Natural Horsemanship vs Liberty Horsemanship

Disclaimer: This post is not written to offend people. I am stating information that I found while doing research on the topics and then stating my personal opinion. I am also aware that I refer to horses as him, but this is just to make it more personal than saying 'it' or 'them'. Thanks, enjoy reading!

If you’re horse person, there is a large chance you have heard of Natural Horsemanship and Liberty Horsemanship. There is also a large chance that you know of the big debate about which is better and less stressful to the horse.

Liberty Horsemanship is defined as being about the horse’s free will and its choice of whether he wants to be with you or not. Some of the key words in Liberty Horsemanship are love, hope, trust and freedom. Part of Liberty Horsemanship is praising good behavior and ignoring bad behavior. Liberty Horsemanship trainers claim that a horse won’t develop bad habits when the bad behavior is ignored because the relationship you create with your horse means that he will do anything for you.

There is also a Liberty Horsemanship training method called Clicker Training. This is asking and rewarding the horse, instead of the more common pressure and release technique. Clicker Training is when you break up a question that you give to you horse into multiple smaller questions and reward each try with large amounts of praise. It is essentially creating an eager and willing horse.

Natural horsemanship is when you use pressure and release to train a horse. If you are holding them at the end of the lead rope and he start walking forwards, you let him make the mistake and then you ask him to move back to his original place by putting pressure on him, for example, shaking the lead rope until he moves back. Once he is back where he originally was, you immediately take the pressure off him.

According to a lot of people, especially ones that practice Liberty Horsemanship, believe Natural Horsemanship puts unnecessary pressure on the horse when you put the pressure on while asking him to do something. The horse is always rewarded by the pressure being taken off immediately after the horse does what it is asked though.

I personally think that Liberty Horsemanship is great if you want to muck around with a horse that isn't able to go to shows because the atmosphere is too overwhelming for him, but it is completely pointless if you want to and are able to go to shows as there are no classes at shows where you can ride tackless.

I also disagree with the common theory that Natural Horsemanship puts unnecessary and possibly traumatising pressure on the horse when you use pressure and release. I feel this is completely untrue because when you ask a horse in Liberty Horsemanship you are putting pressure on him when you ask him to do something, and you are releasing the pressure and rewarding the horse when he do what you've asked. The only difference between pressure and release training in Liberty and Natural Horsemanship training is in Liberty training it is called Clicker Training to stop it from sounding as harsh or forceful.

Liberty Horsemanship is training a horse to work in liberty. The trainer asks the horse to do something and gives large amounts of praise when he performs the movement correctly. Natural Horsemanship is all about training a horse with a pressure and release technique. There are large debates between Liberty and Natural Horsemanship trainers about whether this pressure and release technique is unnecessarily stressful for the horse, but I personally disagree with that.

Until next time

-KaimanawaKim