I AM NOT SHOUTING!
I AM NOT SHOUTING!
Well, how about "I wonʻt shout if you donʻt"?
Welcome or welcome back to They Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir. In recent weeks I have been writing about the influence of horses as teachers in my life. Which is kind of ironic since I spent a year writing about influential human teachers I met from 1992 - 1997. A few year later, I was ready for a new kind of learning.
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To recap where I am in this story of my accelerated course of self-development, the story continues in late spring of 2002. I am now responsible for getting two rescued Arabian mares adoptable by the end of the summer. When I agreed to volunteer, one of my conditions was that the barn manager Pam show me what she had been doing so far in the three years since the rescue. I could see where they were stuck with no further progress on the goals or issues. Desperate for a different approach, I found a book on natural horse training using equine psychology. As I absorbed the principles and reconsidered the status quo with new eyes, I felt like a marriage counselor observing what had gone wrong in the now habitual, dysfunctional communication patterns within the family.
For example, it is important for a horse in captivity to allow humans to handle their legs and hooves. Much like our toenails need to be clipped so they donʻt become painfully long, horses who donʻt wear their hooves down traveling for miles a day over rough terrain as mustangs do must have our assistance in trimming their hooves regularly. Plus we keep them in stalls and small paddocks where they can step in their own manure, or pick up pebbles and debris along the tender underside of the hoof. Part of regular daily grooming involves using a “hoof pick” to clean out the yuck.
After three years, Pam and the barn girls had never been able to pick up - let alone pick out - Jennyʻs (as she was then called) hooves. They would put her on crossties in the aisle of the barn, one teenaged girl on either side and Pam at her head with treats. One of the girls would reach down towards a front hoof. Jenny would lift it before they could touch, stomp it back down with a slight, annoyed toss of her head (as much as she could toss it with ropes from the wall clipped to her halter on both sides), and then stretch her nose to Pam for her horse cookie. Which she received.
I started to think of her as Shirley Temple, The Little Princess, stomping her foot, demanding her treat, then flashing a charming smile as she chewed.
Once I had this first insight, I considered this mareʻs other “crazy” behaviors and realized she was no longer scared most of the time. She had figured out that if she acted terrified, threatening to kick or rear or just wheeling around in circles at the sight of the halter, humans would leave her alone. She had used the principles of horse psychology to train the humans!
You know how sometimes at the start of an argument someone might raise their voice while while denying “IʻM NOT SHOUTING!”? Or the stereotype about how Americans who speak only English (that would be most Americans, I am afraid), tend to RAISE THEIR VOICES when speaking to someone they think does not understand English, as if speaking louder and slower would enable the other person to comprehend?
Translate the equivalent superior look and raised voice into the body language of a skinny white horse. Jenny had decided humans were somewhat dense, completely oblivious to the obvious communication the horses were attempting. However, at least this new gang of humans were reliable vending machines and sheʻd been starved most of the first three years of her life. She adopted a strategy of minimal cooperation to be fed, and wild resistance to any further demands. She definitely believed she had to YELL to be understood. LEAVE ME ALONE was pretty much her mantra, and she preemptively reared and spun and galloped around to make herself heard.
It worked. The humans generally responded with equally big, actually scared, energy as they quickly fled and just left her alone.
Now the instructions in the Natural Horsemanship book began to click for me. Ask softly first, then up the phases. Duh, what had my riding instructors taught me all along? You donʻt just kick the s*#t out of them with spurs to “go”. Sit up tall, squeeze with your seat, maybe your inner thighs. That should be enough. If it isnʻt, you increase the “ask” from there. I could translate the way I rode into communication on the ground.
I could offer Jenny a new deal: I wonʻt shout if you donʻt.
But first she needed to understand that I was trying to communicate in her language.
If you have ever been on a trail ride with a string of robotic horses, those blessed animals doing one of the hardest jobs around, safely ferrying people who have never or rarely ridden, you may have wondered at my saying you do not have to kick to get the horse to go. These patient creatures deal with a signal-to-noise ratio near zero. They simply have to ignore the random weight shifts and leg and rein movements that would be communication from someone who is an experienced rider rather than a passenger. They mainly move through a routine, taking cues from the lead horse and rider. Only a big signal cuts through the noise.
Likewise, Jenny just assumed everything was noise. And even when she knew there was communication, if it was not connected to food she plugged her ears with her fingers and started loudly singing “nah nah nah I canʻt hear you!” At least that was the cartoon picture in my head when I reinterpreted her behaviors through my new mental framework.
Where to begin? I could not ask for Jenny to respond to a complete sentence until she believed I was spelling out a word. I picked a logical place to start. The biggest actual safety issue with her was that she was completely oblivious to personal space. She was “only” around 750 lbs, but that was roughly seven times my weight, so I really did not want the two of us inadvertently occupying the same spot. If I was leading her from the barn to put her back out in her paddock after a “session” and something spooked her, she could and did run right into or over me. Sometimes a big enough fright would cause her to simply freeze in place - and I had learned the hard way to keep my distance when she came back into her body with a start. She regularly displayed all three threat reactions - fight, flight or freeze. None would be a problem for me once we had an agreement about collision avoidance. I never saw her running into or over another horse!
I would start with asking her to back up out of my space.
Luckily the book offered instruction on the back up phases. With Jenny facing me on a lead rope, I give her a meaningful “move now” look. Then I would wiggle my finger counting 1-2-3. If there was no reaction I would start to move my wrist, gently swinging the lead rope slightly from side to side. If there was no reaction to that, I would increase the movement by waving my arm from the elbow. And finally my whole arm could move, I could add jumping jacks, whatever commotion it took for her to react. The first few times it was just a vertical toss of her head that I noticed and acknowledged by stopping. After a few tries I kept going and there was a slight shift in her weight towards her haunches, as if she might lift a front hoof. I rewarded that. Finally, as I waved the rope she took a first step back.
I stopped shaking the rope and with a huge smile on my face blurted an encouraging “YES!” Jenny considered me carefully, blinking furiously. After a moment I started the sequence again, and by the time I made the first motion of my entire forearm, she stepped back. I stopped. She looked at me with bright eyes and began licking and chewing, a sign of relaxation and understanding. I stepped towards her and petted her briefly on the neck. Then I stepped back to my starting point, and this time she promptly responded to my finger wagging request, looking at me in wonder as if to say “I got it! Finally, someone who can actually talk to me!”
I always refer to this as the mareʻs “Helen Keller moment,” like the moment when the deaf and blind girl realized that the motions in her hand her caregiver Anne made were naming the cold liquid flowing over her hands.
Jenny stepped in to be petted and then nudged me as if to say, “Show me what else you know.” Together we experimented with my asking for other movements, both with rhythmic motions and with actual touch, the way that eventually rein and leg cues would communicate her riderʻs requests. It never took more than a couple of asks before she responded to each and every request.
I am not sure which of us was happier. I could have sworn that mare was smiling.
I found Pam to tell her of our progress. She looked at me with misty eyes. “She might be the smartest horse I have ever known,” Pam responded. “I saw that in her but just could not figure out how to connect with her intelligent mind.”
Jenny started hiding behind me rather than from me. She never liked cameras pointed at her.
The two mares stopped hiding at the back of the paddock. By the time I collected their halters from the barn, they were both at the gate, vying to be haltered first. If by some chance they had been put in a different paddock or were waiting in the barn, Jenny would start whinnying as soon as she heard me, as if to say “Iʻm over here, they put me in the wrong place.” When I found her I was greeted with a soft nicker.
Neither of us needed to shout. We had found the magic of communicating in whispers.