Hey Everyone!
A member recommended that I write a little about Xenophon. I was wondering if anyone else knew about him?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophon
Above ^ is a link to wikipedia that gives a little briefing about him and some of his works. Xenophon is considered to be the first dressage person. Even though he lived in 431-355 B.C. his training methods are extremely similar to todays. Many horsemen have looked at Xenophon's texts such as his book
The Art of Horsemanship and based their training methods off of him.
Below is an exert from his text
The Art of Horsemanship
[13] The one best rule and practice in dealing with a horse is never to approach him in anger; for anger is a reckless thing, so that it often makes a man do what he must regret.4 [14] Moreover, when the horse is shy of anything and will not come near it, you should teach him that there is nothing to be afraid of, either with the help of a plucky horse--which is the surest way--or else by touching the object that looks alarming yourself, and gently leading the horse up to it. [15] To force him with blows only increases his terror; for when horses feel pain in such a predicament, they think that this too is caused by the thing at which they shy.
AND
[9] Washing down of the legs we disapprove of; it does no good, and the hoofs are injured by being wetted every day. Excessive cleaning under the belly also should be diminished; for this worries the horse very much, and the cleaner these parts are, the more they collect under the belly things offensive to it;4 [10] and notwithstanding all the pains that may be taken with these parts, the horse is no sooner led out than he looks much the same as an unwashed animal. So these operations should be omitted; and as for the rubbing of the legs, it is enough to do it with the bare hands.
Xenophon. Xenophon in Seven Volumes, 7. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; William Heinemann, Ltd., London. 1984
So as you can see by reading the first exert it is quite similar to what we do today. The second one contradicts what we do but you can kind of see the reasoning he had for it. For example, he mentions grooming under the horse's belly bothers them. I have also found that quite a few horses do not like being groomed under their belly, so by studying their body language that is most likely how he came to that conclusion. And everyone knows that one of the most important thing with communicating with your horse is studying their body language and getting to know how they say different things using their body. I got this from the citing in bold. If you ever get a chance I recommend reading The Art of Horsemanship. There are a few things that are different, like I said, but since he did not know everything we learnt today from science and such you can see where his ideas were coming from once you analyze it a bit.
Enjoy!=)