My Horse Is Not My Therapist

I think we've all seen the t-shirts that say, "My horse is my therapist."  I know people who wear them.  And there was a time in my life when I would have worn a t-shirt like that too.

I have absolutely used my horses as my therapists over the years.  The most significant example I can think of was when I used Nimo to help me overcome post-partum depression.  You see, I didn't tell anyone at the time that I was not feeling right.  I kept everything to myself, although my husband knew something was wrong.  He just didn't know what.  Instead of talking to a person, or seeking medical help, I turned to my horse.  Looking back, I'm not sure I was capable of anything else.  I would have done exactly what I did again, but that doesn't stop me from wishing that it could have been different.

I will say that it worked.  I pushed myself to the point of mental and physical exhaustion over and over and over as I learned the ropes of endurance riding and conditioned my completely unsuitable horse to tackle the tough trails we have here in Virginia.  I nearly died more than once because of poor decision-making and also just because sometimes riding horses is dangerous.

But all of that changed my brain and allowed me to find my way through the sadness and anger and grief.  And because Nimo was who he was, it worked.  He hung in there with me and learned to function better.  While I don't necessarily condone pushing horses too far outside of their comfort zones, the reality is that before I started really focusing on endurance riding, Nimo didn't move that well in the arena and he was spooky and dangerous to ride outside of the arena.  After several years of training for endurance, he moved better and he was so safe to ride, I felt comfortable riding by myself on rugged trails with no cell phone service.  And we were able to pay forward at least a few of the times we had babysitters on the trail by being the sane, quiet ones for other green horses.

So in the end, it all worked out OK.  I was mentally healthier and so was Nimo.  But it could easily have gone horribly wrong.  There were times when I thought it would.  Although, I don't think we should discount the process of returning to mental health.  I am not an expert at all, but I have discovered that sometimes I have to go through hell and come out the other side in order to make progress.  Most of my biggest learning moments have come shortly after I felt so frustrated and angry that I wanted to quit.  So there is value in the struggle.  But sometimes the struggle can be so great that people don't come out the other side.

The reality is, though, that Nimo shouldn't have had to help me as much as he did.  He shouldn't have been the sole reason I clung to life.  To put that burden on a horse is, well, I don't have a word for what it is.  I guess the closest I can come is unethical.

Yet we do put that burden on horses all the time.  Not only do we use our riding and other horse activities as ways to diffuse our own stress, but we actually employ horses for professional therapy.

I should say that I used to be a very avid supporter of equine-assisted therapy.  It wasn't until a friend donated her horse to a program that I started to have reservations.  I watched a very vibrant, balanced, good horse slowly eroded physically until she was chronically lame (repeated veterinary exams never identified the problem), was eventually diagnosed with an unspecified neurological problem, and then fell through a pasture fence and over an embankment.  The fall broke her pelvis and she was euthanized 45 minutes later.  This whole process happened over the course of about 18 months.

I had known this horse for probably close to 15 years.  I had ridden her regularly when Nimo was too young to ride and sporadically after that.  I helped take care of her when my friend was traveling or needed help.  My daughter rode her.  She was part of my extended family, and her death shocked me to my core.  It made me wonder if her life might have gone differently if she'd never been used as a therapy horse.

Then, back in the spring of 2021, I attended a Masterson Method clinic.  I posted about my initial thoughts in this post.  The clinic was for using the Masterson Method on therapy horses and it was held at a therapy barn.  I didn't realize the focus of the clinic going into it, and I found myself not feeling very good about it afterwards.  That experience added to my level of discomfort about using horses for therapy.

Since then, I keep reading about how horses have a significant level of mirror neurons.  This is a quick read to give you an introduction to mirror neurons if you haven't been bombarded with it already: https://www.equineconnectioncounseling.com/blog/brains-relationships-and-horses.  In particular, the author writes, "All those mirror neurons enable horses to empathize even more than people do. In counseling, the horse can pick up on emotions that human clients and human counselors might not be aware of yet. It also means that humans and horses can engage in social relationships on a neurological level; although facial expressions and language might be different, the horse’s and human’s brains can respond to each other and build a relationship."

So this is some pretty significant stuff.  The idea that two different species can communicate on a neurological level is mind-blowing (pun intended - haha!).  And it helps explain at least some of what I've been doing in my Science of Motion work.  The work taps into the neurological connection that people and horses can have, which allows the horse and rider to move beyond obedience to aids and into a world of true back-and-forth communication which is occurring for the primary purpose of helping the horse carry a rider in a way that ensures the horse's soundness.  I think this level of communication is also what The Balance Through Movement Method explores.  (And I'm sure there are other methodologies that consider the benefit of mirror neurons too - I just don't have experience with them.)

