The Real Secret to Relationship with your Horse

Steven Covey has his seven habits of highly effective people. Andy Andrews has seven decisions. There are twelve keys to success. Thirty secrets. Eight principles. Five things you must know. Eight ways to the top. Six lessons in life.

But I believe my dad had it right. There’s really only one thing you need to be successful in whatever you’re trying to do. And that one thing drives all the others. I remember the conversation as if it were yesterday. We were driving home from my part-time job at Bob’s Camera Store and I had been thinking a lot about the future. How was a sixteen-year-old supposed to know what to do with his life; which way to point? There were so many things to consider, and college was barely a year away. As we rounded the corner from Highland onto Southern I turned to my dad.

“How am I supposed to go about choosing a career? Where do I start?” His response was profound, and not of the times, and for some reason that surprised me.

“Do what you would do if you didn’t have to earn any money at it whatsoever,” he said. “Only then will you be passionate about your life and your work. Only then will you do your best job. Only then will you be happy.”

It all came down to passion.

Just that one thing.

Where does it come from, this passion stuff? Why does it work? How do you find it?

Libraries are full of attempts to analyze the passion-driven vision of successful people by breaking down what they did or didn’t do into neatly compiled lists. But there is no power in those lists. Only information. Information that is historical in nature and no more applicable to all people and all circumstances than is taste in wine, preference of religion, or choice of spouse. But the magical results of living a life of passion are available to all regardless of goals, dreams, age, gender or education. Anything is possible when you care passionately about it. With passion obstacles are just that. Mere obstacles. Something to power over, or dig under, or find some way around. Without passion the obstacles usually win.

That conversation with my dad was fifty-nine years ago and it changed the direction of my life forever, ratifying dreams that I had only thought of as wholly irrational. They weren’t. Because they were driven by passion. Passion led me through the creation of a unique international motion picture superstar, with no help whatsoever from Hollywood. And passion led me through the creation of a national best selling book on an entirely different subject about which I knew nothing a couple of years before. Two completely different incarnations in this life.

So far.

All passion driven.

Our first Benji movie was independently produced and distributed by our own unknown inexperienced company after the film was turned down by every distributor in Hollywood. It became the #3-movie-of-the-year. That same passion created a program at a boarding school for historically black at-risk students that now, every year, places 95% to 100% of the graduating seniors into college with a large percentage of them entering universities ranked in the upper 25% nationally. Eight years ago we didn’t have a horse or a clue, but today a best selling book published by the largest publisher in the U.S. is in its thirteenth printing and is changing traditional thinking about horses and the way they are kept and cared for all across the planet. It was passion, not experience, that made me dig for the truth, which created the book and drove me through the writing process. Passion has caused the adoption of more than two million homeless pets and generated more than a billion media exposures for animal shelters and adoption around the country. And the list goes on, usually against the odds, always adventuring into uncharted waters, and hopefully leaving the world a better place for the effort.

As it was with horses.

Passion made me care.

So where did it come from?

Where else? It came from a horse. Because I allowed it to come from a horse. Because I allowed my very first horse to choose me. To tell me that he trusted me to be his leader. Not the other way around. It was his choice. And when it happened everything changed. For me, and my horse. He was no longer my horse. I wasn’t his owner. The first line of the movie Hildago said it right. Cash was now my little brother.

And I promised him that day that he would have the best life I could possibly give him. And I meant it.

No stone would be left unturned because I now cared deeply about this horse and I would be asking everywhere I went how do I make his life better. Not how do I make my life better. My life would get better when his did.

And with that perspective it soon became very clear that there were things in his life that needed to get better. If what I was being told did not appear to be in the best interest of this horse who had trusted me and chosen me then I was not going to listen to someone else telling me what I needed to be doing to my horse that I loved and he didn’t even know. I would get the answers myself. The true answers. Because I now had the passion to drive me through the barriers. And to withstand the onslaught from those who did not care about their horses as much as I did.

