When I was little I worshipped a movie hero who could talk to animals. I desperately wanted to do the same. I wanted to be Dr. Dolittle. I would sit for hours with little scraps of bread in my open palm, held open on the ground, trying to entice some local squirrel or chipmonk to come and eat out of my hand. Once or twice one actually did grab the bread from my fingers. While not a resounding success, I felt that I was on my way to waltzing in Dr. Dolittle's footsteps. (I also stalked all of our neighborhood's cats, but never brought along any catfood, and they were not going to let me hold them for anything.) As I grew older my life grew busier, we moved to a more urban setting, and I forgot about my career plans to become an animal communicator. I fell far from my dream. As a young adult I didn't even have a dog.
Then a miracle happened. I now live here on the ranch, and run a business that involves horses. I love working with and training horses. My business enables, and indeed, requires that I focus attention on them. One of my favorite tasks is starting young horses and for this one of my favorite tools is a round pen. Among other things, I use a round pen for pre-riding and early riding experiences.
The round pen is a wonderful place to meet a horse. It is a place where we can hold a sort of body language dialog that the horse understands. The dialog consists of two ideas: move… and stop. As it turns out, I believe that my ability to communicate these two ideas to a freely moving horse in the round pen is magical. Most horses like to move. Getting them to move requires only a little encouragement. We can get horses to move outside the round ring as well, but on the outside, unless they are confined on a lunge line, they quickly leave us in their dust. In contrast, in the round pen, the horse runs and runs without ever leaving us. Eventually, even the most athletic and scared horse is ready for the second idea, "…and stop". It no longer wants to run, and therefore recognizes that I have taken charge of that decision. Once it wants to stop, it can feel me pressuring it, "herding it along". If I can be patient, and wait for the horse to want to stop, then I can use my body to say, "Stop" (running backwards from the horse and thereby removing the pressure is one way to do this). The horse will stop, and I will have completed my first dialog with it. Every subsequent dialog that I have with the horse will be easier. Interestingly, the horse will also be more tuned in. In fact, if I handle my side of the dialog with finesse, the horse will become intensely focused on me, and will ultimately respond to slight changes in my body posture with changes in speed or direction, like a partner in a dance.
I think that something else goes on in the round pen as well. We have a new weanling here at the ranch, and it has been put out with a group of older horses each day for the last several weeks. One mature gelding in particular spends part of each day herding the weanling around. The weanling is now more likely to follow this gelding than any other horse on the ranch. I believe that the herding behavior has somehow created a bond between the two horses, with the mature gelding in charge. I can imagine how a group of horses in the wild would use this behavior to establish leadership within the group to maximize safety. The round pen might mimic this natural behavior, setting the horse up to be herded by us, and subsequently to bond with us, accept our leadership, and tune in.
I thought about this as I recently reviewed pictures taken as I worked in the round pen with a young, relatively unhandled, new-to-the-ranch mare named Little Miss. The pictures are not an ongoing video, but so many were taken (several hundred) that it was almost as good. As I looked through them, I could see how, at first, Little Miss trotted around with almost no regard for me. She held her head high and to the outside. Her inside should was dropped down toward me, and I could see lots of her spine. Sometimes she even trotted with her hind end in toward me. As the pictures show, it almost looks as if she is holding her body in an outward-facing arc. As time went on, her body posture changed. She began to pay more attention, focusing on me. Her nose came down and in, and she kept her inside ear and eye trained on me. Her inside shoulder rose, and the arc of her body reversed - to the inside, lifting her back, so that her spine was harder to see from the ground. She also came away from the rail at times, circling closer to me. Other things that I saw included her licking her lips and lowering her head to the ground while trotting. When we stopped, she remained tuned in. She willingly followed me around the ring with soft body posture and her head lowered.
By herding the weanling around, the mature gelding developed a behavioral bond in which the weanling follows him around, accepting his leadership. I wonder if the round pen is such a great training tool because it sets us up to communicate using the natural language of horses. We set out to initiate a dialog with our horses, and end up creating attentive equine partners. The round pen might give us some of Dr. Dolittle's magical ability to talk with our animals.
