The Definitive Horse

In order to orient our informal research efforts, we have had to define what we think an ideal relationship looks like with a horse. It's merely our hypothesis. Doing this is very important however. It's not our opinion. Rather, it is what we imagine the relationship could be, based on what limited data we have. Maybe it's wrong. Maybe it's incomplete. Maybe it's hopelessly naive. But if it's true, we will be able to accomplish wonderful things with our horses. This vision drives us because it defines what could be.

To be sure, we have much to learn about as to the "truth" of our vision. But that's the idea. A vision is that way. The gap between our vision and our current understanding of horses establishes what we don't know. Through this gap we learn new things. Each area of disagreement (between our vision and reality) creates new opportunities to ask why. If we

Horses are hierarchical. A herd always seems to have a leader. The stronger and more confident the leader, the healthier the herd seems to be (merely an anecdotal observation).

I can tell you, when we walk into the corral with 20 horses, they do not part like the Red Sea. They are respectful, but the wise (and healthy) horseman on the Ranch still keeps a wary eye on all the horses-lest he or she get inadvertently run down by a 1,200 pound 4 legged beast as it moves to avoid some other horse.

Instead, we want what Lucy had: total command of the situation without having to strongly or physically exert it. I can assure you; she did not run around biting and kicking her way to that open path. Instead Lucy moved around the corral as if there wasn't another horse in the area. Occasionally her ears would pin-no

doubt reinforcing past training on other horses by her, but the level of her communication and leadership was subtle but unambiguous..

Whatever communication was going on, we still think Lucy was exerting effective leadership. You see, we think leadership is granted-even with horses. In other words, it cannot be taken (another hypothesis). Control, by contrast, is taken. Unfortunately, control is not maintained for very long.

Our guests to the Ranch are not always effective leaders for their horses, nor do they even have the more fleeting "control relationship" with their horse. Instead, the public tends to merely participate. Unpredictable things can happen under these circumstances.

Generally, horses do not hurt their riders out of some form of vengeance or anger. Instead, we think people primarily get surprised or hurt because they are unwitting and un-observant bystanders to horse herd dynamics. An instinctual response to nature, turkeys jumping out of a bush for example, plays a big part in the behavioral dynamics as well. If the horse is not convinced you (the handler or rider) have the situation well understood, it will stop focusing on you and take control of the situation. You become secondary to any instinctual response. This is not ideal.

Our Equine Leadership Vision

We think a single handler can lead a large number of horses as Lucy did. In this way, the horses are not primarily "listening" to their rider, but are instead taking many of their queues from the primary handler and leader. This is not to say that our horses no longer listen to their individual rider, but that they are deferring some of their natural responses to the leadership of the primary handler.

Communication

Human-horse Communications is a very interesting thing.

I suspect that many folks think that horses aren't extensively communicating because they are not vocalizing like people do. In actuality, I think (need I say it … merely a hypothesis) that horses are veritable "chatter-boxes."

Why do I believe this? These animals seem to organize themselves, develop good herd etiquette, and work together to keep the herd viable under the most challenging situations. Undoubtedly, some level of communication is going on between them.

Our vision for communications is really about changing our (the handler's) habits instead of significantly adapting the language skills of the horse. When it comes to our horses, I think it's first about learning to say ONLY what we mean to say. That's hard, since we can add quite a bit of filler to our verbal communications.

Kathleen and I talked about when she was a foreign exchange student in Germany. She was assigned a student "guide" that was their to help her adapt to the culture and the language. This German girl, though well meaning enough, spoke very fast an was apparently quite verbose. Kathleen confided to me that is was all to tempting to just listen, smile, and then just tune the girl out. She added that it was so often hard to keep up and try to figure out what was important in the monologue. Kathleen said the girl felt Kathleen was very "slow." This cracks me up. Kathleen is definitely not slow.

If the German girl's goal was to help Kathleen through the ins and outs of German society, it would have been much more productive if the German girl spoke in whatever limited English she knew. I'll bet she would have been much more concise and correspondingly more specific in her guidance. And that's the goal here. Get the action completed.

So imagine how those poor horses feel? Yakity, yakity, yak. That's surely what they hear. Whereas I think that they are really interested in knowing when we have something more compelling to say like "Hey, look-out, there's a cougar over there! Run for you life." I'll bet they are not enthusiastically listening for crazy commands like "let's turn right" or "could you pick up a canter" ... just for the heck of it. Think about it. The purpose of their communications supports what they have to be interested in. Prancing around the arena cannot be at the top of their survival agenda. Bless their hearts for playing along with us anyway though. That's why I like them. Our ranch cats should be as biddable.

OK. So what easier? Teaching a horse English or learning to better communicate with the horse using it's built in vocabulary and grammar, such as it is. Careful. Your answer could tell me a lot about your confidence in your own problem solving skills.

A few days ago I watched the Day of the Dolphin. This is an old movie where a couple of "brilliant" trainers teach a Dolphin how to speak (and understand) English. Hah! The Dolphin apparently figured it out. Hmm. Now who was smarter?

I know it's harder than all that. But, I hope our intellect can take a little humility and time to understand the horses point of view. You see, we are not just training them to understand basic commands, but we are potentially altering behaviors that have served their survival for thousands of years. To the extent we can work with this (remember nature's perfection) rather than altering it, we expect to go farther.

This is our goal.