At Meadowrock farm this week, a small group of women gathered under sunny skies to remember their friend Tim Fortune and ride the site’s trail where he trained many of their horses.
On July 7, 2013 Fortune suffered a massive cerebral stroke and passed away a few days later on July 12. A year later, those who relied on the devoted horse trainer are still coming to terms with the hole his absence has left in their lives, and the lives of their horses he spent hours coaching.
Dedicated to practicing natural horsemanship, Fortune’s passion for horses extended further than most. For him the relationship between handler and horse took precedent, and he would spend however many hours were necessary to develop that bond.
“Horses remind us every day that it is more important what the human knows about the horse’s point of view and how to get along with them, than it is about training the horse,” Fortune stated on his business page. “Every horse owner needs to understand this point of view.”
For his wife Patti, this determination meant Fortune was often late for dinner.
“He couldn’t stop. It would happen all the time, he’d be training a horse and I’d be phoning him saying, ‘honey are you coming for supper, what’s going on?’” she laughed. “He would say, ‘I’ve been jogging this horse for two hours and it won’t listen to me.’”
“But he wouldn’t ever leave it,” Jane Lasko interjected. “Because if you leave it, then they win.”
Natural horsemanship, also known as “horse whispering,” is based on the principle of developing a relationship with the horse and rejecting abusive training methods.
“Tim used to say, it’s not natural horsemanship, it’s just good horsemanship,” Lasko says. “For most people the words natural horsemanship conjures up flower children and hippies, but it’s not that.”
Horseman like Fortune maintain that teaching through pain and fear does not benefit horse or rider. Instead a technique of pressure and release is used instead.
By applying a pressure as a “cue” for action and releasing it as soon as the horse responds, the horse doesn’t learn from the pressure itself, but from the release.
Horses also have a highly developed body language communication system that humans can learn and at the same time gain the horse’s respect. By not scaring or hurting a horse, it learns to work alongside people in a partnership.
“It’s not just packing them up, getting on, riding and throwing them back out into the field,” says Kris Coad. “You build a relationship with your horse, so they want to be with you. I give a whistle to my horse when she’s out in the paddock… and she just comes running right into her rope halter because she wants to be there and she has fun doing it because you’re not beating her into doing it.”
Many of the Wellington Grand Trail Riders who came out to the event, brought horses that had been trained by Fortune. And even a year later, they still unconsciously find themselves reaching to call him and ask a question.
“When you have an animal like a horse and you can’t do something with it, you always knew that he could,” says Judi Morris. “You knew it would get sorted out.”
Despite the success of his clinics and local celebrity among equine enthusiasts, the women say Fortune remained humble, always willing to learn from others and find new ways to do his job.
“With Tim there was no limit to what he could do with horses, but he wasn’t a proud guy, he just did it,” reflected Lasko. “Other trainers are kind of envious of each other, there’s a lot of politics going on– there’s a lot of ego. Tim wasn’t like that at all. He was like, whatever just get the job done.”
Last year a bench was donated along the trail in Erin in Fortune’s memory, and his skill and dedication continue to live on in the beautiful horses that took to the trails on Aug. 6.
Fortune was a member of the community that won’t soon be forgotten.