BUT, if horses are so able to empathize with humans and pick up on emotions that the humans aren't even aware they have, what does that mean if horses are working with humans who may not have their best interests at heart or humans who are trauma victims or humans who can't communicate very well because of neurological deficits?  And the horses have to absorb it all.  They are like Deanna Troi in Star Trek: TNG.  She has the ability to feel thoughts and emotions and sometimes that ability almost overwhelms her at times.  Over time, she learns to set boundaries and manage what she feels, so she doesn't spend every waking minute feeling everything that everyone else feels.

Unlike a TV character, though, horses are part of the real world, where everything doesn't always work out in the end.  What about the therapy horses?  Or even just the average horse?  What happens to them over time as they feel the constant bombardment of human emotions with no one to help them manage what they are feeling?

I think from an ethical perspective, we have to start having this conversation about what we ask horses to be exposed to and take in on a regular basis.  We all know from working with horses that they can sense our emotions and some of them will react more than others.  The ones who react the least are often considered the best riding horses and probably the best therapy horses.  But are these less reactive horses truly mentally healthy?  Or are they shutting down in a desperate attempt to tune out the constant barrage of human emotions?  The ones we often make no attempt to control.  Maybe the less reactive horses are just better able to naturally figure out how to set up boundaries, like Deanna Troi.  Or maybe they can process what they feel better than other horses.  Or maybe they are screaming inside.  The reality is that we don't know.

But we should know.  How many of us would feel comfortable using another person to absorb all of our emotions every day?  I hope that most of us wouldn't.  I hope that we would understand that it isn't fair to ask someone to be exposed to that level of emotion.  That we would expect that person to have breaks from us or need their own space or have their own life and hobbies to help them mentally support themselves.

But it isn't just mental.  We also ask therapy horses, and often other horses, to support riders who have poor physical coordination.  It's easy for us to see the damage that can be done to an average riding horse whose rider does little to improve their own balance.  What about when horses are ridden daily by people who simply can't improve their balance to the point of a good dressage rider?

My friend's horse who died was a very stoic mare.  She rarely got reactive about anything.  And because of her lack of reactivity, she was the horse of choice for the most challenging kids.  The kids who were nonverbal and whose bodies were constantly in motion and out of balance.  These kids would cause extreme reactivity in other therapy horses, but not my friend's horse.  So she supported these kids several times a week.  And within 18 months, she was dead.

That is a steep price to pay for therapy.  We have got to do better, not just for therapy horses, but for our personal horses.  We need to acknowledge that horses do have this amazing ability, and we need to commit to not taking advantage of it to the detriment of the horse.

Mark Rashid is fond of saying that our minds should be like still water when we work with our horses.  And I see that sentiment echoed in other top trainers as well.  These trainers don't bring their emotional baggage to their horses.  In fact, they make a special effort to train their minds through meditation and other mental exercises so that when they are working with a horse, the horse feels nothing from them except what is relevant to the work they are doing.  What a relief that must be after having to constantly sort through random human emotions that they can't understand.

It also reminds me of Nimo.  You see, he worked very hard to train me.  If I lost my focus on the work we were doing, he usually stopped dead.  If I got too out of balance, he stopped dead.  By the time his life ended, I could easily keep my focus on him for a whole ride of 1-2 hours (he cut me some slack on the longer trail rides sometimes:)).  My balance was significantly improved, and it was very rare for him to stop on me.  I wonder if other horses do that too and we think of it as disobedience or poor training.

I know that equine-assisted therapy is a popular thing these days.  And I know that a lot of people in that world consider the horse's massive amount of mirror neurons to be a benefit to the humans who are assisted in that therapy.  What I want to encourage is that we look for ways to support horses in this field.  They probably have needs that go beyond a "normal" horse and we don't have a good grasp of what those might be.  We need to start figuring that out.  At a minimum, though, I would think that having sessions with a good trainer who does have a mind like still water and good balance in the saddle would probably help a lot to recalibrate the horses in between therapy sessions.  I suspect each horse might be a little different, but maybe a good starting point is for each therapy session the horse does, they get another session that is focused on them with a capable professional.  These horses need mental and physical support to help them do their jobs.  

I would also suggest that maybe therapy horses don't do that job for a long time.  (I would also suggest this for lesson horses, which is a whole other can of worms...)  Being a therapy horse shouldn't be the place horses go to retire.  They should go for a year or two and then be placed in a stable and supportive home to thank them for their incredible service.

Finally, I would like to suggest that the rest of us look at ways to stop using our horses as our therapists.  Let's find ways to be mindful and aware of ourselves and leave our emotional baggage at home.

We are so lucky to live in a time when we don't require the brute labor of a horse just to eek out our survival.  Instead, we have the luxury of interacting with these amazing creatures in a way that can honor their nature.  So let's figure out what that looks like.

Taken about a year before he died, this picture shows my 5-year-old daughter putting a halter on Nimo to bring him in for grooming.  He was always quiet and patient with her.