By Melanie Hess
“Just like a 3 year old, horses have a ‘No’ stage,” explains expert trainer Mike Aldridge. “They’ll stomp their little foot and say, ‘No. I’m not doing it!’”
That’s just one of the reasons why Aldridge, a Cedar Hill resident, strongly believes child psychology applies to more than just humans.
“Horses go through the developmental stages too,” he says.
Aldridge, who boasts more than 40 years experience with the animal he refers to as poetry in motion, says there is a popular term among horse trainers called “breaking horses.” However, he doesn’t support the mentality behind this system.
“I don’t break horses,” Aldridge stresses. “I gentle them. I earn their trust, and I ask them to work with me.”
He calls this method of training, “the only way to do it.”
Of course, he didn’t come to believe this overnight.
Although he was exposed to horses as early as age 6 through his neighbors, his immediate family did not share his excitement for them.
“I was fortunate enough in high school to take a course at the junior college,” he remembers.
It was there that he learned styles and more technical elements regarding the care and training of horses. His grasp of the horse’s mind began with a psychology course he completed during nursing school.
“At the time, I was doing a lot of training with my dogs and horses and I started realizing that these young horses are going through the same developmental stages young kids go through,” he explains.
Through his career, Aldridge also has witnessed that the developmental stages are not the only commonality between horses and humans. Like humans, horses have unique personalities too.
“I’ve got some that are mischievous and I’ve got some that are just like ‘Why can’t I just stay here in my stall today and eat hay? I don’t want to go out.’ Those are my couch potato horses,” he laughs.
“They have likes and dislikes. I have horses that get out of their stall and go let their friends out, but they leave their enemies in,” Aldridge recalls. And like humans, horses are largely communicators. According to Aldridge, horses can be observed communicating with each other in a pasture. “A good trainer and rider learn to understand that language.”
“When you learn to understand them and read them, they talk to you, they tell you, ‘Oh, this is what you want. Okay.’ and then they tell you when they’re mad about something and when they’re scared about something.”
Jokingly, he was requested to read juries for an attorney client. Aldridge knew his expertise with horses was exactly why he was asked. Odd to the average person, for horse and animal experts, the idea is not strange at all.
“You learn how to read your riders and students to see which one has the right personality to mesh with that particular horse,” Aldridge says, explaining rider-horse pairing.
“I read the students. I read the horses. I make sure they can work together so I have to pair them up until the horse and rider are working and doing things together as a team,” he says. But Aldridge doesn’t use verbal language to reach his horses. He uses something else entirely.
“Horses talk to you,” Aldridge declared. “You just have to listen to them. Their body language.”
“I think that any good horse person tends to also be good at reading people because it’s almost a subconscious thing that you do.” They also learn that horses’ personalities may mimic humans more than originally expected, noting that horses are very emotional animals.
Aldridge says, evidenced by these type of actions, they have to have some intelligence in order to do these things. “It’s a good thing too,” Aldridge says, “the training goal for riders is to teach their horses to think. People look at them like they’re stupid, but I’ve seen a horse figure out how to untie knots and they figure out how to undo their stall doors.”
After creating the perfect pairing, Aldridge enjoys seeing the individual skills each horse can teach a student.
One of the areas horses can teach, or at least aid in, is therapy, both physical and psychological. “Hippotherapy is what they call it,” Aldridge explains, describing a process that’s dear to him. Having spent time in Somalia with the military himself, Aldridge, like many other veterans experienced symptoms of PTSD.
“You know, I’ve had veterans out here and ridden with them and we just think differently.”
He frequently knows exactly how to reach them.
“You know I take disabled children that I teach and I will coddle them,” he explains. “But I get a disabled vet out there, and I might say ‘Come on! Are you some kind of pug that you can’t do this? Come on. That ain’t a 12-mile red march,’ and they’ll be like, ‘oh yeah,’ and they’ll go back and they’ll do it.”
As for the physical, Aldridge says the therapy aspect of horses is amazing. “I’ve dealt with disabled children over the years,” he says. “I had a boy that I was teaching who was paralyzed from the waist down. He was in a wheelchair and he’d run you over…but put him on that horse and he’s like, ‘I’ve got legs now.’ And it was amazing seeing that transformation that occurred between the boy and that horse.”
When he joined the service, Aldridge served in the horse Calvary at Fort Hood and in Alaska before returning to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where he currently trains horses and teaches lessons.
Aldridge said he recognizes that many people are unaware such jobs even exist and he stresses how many other tasks horses are used for that the general public does not realize.
“Horses are used throughout history in the military, and they are still used throughout law enforcement military. The Russians lining a brigade use Special Forces aligning courses in Afghanistan. They’re still used in that regard,” he stresses.
Married 30 years to his other half, Mike Aldridge loves that he and his wife share a deep love for horses. “That was our thing…Everyone else is talking about, ‘Oh, did you see that new neighbor’s car?’ While my wife and I talk about horses and dogs.”
Naturally, his daughter shared the couple’s passion as well, now working as a professional trainer in the Denton, Texas area.
After many years, Aldridge will still say the horse is one of the greatest animals he’s ever had the pleasure of working with.
“I think I’m very fortunate in this respect that I’ve always loved horses and I’ve always loved teaching and I’ve found a way that I can do both together.”
To learn more about Mike Aldridge, visit www.dfwridinglessons.com.