I rejected their lists. All those things you are supposed to do when you find yourself owning a horse. Or six. And Kathleen and I set out to find the real answers for ourselves.

Now that we have eight horses living happy, healthy, stress free lives with none of the traditional problems and issues of so many horses living a more traditional life, what do you suppose has happened. Barely a day passes that someone doesn’t ask if I have a list of everything we’ve done in order to obtain the results we have.

A list.

I can’t believe it.

A list.

Does anyone believe that Pat Parelli became one of the best horsemen on the planet by using a list? Or Monty Roberts? Or Ray Hunt?

That’s why The Soul of a Horse and Born Wild are recommended reading. Because within those two books lies our entire journey to date and the passion shows through. If you don’t have passion for what you’re doing, for your horse, no list will make even the slightest difference in your success.

If you don’t care enough about your horse to passionately want the very best life in the world for him or her, then none of what I’ve written before, or here, will make any difference whatsoever. To you or your horse.

Joe

The above is the Foreword of a book I am currently writing entitled Horses: For Beginners Only.

——

The story of our journey with horses (to date) is told in the two books that follow: the national best seller The Soul of a Horse – Life Lessons from the Herd and its sequel Born Wild – The Soul of a Horse.

And what a story it is as two novices without a clue stumble and bumble their way through the learning process so that hopefully you won’t have to. If you haven’t read both of these books already please do because with that reading, I believe, will come not just the knowledge of discovery but the passion and the excitement to cause you to commit to your journey with horses, to do for the horse without waiver so that your relationship and experience will be with loving, happy and healthy horses who are willing partners and who never stop trying for you. Horses like ours.

Read the National Best Seller that started it all:

Amazon & Kindle

Barnes & Noble & NOOKbook

Apple iBooks

Order Personally Inscribed Copies of The Soul of a Horse – $15

Order Both The Soul of a Horse & Born Wild – Save 20%
Both Personally Inscribed – $24

Please list the names for each inscription in the “instructions to Seller” field as you check out!

Watch The Soul of a Horse Trailer

Watch the Born Wild Trailer

The highly acclaimed best selling sequel to
The Soul of a Horse – Life Lessons from the Herd

#1 Amazon Best Seller
#1 Amazon “Hot New Releases”

Amazon & Kindle

B&N and Nook

Apple iBooks

Google play

Order Personally Inscribed Copies of Born Wild – $15

Order Both The Soul of a Horse & Born Wild – Save 20%
Both Personally Inscribed – $24

Please list the names for each inscription in the “instructions to Seller” field as you check out!

Watch The Soul of a Horse Trailer

Watch the Born Wild Trailer

“Joe Camp is a master storyteller.” – The New York Times

“One cannot help but be touched by Camp’s love and sympathy for animals and by his eloquence on the subject.” – Michael Korda, The Washington Post

“Joe Camp is a natural when it comes to understanding how animals tick and a genius at telling us their story. His books are must-reads for those who love animals of any species.” – Monty Roberts – Author of New York Timers Best-seller The Man Who Listens to Horses

“Camp’s tightly-written, simply-designed and powerfully drawn chapters often read like short stories that flow from the heart.” Jack L. Kennedy – The Joplin Independent

“Joe Camp is a gifted storyteller and the results are magical. Joe entertains, educates and empowers, baring his own soul while articulating keystone principles of a modern revolution in horsemanship.” – Rick Lamb – TV/Radio host – The Horse Show

“One cannot help but be touched by Camp’s love and sympathy for animals and by his eloquence on the subject.” – Michael Korda, The Washington Post – See more at: https://thesoulofahorse.com/blog/the-books-of-joe-camp/born-wild-the-soul-of-a-horse/#sthash.6KJjzSLr.dpuf

“One cannot help but be touched by Camp’s love and sympathy for animals and by his eloquence on the subject.” – Michael Korda, The Washington Pos – See more at: https://thesoulofahorse.com/blog/the-books-of-joe-camp/born-wild-the-soul-of-a-horse/#sthash.6KJjzSLr.dpuf