A Thought About Tom Dorrance
November 18, 2011 by Shawna Karrasch
Filed under On Target Training
I posted this comment about Tom Dorrance in a group discussion but thought I would share it here too. He was a man who influenced many a horse trainer!
When I was still at Sea World and looking into horse training and realized it was WAY different than what I knew as animal training, I read an article about a man named Tom Dorrance.
I hadn’t started riding yet. I was still researching the subject. I couldn’t figure out why no one in the horse world was using positive reinforcement. So, I called this man. We talked on the phone for a while about horses and marine mammal training. Tom was quite open to the idea of incorporating positive reinforcement into horse training. He invited me to come to his farm. He sent me a signed copy of his book True Unity. I was still just looking and trying to figure things out. I was entrenched in my Sea World career so I didn’t take him up on his offer. I didn’t really know much about the man or the cowboy mentality at the time but he was never condescending or dismissive. He was soft, kind and open to a new method. He certainly didn’t fit the stereo type. It doesn’t seem to me that the trainers that have studied under him have that same quality about them that I heard on the phone. Tom was unique. He really seemed to be a gentle soul who cared about the horse’s well being. If there was possibly a better way to train a horse, he was eager to learn about it with an open mind. I applaud his spirit.
I know we’re all looking for a way to shorten the learning curve and everyone wants a hero to look up to but I cringe to think that the horse training industry has become a marketing gimmick of whose name one can throw around or put on their list of credentials. I never heard of all these so called gurus until I was nearing my 50s. I began my horsemanship career when I was four years old and my Dad just kept getting me another untrained colt as I got the last one trained well enough to sell. Dad and some of his friends taught me a lot but I think most of what I picked up was from spending time with the horses themselves watching them as they responded to other horses and my attempts to train them. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s there were a lot of great horseman in the everyday world. Men who spent time with their horses and appreciated a quality mount. It was easy to watch them as they handled their horses and ask questions. They would freely give of their knowledge and expertise, at least those who were true horsemen and valued their knowledge to freely pass it on to others. Seems like today, a trainer is expected to brag about who he learned from and throw out a few choice names and that makes him/her a horse trainer. If you didn’t spend time with Monty Lyons or Buck Parelli then you must not know what you’re doing because those guys are the only ones who can really teach horsemanship. After all, they learned everything they know from Tom Dorrance. My point being, get out there and spend time with your horse and learn something. Read all you can from every source you can find. Ask questions and filter through the answers. Don’t take everything you hear or read as the gospel but use what will work for you or for that particular horse. Not all horses are alike and not all trainers should be expected to be clones. Develop your own style and learn to read a horse and what will work for him just like we humans have different learnig curves. As for positive re-enforcement goes, a horse just like a human will gravitate towards the positive rather than the negative. All training should be filled with more positives than negatives. What if parents and schools took a more rewarding attitude for positive behavior instead of concentrating on correcting negative behavior? Having had a career dealing with delinquent youth, I found it much easier to effect change by rewarding the positive than by punishing the negative.
Thank you Jolly for the post, it is full of wisdom.
I am not as familiar with Tom, but I read most of Bill Dorrance’s book (True Horsemanship Through Feel) a year or so ago.
Bill wasn’t a clicker trainer and didn’t use food. Still, there is so much in that book about good shaping, breaking behavior down into tiny parts so the horse can understand, and rewarding any of the horse’s attempts toward the final goal. Definitely clicker compatible.
Although I clicker train, I continue to explore and try to learn from trainers who don’t clicker train. There are some very good horse trainer out there who don’t use clickers.
It always makes me sad, though, when people start clicker training horses and then get so much “into” clicker training that they refuse to consider trainers who don’t clicker train. To me, they are really missing out on learning from some of the masters.
~Mary
Mary, I couldn’t agree more. There has been hundreds of years of successful horse training. We are progressing and learning more as we go but let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water! If we want to keep learning we have to keep an open mind. THank you for your comment.