They are other nations...

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals...We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves.  And therein we err, and greatly err.  For the animal shall not be measured by man.  In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.  They are not brethren, they are not underlings, they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.  -- Henry Beston

I first heard this quote when I was listening to the Journey on Podcast with Warwick Schiller a couple of days ago.  It is the quote that appears on the home page of Jillian Kreinbring, the lady that Schiller interviewed in his most recent podcast.  

There is so much in this quote that resonates with the way I have come to feel about horses.  And there is a whole lot in the podcast discussion that resonates with me too.  In fact, it will probably take me awhile to unpack it all.

But after spending a day at a horse show with my daughter yesterday, it occurred to me that the ideas that Beston identifies are not catching on, even though he wrote them over 75 years ago in a book called, The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod.  I watched horses exhibit a range of behavior that indicated they were not ready for their job that day and that their communication with their humans was spotty at best.  Sometimes the behavior was less obvious - moving on the forehand or being unbalanced through turns or at the canter.  Other times, it was more obvious - rushing between fences, head held super high with a stiff neck, refusing fences, and even unseating riders in a fairly dramatic fashion.

It is certainly true that the only way to really prepare a horse for doing something is to do the thing.  It can be particularly hard to simulate a horse show environment at home or even by going to another barn.  There is no substitute for the impact things like a loudspeaker, lots of high energy horses, random people walking around, colorful jackets and EZ-ups and coolers, a new ring with different jumps, etc.  I remember that when I started going to endurance rides with Nimo, there were still things about the ride day that I couldn't prepare him for in advance.  Even though his first endurance ride was at the exact same location we had done an intro ride at the year before, he still had a complete meltdown and we spent nine brutal miles on the trail before we finally got the opportunity to get it together.  Each ride after that got better, but I feel lucky we both survived the first one.

So my point here is to acknowledge that I do understand that a person can do a lot of prep work with a horse and still have the show or the event go horribly wrong because horses seem to have a pretty good sense for what is a training exercise and what is the real thing.  Probably due to those voices they hear that we don't.

But one thing we can control if our horse has an unexpected meltdown despite our best preparation is our response to the situation.  Without exception, every rider I saw yesterday responded to their horse's refusal to go forward, whether it was over a jump or on flat ground, in the same way.  With increased pressure.  More kicking, more seat aids, yelling, or even hitting the horse with a crop.  Near the end of the show, one horse entered the arena and was rearing and spinning and giving super clear signals that all was not right in his world.  The horse's extreme responses continued and continued.  The rider kept insisting that he move around the arena and attempt a jump.  A person that I am assuming was the trainer stood at the gate and twirled a lead rope at the horse if he ever tried to move toward the exit.  

I admit that most of my verbal filters were gone at this point (I think I'd been at the show for at least 12 hours), and I said, "If that horse flips over backward on that rider, she will deserve it."  I'm pretty sure the people around me thought that was a pretty awful thing to say.  After all, people are more important than animals, right?  And horses are supposed to do what we say, right?  They don't get to have choices or express concern about anything.  The whole reason they exist is so humans can get on them and control them.  Surely after 55 million years of evolution, they would understand their job, right?

The thing is, I don't believe that anymore.  There was a time when I did, at least to some degree.  But now, what happened with that horse and rider in that arena last night is something I can only categorize as a utter tragedy.  This horse wasn't simply saying, "Hey, I am a little worried about that jump over there because the light is fading and my depth perception is wonky."  He was SCREAMING.  Loud enough so everyone could hear.  And he was not only ignored, but he was told over and over and over that his screaming was irrelevant.

