I had seen a few things, but when I put them into practice and thought they wouldn’t work, I put them aside. One day, however, I bought Parelli’s Seven Games. They didn’t seem like much—what’s more, if you don’t give them much consideration, they can be a bit boring. But I thought that by working the games out you could have better control of the horse in hand and a good base to continue working on the saddle.After that, and by investing many hours, I got better and realised that horses respond to other, much less appreciated stimuli. It’s as if there was a curtain that separates us from them: They fear us because we are predators, and once they overcome that fear everything changes.

It is then when you realize that they are in fact observers—they can differentiate and learn many things as long as they can relax and work with an appropriate system.

I have bee working on this system for the past five years. I can see I have a long way to learn yet, but I never imagined that I could do everything I do with horses and the opportunities this offers me.