Story by Terry Temple, Photos by Sam Sharnik

“I didn't have contact with a horse until almost two decades later. No wonder my life was a mess for awhile!” Getting back into it as an adult, Cheryl volunteered at a few stables, but as her first

horse after such a long lay-off, Romeo presented a serious challenge.

“I knew I couldn’t out-muscle him, so I began searching for training techniques. The few attempts to use force or even pressure/release often overwhelmed his sensitive and explosive mind. He had learned to keep safe by out-maneuvering people. I needed to find a way to communicate with him without any pressure, period.

“That's when I began researching how marine mammals are trained. You can't put a halter on a dolphin and pull it or prod it to where you want it to go. A situation has to be created where the dolphin moves towards what it wants, which is the nature of positive reinforcement or operant conditioning. I figured if it works with killer whales it should work with my pint-sized Paso.”

“If Romeo was imitating a Lipizzaner, with all four feet in airs above ground, I'd wait until all four feet landed, then click and treat. He soon learned that all four feet on the ground earned him something he wanted and I quickly had a horse that was standing still. In essence, I rewarded what I wanted, not corrected what I didn’t want.”

Romeo’s training progressed to where he would follow, touch and manipulate objects. “It’s called targeting, or object training. For example, to get them to stay put, I teach the horses to target their hooves to flat bricks or raised pedestals. They learn to follow target sticks into the trailer. I teach a horse

DaVinci is learning to follow a target stick.

to lunge by first targeting a long target stick in a circle.

“It's attraction-based training, where the motivation is an invitation in front of the horse rather than pressure from a whip or waving hands from behind.create a situation where the horse is always moving towards what it wants rather than moving away from something it doesn't want or finds unpleasant.

“Within several months of clicker training, Romeo learned to overcome his fear by manipulating objects that scared him, such as tarps, trash can lids, or bags blowing in the wind. 

“He became so adept picking things up and handing them to me, I could drop my riding helmet while I was on his back and he'd pick it up and hand it back to me. It was then I knew he had potential for big things!

“One day armed with a sketch pad and a paint

The Trainer
Incredibly, Cheryl doesn’t consider herself a horse trainer. “It was always the horses that trained me and it is still this way. If I do anything that looks like training, it's my attempt to continually build a common vocabulary that leads to a fulfilling relationship for both horse and human.

“It’s all about listening. Once I can communicate to the horse by validating behavior through positive reinforcement, it seems like I've achieved the horse's trust and I feel safe. I don't have to assert my dominance because the horse knows I'll listen and respond in their best interests.”

“I believe the work meets a deep need for both me and the horses. My desire is to create large, unpredictable, random works on canvas. The horses have a built-in need to manipulate their environment. It then becomes our combined expression that creates the paintings.”

To learn more about Cheryl and her equine artists visit the Painting Horses’ Art Gallery at www.paintinghorse.com.