The lady did finally leave the arena without jumping the course.  She was alive, but I worried about the fate of her horse.  Another person watching pointed out that this particular horse had shown similar behavior in the past at this show and it appeared to be getting worse.  I'm definitely not any kind of horse whisperer, so I don't know what was bothering that horse, but I do know that just about the worst thing you can do when a horse starts acting like something is really bothering them is to increase the pressure.  I know that because I've made that mistake about 6,237 times during the course of my life.  I have only recently (like in the last few years) started to rethink that approach, because it finally occurred to me that it never worked.  (I have often said that sometimes I can be a slow learner, and this issue is a perfect example of that.)

I have been practicing over and over the idea of looking to find the horse's first indication of stress to something, for example, the clippers I'm introducing to Donut.  Once I see that first indication, I stop progressing and hold the pressure as constant as I can and wait for Donut to start showing signs that she is OK with the clippers.  THEN I TAKE THE CLIPPERS AWAY.  That is the key.  For a long time, what I did was start escalating the pressure again.  So the reward to the horse was more pressure.

After watching some videos done by Warwick Schiller and Tristan Tucker, I started to understand that taking away the pressure was the real key to helping the horse become more confident.  I am not claiming to be an expert on this technique.  And I am definitely still learning how to do it well, but I like it a lot.  I've seen positive results with it.  I had posted a few weeks ago about taking some baby steps with clipping Donut.  She now has a full trace clip that I am starting to expand.  She still doesn't like the clippers near her head or on her lower legs, but pretty much everywhere else is fine now.  I stopped having any kind of time considerations about when I would have her fully body clipped and what I do now is clip for a minute or two several times a week.  Sometimes I revisit an area I've already done and sometimes I will clip new hair.  Each time I try to watch Donut's reaction.  Is she worried or relaxed?  If she is worried, I will pause and stay in the same area and then when she relaxes, I give her a break.  My goal is simply to spend the summer working on clipping.  So her coat may look funny for a few months, but that is OK, because in the end, clipping any part of her body should be no big deal.  And then we can spend the next 20 plus years together not worrying about it.

And when I think about it, the clipping process is pretty amazing.  Here is my horse, standing in a box of four walls, an environment that should scare her to death because she can't see any predators coming, munching on food that has been prepared for her instead of food she has chosen for herself, letting a predator at the top of her food chain touch her with an object that sounds like a huge buzzing fly that creates weird sensations on her sensitive skin.  

She really is from a foreign nation.  Everything about the way that I want to interact with her is opposite from that which she has evolved to handle.  And yet, she is there with me.  What an incredible gift!  What a testament to how well horses can handle cross-cultural interactions!

In fact, I sort of wonder how our relationship with horses would change if we viewed them as representatives from another human culture very different from our own.  What if we exercised the same care with our words and our actions as we do when we meet someone from another country?  I remember when I traveled to Australia to spend a semester there, I read a lot about the culture ahead of time and while I was there, part of my studies involved an immersion in Australian history, art, and language.  When we visited areas inhabited by Aborigines, we received careful instruction on how to interact and show respect and it never occurred to anyone in my group to do anything other than follow those instructions as best as we could.

Of course, unlike our knowledge about many human cultures, our knowledge about equine culture is still limited.  The studies that are done are often quite human-centric because it seems to be very difficult for people to think that animals might have more knowledge about how to live in this world than we do.  But I don't need a double-blind peer-reviewed scientific study to recognize that my horse is Other.  She is as alien to me as a sentient being from another planet.  She does things that I don't understand all the time.  I'm sure I do things that she doesn't understand all the time too.  And yet, we keep coming back to each other every day to try again.

I have to admit that I have a deep curiosity about why horses want to interact with people.  I doubt I will ever know for sure, but the journey to investigate is so very appealing.  And perhaps it is so appealing because of the very intangible quality of Other that we see in horses.  Horses possess a very ancient knowledge passed on to them from millions of ancestors.  Humans do too, but we seem to have lost the ability to access it.  I wonder if part of our attraction to spending time with animals is our DNA's way of telling us that the key to unlocking our own ancient knowledge is through trying to understand these other nations.

I wonder what ancient voices Nimo heard as he looked at this sky?