David Skipworth:
Earning His Stripes With Zebras
Reprinted from: Lone Star Horse Report - July 1994
With 25 years of horse training experience, including a five-year stint of working with mustangs and feral horses from the BLM Wild Horse program, David Skipworth found he had a lot of things to forget when he started working with zebras.
He also
found he had a lot to learn, and having no living, breathing mentors to coach
him, he had to rely on books and libraries to bring him up to speed on zebra
culture. Before he cracked a book, however, he knew what everybody else knows:
zebras can’t be trained.
Horses, like zebras, lived in the wild and developed their
behavior and instincts
through untold centuries of interaction with each other and with their
environment. Knowledgeable horsemen have adapted the behavior and instincts
which are a part of the equine package into an overall methodology of control
which is loosely referred to as a training program. There is no evidence of a
similar wide spread program for training the zebra, although a few exceptions
have been noted in the annals of time.
Skipworth’s self-imposed assignment was: find the exceptions and see if anything could be learned from the pioneers who had trod the zebra trail before him. Thus the libraries and the books.
Skipworth’s “Soft Hands” program for dealing with wild horses is based on the herding habits of horses, and how they interact with each other as a family. Pecking order, dominance, expressions of affection and the family relationship of mare and offspring precondition the horse to respond in predictable ways when man applies these herd behaviors to control the horse. Skipworth reasoned that similar applications might control the zebra, if he knew enough about their behavior in the wild and as a family. “If you can train the mind,” he says, “you can train the animal.”
In reading everything he could find about the subject, he found a book by a man who had virtually lived with zebras for several years, following the herds and noting their behavior. The similarities to horse behavior were noted, but it was the exceptions that struck Skipworth’s imagination.
In a horse herd, the dominant mare will lead when the group is purposely moving, with the second-dominate mare following, and on down through the pecking order.
The mother-daughter offspring ties of the zebra are more pronounced when their herds are on the move; the dominant mare again will lead, but her youngest foal will immediately follow, and behind that weanling will be the dominant mare’s yearling offspring. Following the yearling will be the second-dominant mare, her baby, her yearling, and so on.
The family unit is very strong, and the herd sire works hard to keep his group together. When young males mature, they seldom try to take over the herd in which they were nurtured, preferring to leave, however, the herd stallion will try to drive them back and keep them in the family.
Another difference Skipworth noted was the location of the patting place. With horses, as a recognition of approval, their human friends and trainers will pat them in front of the withers or on the dock of the tail, This doesn’t mean zip to a zebra; in fact, it startles them. Zebras are touchy about the neck because that is the area where predators, such as lions, attack. The brushy mane is camouflage which might cause the attacker to miss. Skipworth found that in restful situations, one zebra might rest its head on the back of another, so “a pat on the back” takes on a whole new meaning.
The reason for Skipworth’s zebra-intensive study is the small herd of beasts a Jim Toon’s Toontown Texotic Animal Farm at Wills Point, Texas. Toon was at the of getting rid of his zebras out of frustration with difficulties of handling them, so Skipworth’s offer to experiment with training was instantly welcomed.
He chose a mare out of the herd to work with, and after a few weeks of patient guidance, she has proven to be an apt pupil. She is a long ways from a reining pattern, but considering the starting point and the zebra’s reputation, her trainer is justifiably pleased. And her owner is outright delighted!
Forest
Hill Farms Equestrian Center