Chris Irwin works with Shinook, a horse owned by Tina Carroll, Saturday at the Buck Springs Arena. Irwin explained horses understand body language. He said people should always be aware of their own body and how the horse is responding when training horses.
Chris Irwin spent 14 years working with wild mustangs in Nevada to learn how they communicate with people.
Saturday, he came to Saratoga and the Platte Valley for the first time to share his knowledge.
Irwin had not worked with horses until he was 19 years old. Irwin said he was a disillusioned 19-year-old when he ran away to find the truth about himself.
As fate would have it, he said, he was looking for work when he found day work at the race tracks in Seattle, Wash.
When he saw the horses, every cell in his body turned on, the hair stuck up on the back of his neck and he knew this was what he wanted to do.
He started out mucking stalls, but soon discovered the violent way the horses were being treated. Irwin said, "I was appalled by the violence in the horse industry."
For the first 10 years, Irwin said he learned what not to do. "I did what the trainers told me to do, and it was so aggressive and violent," Irwin said.
"I couldn't get past the contradiction that this is the sport we get into because we love the horses," Irwin said.
Every discipline he went into he saw people beating their horses. "I was determined not to," Irwin said.
Irwin prayed and asked to find another way to train horses.
When he was 23, he moved to near Reno, Nev., and began working with wild horses. Irwin chose to work with as many wild mustangs as he could. He said he had it in his head: if he was going to learn about horses, he was going to learn about untouched wild mustangs instead of domestic horses.
"(The domestic horses) were already messed up," Irwin said. "They had been exposed to people since the day before they were born."
According to Irwin, he just experimented. "Asking me about how I learned about horses is like asking a child how he learned how to walk and talk."
"You don't remember the process. I immersed myself in the horses and that is all I was interested in," Irwin said.
It was a lot about learning about what not to do, Irwin said. "Don't do what a lot of other trainers do because it is aggressive and the horses resent it."
Part of the process, Irwin explained, was going into so may different disciplines to learn about the process of the horse industry.
After working with the horses, Irwin discovered his body started to work with the horses instead of against them. What he teaches in his clinics is what the left brain analyzed what his body learned how to do.
Irwin said that he has had several psychologists tell him he has symptoms of autism spectrum disorder. "It's very similar to Temple Grandin and the cows, I just know. It's very intuitive."
A student once told Irwin the ways he teaches people to be with horses is how Irwin wants people to be with him.
Irwin pointed out an interesting concept stating that after the clinic on Sunday people will see things they didn't see before between people and horses. He works on developing awareness.
"We have such an agenda of what we want do with the horse, we don't see it," Irwin said.
In his clinic Saturday, Irwin worked with Tina Carroll's horse, Shinook. It was the first time he had met the horse, but within an hour the horse was reading Irwin's body language.
Sunday and Monday, Irwin worked with individual horses and owners. More time was spent correcting the participants than the horses.
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