Horses and Humans

What a difference forty-five years makes. I loaned a friend my trailer so she could take her horse to the vet. I went along to keep her company. Her horse, an Arab gelding of some twenty years, wasn't about to come up when he saw us with the trailer hooked up and halter in hand. With five acres to evade us you'd think we might be in for a very long hike.
Ten minutes later he was in the trailer and we were on our way; a far different scene from the one forty-five years ago when I tried to load a horse for the first time on my own.
Rumba, a Thoroughbred mare, was nearly impossible to catch when turned out in even a small paddock. This was due to my lack of knowledge and ability when it came to catching horses. I made every mistake in the books with her and it showed.
In those days I acted like the predator I was and chased horses, because no one told me that prey animals are very good at evading predators. Any horse is the end result of millions of years of ancestors who managed to escape being eaten long enough to reproduce. This makes them very good at reading predators and doing the opposite of what the predator wants them to do. As humans we are predators and anything that comes naturally is wrong when it comes to handling horses.
The true art of horsemanship is learning to put aside any and all of the predator's inborn behaviors and learning to act like a horse. Horses have a rich and varied body language that we have to learn in order to have a good relationship with our horses.
I didn't know this and kept speaking predator with Rumba. The fact I managed to ever catch Rumba and train her at all is amazing to me now. I must have made every mistake in the book with her and yet, somehow, she eventually became a prettily behaved little mare; at least according to George Morris at a clinic back in 1968.
While Rumba was good under saddle she was hard to catch and even harder to load in a trailer for the rest of the time I owned her. It usually took at least an hour to catch her and four people to get her into a trailer. Every time I read an article about a fool proof method of loading a horse I would try it. All these methods had one flaw; they did not take into account the predator/prey relationship.
The first time I tried to get Rumba into a trailer by myself she broke the lead rope (good equipment is critical when dealing with horses) and took off. The problem is I kept her at a stable near downtown San Antonio. She ran across several of the main through fares at a busy time of day. I walked seven miles before I finally caught up with her. By that time she was tired and had boxed herself in a dead end alley.
It was late in the day and the alley was only a mile from my house so I led her home and put her in the backyard before I called a friend and ask her to give me a ride back to where I left my car and trailer. That was the night Rumba caught a bugler.