.  “If you can teach a horse to be curious, if you can replace fear with curiosity, you’ve won.  You’ve already won.”

In the third program, conducted “under saddle,” the instructors work to build communication.

“More people learn to communicate with their horse in their seat, using silent aids, whispering to their horses,” said Pettit.  “No shouting.  By shouting, I mean kicking them and pulling back on them.  It’s not necessary.  Horses are seven times more sensitive than we are.”

“There are horses here that are good enough that, if you turn your head, the horse will turn that way,” she said. 

“When was the last time you gave somebody a piggy-back ride?” Pettit asked.  “Remember?”

When giving someone a piggy-back ride, you feel everything that they do — every breath they take and every movement they make, she said.  Except, Pettit said, horses are seven times more sensitive. 

“It’s magnified seven times,” she said.

Round-penning

“Chris and I came here together…and we both have a love of the Thoroughbred, and we want to prove that there is life after the track,” said Munn.

Paradiso boards her off-the-track Thoroughbreds, Teddy — a 6-year-old gelding — and Taco — an 11-year-old gelding — at Shadowbrook.

When she first got Teddy, he was a very angry horse, Paradiso said.  Teddy had been trained to race, and that was all he knew, and that’s what made him very angry, so she had to untrain him to retrain him, Paradiso said.  The seminar and Cherie Pettit’s help has turned him around to use the thinking side of his brain instead of the reactive side of the brain, she said.  

“He respects me as the herd leader.  You try to convey to them that you’re part of the herd even though we’re human,” said Paradiso.  “They go through a pecking order.  The pecking order is to figure out who is dominant, who’s going to be the top herd leader, and then it breaks it down to the peon, who has no say whatsoever in a herd.”

Paradiso led Teddy into a pen within the barn, where, using body language, she guided his movements and speed.  She led him to the center of the ring by leaning back and then forward.  At times, he licked his lips, a sign the instructors found promising and what they call “licking his brain.” 

Paradiso rubbed Teddy all over his body with a whip, a training aid the Pettit’s call “a happy stick,” focusing on his legs, which, the instructors said, are where horses are most sensitive. 

“We’re initiating the learning process,” said Cherie Pettit.  “Every horse knows how to walk and trot and turn, but not every horse knows how to do it on command.”

Horses, Pettit said, are right- and left-brained.  One side is the reactive side, she said, and the other is the thinking side.  Every horse, she said, is born with both. 

“Because they are a prey animal,” she said, “the first side they use is always the reactive side…because they don’t want to get eaten.”

“That’s instinct.  Its real tough to overcome that, but what we’re trying to do is get them to use the thinking side of their brain more so that’s the first side of the brain they go to when they’re upset or excited or confused,” Pettit said. 

Looking into the pen, she said, “If he does what she asks him to do, she won’t make his feet move anymore.  You have to understand herd dynamics.  [Paradiso] has taken the place of the lead mare…and what the lead mare does to move horses around is that she moves her feet; whoever moves their feet first loses.  Whoever moves their feet last is the leader.  So she’s trying to make him move his feet so his reward is that he’s done what she’s asked.  He gets to stop moving his feet.  He gets to come into the center and rest.  That’s his reward — the lead mare leaves him alone.”

Pettit said horses like to eat, play, and rest, and are very lazy.

After learning a new lesson, the instructors do not reward horses with food.  The most they get, Munn said, is a pat, or a “What a good boy.”

For each new lesson, a horse needs to be trained four times for one side of its brain and four times for the other side, Cherie Pettit said.

“Remember, its like two separate brains,” she said.  “If I do something with this horse four times — brand new, he’s never done it before — and I don’t do it again for six months, he’ll do it,” she said.  “He’ll remember it, but I have to do it exactly the same way four days in a row.  And I’ll bet the farm on it.”

Unpredictability

Shortly after Munn had boarded her horse Emmett at Shadowbrook, she went to pick up an off-the-track horse.

“The horse was being stubborn, so, I said, ‘Well, I’ll jump on him and get him to take a step forward and then he can be done,’” Munn said. 

After she got on the horse, it reared over and landed on her, fracturing her spine in 10 places, she said.

“Coming back from that injury, I acquired a hesitancy, a real fear of a horse raising his head,” Munn said.  She then had to wear a brace.  

“I still had the brace on when [Cherie Pettit] said, ‘Come on.  This has been traumatic for your horse, too, because he’s gone from being ridden five times a week to doing nothing.  Get his mind thinking and put him in the round pen.’” 

“That was my introduction to the round pen and Cherie’s training,” Munn said. 

“And it was amazing,” said Munn.  “It was an amazing transformation.” 

She described Emmett as “very emotional” and said that, at the time, he was “still very green.”  Through round-penning, they learned to understand each other a lot more.

Elaine Bouvier said, “Coming through this program, we’re not just training the horses.  [Cherie Pettit is] training us to train the horses.  So we work together as partners.”

Bouvier’s Thoroughbred, Jen, was initially given to her daughter. 

Jen was a racehorse and was taken off the track because she was fast, and someone wanted to breed her.  Her grandfather, Northern Dancer, won the Kentucky Derby at age 3. 

Jen was sent to a breeding farm, but had problems reproducing.  When she was 13, the trainer gave her to Bouvier’s daughter.

“And my daughter and her did very well together in the beginning and then my daughter found boys and cars and work and school and said, ‘Here you go, Mom,’” Bouvier said. 

Her daughter and Jen had had a bad accident.

“So I inherited her horse…And I was afraid to ride her.  So I found Cherie, luckily, and we came here, and I told Cherie, ‘Either I have to ride her or I have to sell her because I can’t afford two horses,’” said Bouvier.  “And we went from the ground up with Jen.”

“This is a prime example of a horse that you don’t want to disrespect your space,” said Brian Pettit, as he held the reins on Jimbo, a stocky 5-year-old Percheron. 

“They’ll hurt you even if they don’t mean to,” he said.  “They have to understand that you have your space and they don’t need to invade it,” Brian Pettit said, “and, if they do get scared, you don’t want their reaction to be to run over you.”

Pettit guided Jimbo to the top of a small staircase made from wood, resembling a winner’s platform, which is one of the many obstacles horses are led through.  Brian Pettit called the Percheron, which he estimated weighs about 2,000 pounds, the Pettits’ “crash-test dummy.” 

“I’ve driven cars that weigh less than he does,” Cherie Pettit said.

Brian Pettit said that, shortly after his wife began working with him and the horse, he slipped on ice and landed between Jimbo’s front and rear feet.

“And I was laying down flat on my back, and all I yelled was ‘Ho,’ and he stopped mid-step and allowed me to get my feet back up,” Brian Pettit said. 

“We train them according to their nature,” said Cherie Pettit. 

Not understanding horses and not knowing how their minds work, she said, is the biggest problem in today’s horse society.

“They need to understand that,” Cherie Pettit said, “because these beautiful horses go to the slaughter and people get hurt.”