What Wild Horses Taught Me About Consciousness | Mary Ann Simonds | LFRF 56
Live Free Ride Free with Rupert IsaacsonShow Notes
✨ "All social species seek connections. People and horses are no different. Safety and comfort are the core elements to build strong social bonds regardless of species. “ – Mary Ann Simonds
✨ "The best tool we have is be the best human you can be. You don't have to know everything. You just have to be clear on yourself and be pure and be silent, and then help your horse be the best horse it can be." – Mary Ann Simonds
Mary Ann Simonds has spent more than four decades sitting at the intersection of wildlife biology, consciousness studies, and horsemanship — and almost none of it has looked the way science was supposed to look. She grew up in California riding hunter/jumpers, earned her BS from the University of Wyoming in Wildlife Conservation and Management and a minor in Range Management studying wild horse ecology and whole systems approaches. She was appointed to the National Advisory Board for Wild Horses and Burros in the early 1990s after years of field research on wild horse behavioral ecology. She has worked for oil and gas companies as a reclamation specialist, pioneered ecotourism partnerships with ranchers in Wyoming and Oregon, taught interspecies communication at Nippon Veterinary and Life Sciences University in Tokyo, earned a graduate degree in Inter-disciplinary Consciousness Studies and has spent years working quietly behind the scenes in the sport horse welfare world near her home in Wellington, Florida. Her new book, A Horse by Nature, published by Trafalgar Square, draws on all of it — wild horse social behavior, domestic horse psychology, welfare ethics, and practical communication tools — organized in red, blue, and green tips so riders can go straight to what they need most. It is, as Rupert and Mary Ann agree at the end of this conversation, Part One of what will be a longer series. This is a conversation about what happens when rigorous science and genuine animal communication occupy the same person — and what that has to teach anyone who lives and works with horses.
FREE Helios Harmony Intro Course: https://longridehome.com/onoutpout What You'll Learn in This Episode 00:05:30 – How Mary Ann first recognized, at age 11, that a trainer couldn't hear what a horse with a headache was saying — and why that question drove her entire career 00:13:00 – What double degrees in range management and wildlife biology taught her about the gap between academic science and what animals are actually doing 00:39:00 – The dietary overlap study she conducted as an undergraduate — and how it became the data cited to justify mass BLM removal of wild horses decades later 00:44:00 – How BLM's gate-cut removal policy destroyed wild horse social structures and caused reproductive rates to skyrocket 00:47:00 – Why a Nevada rancher admitted he hated the wild stallion eating his alfalfa — and what that revealed about the real psychology behind mustang persecution 00:56:00 – How she converted ranchers into ecotourism operators years before the concept had a name — and why she calls herself a solution finder, not an activist 01:04:00 – The discovery that studying nature with a quiet mind produced completely different wildlife sightings than looking at it with scientific intent 01:20:00 – Why she went to graduate school to study human consciousness after watching a BLM official throw a briefcase at a rancher in a public meeting 01:38:00 – How she taught interspecies communication at Nippon Animal Science University in Tokyo, and why Japanese vet students grasped it almost instantly 01:44:00 – Why a horse's first two years determine everything, and how not knowing a horse's early history is one of the most common mistakes buyers make 01:49:00 – What A Horse by Nature offers: how to teach a horse to be a functional horse, the OFFER technique, and why eye contact, nose bump, and buddy scratch transform the relationship 01:51:00 – The red, blue, and green tip system — and why safety and comfort, not food, are a horse's primary motiva
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✨ “The principal thing is love, passion, love, passion and passion and love.” – Luis Valença ✨ “The first thing is to communicate with the horse, and for the horse to accept you.” – Luis Valença ✨ “It’s not gymnastics.” / “Our work is like music. It’s the same as listening to Chopin or Beethoven.” – Luis Valença ✨ “I have the same enthusiasm because I love life, I love the horses, I love the family.” – Luis Valença ✨ “Never take the personality from the horse.” – Luis Valença
✨ "For me, competition has always been real feedback, not what I think is good." – Sinead Maynard ✨ "There's nothing about me that's gonna make you do this. You gotta love it, and we gotta love it together." – Sinead Maynard Sinead Halpin Maynard was born in Fort Worth, Texas, to Irish immigrant parents and grew up in South Carolina, where she stumbled into eventing via a hunter-jumper barn that didn't approve of her mother's black saddle. At 15 she drove herself to Middleburg, Virginia, as a working student, went on to train with David and Karen O'Connor, and after losing a horse on course, moved to England to ride for William Fox-Pitt. On the French-bred Manoir de Carneville ("Tate"), she finished third at her first five-star at 30, was first reserve for the London 2012 Olympics and rode on the US team at the 2014 World Championships in Normandy. Today she and her husband, Tik Maynard, run their farm in Florida, teach clinics, and Sinead commentates on top-level eventing and serves as a US team selector. Rupert and Sinead talk candidly about the money and hustle behind a competitive career, why she still loves competing, and how she uses competition as honest feedback on her partnership with the horse. They explore sports psychology and narrow-versus-broad focus, whether riders have the right to ask horses to compete at all, and the difference between training from fear and training from play. Sinead explains retreat and approach, why she'll swap a bigger bit for a rope halter, how rider selection now weighs horse welfare, and why fitness and varied terrain are the foundation of a sound, happy horse. A frank, funny and wide-ranging conversation between two eventers at heart. FREE Helios Harmony Intro Course: https://longridehome.com/onoutpout
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