Kali Kiger
Kali Kiger
Kali Vanagas works with horses using a feel-based approach as her northern star. She combines what she has learned empirically with classical ideas about posture and movement. Kali says, “I just kept going back to the horse in the same way an English teacher keeps telling you to go back to the text. “ She primarily works with rescue horses, ranch-raised colts, and Mustangs, though she is currently working with a diverse group including two Icelandics, a Shagya-Arabian, a Missouri Fox Trotter, a Quarter Horse, a Shetland, a few minis.
In 2004, Kali bought a mare who the owner was afraid to let out of her stall. The mare had tossed the last person who tried to ride her off in less than 30 seconds and broken her arm. Kali says, “When I bought her, I thought I would train her as a hunter pony and pay my way through college, but I fell in love with her. I just kept taking tack off and getting out into bigger and bigger spaces and finally started to see what horses really are.” Kali loved that mare, but she was shot and killed in 2006 by reprobates spotlighting coyotes late at night.
After her beloved mare was killed, Kali was encouraged to start an unruly seven-year-old Welsh mare with a clubfoot to help her recover from her loss. The mare was such a success that soon Kali found herself working with all the Welsh Ponies in the area. She has since trained for a number of noteworthy pony breeders, including the largest Welsh Pony breeder in the United States. It was the colts she started in 2006 that marked the beginning of her program, PonyPros. which is internationally respected as a youth horsemanship program today.
Kali is perpetually exploring how little is needed to gentle a horse in hopes of finding the simplest way for the horse to understand. In 2007, Kali made the decision to see if she could gentle a Wild Mustang without ever putting a rope on her. On gentling a Mustang at liberty she says, “I figured if I could gentle a wild horse in a situation where she had no reason to interact with me, then I must be doing something right.” Kali had had no formal training in horse gentling and worked with the Mustang instinctually. After she and the mare had solid ground work at liberty and she had gotten to sitting on her, Kali felt affirmed that using a rope is the simplest way for the horse to understand, though much of the way she uses ropes on horses today was informed by the process of gentling the Mustang without any attachments.
Continuing her exploration of the simplest way for the horse to understand, Kali has explored working with horses under a variety of conditions – in pens of various sizes, singularly or with other horses, different types of halters and cordeos, bareback riding versus using different types of saddles, schooling horses on trails versus in arenas, etc. Kali tests everything. Her horsemanship involves constant study of what the horse needs and doesn’t need.
Between April 2008 and April 2009, Kali taught approximately 100 rescue horses to be catchable and have their feet trimmed primarily using clicker training methodology. During this same time, she taught approximately fifty individuals with no previous horse experience to successfully assist in the retraining of the rescue horses. The opportunity to work with so many horses and handlers led to much of her curiosity about how humans envision the ideal horse, eventually furthering her suspicion that the way that horses are trained is incoherent with common imaginings of the ideal horse.
Presently Kali is working with a number of ranch raised colts ages 4-10, who have been handled only twice a year for shots, wormer, and trimming. She has remarked that colt starting taught her the horse’s aids, but she needed Classical Dressage to have the words for what she was learning. Of starting ranch-raised colts, Kali says, “All I do is just try not to get in the colt’s way and see, see, see…”
Kali began riding at the age of 6 and competed successfully on the A-circuit in hunters. However, she no longer supports equestrian sport, citing lack of enjoyment on the horse’s part as her reason. She currently operates a horse-show circuit of sorts, based on showcasing the horse’s and human’s natural abilities to create authentic and inspiring demonstrations that nourish spectator’s and participant’s horsemanship practices. However her primary focus is on her program, PonyPros, which teaches kids to play with ponies using natural horsemanship and positive reinforcement.
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