The Art of Making a Connection

Step one: connect before you ask for more

Mahalo for joining me, for the first time or the fiftieth. For reading a weekly installment of They Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir. Iʻm writing again about lessons I learned from horses about being and becoming a better human being in work and personal life. This is one of a series of musings. Iʻm going to be writing about trauma and disconnection, and about relaxation and balance, and about how hard it can be to take anotherʻs point of view.

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Last week I wrote about “offers and acceptances.” I thought I was offering a tip, a simple formula for understanding how we make commitments to others in everyday life. Then one of my dear friends who happens to be an excellent lawyer described it as a “first year contracts class.”

Which is to say, I think, technically accurate. And valuable. But definitely not the answer to all our communication and interpersonal challenges. How often we think we have an agreement, but each party understands the agreement to be something very different? How often do we think we are making a valuable offer, or just reaching out to establish a connection, and our intentions are completely misread? And then there is this: remember something I wrote about previously, that surrender is not acceptance? When there are institutional or situational power differentials, “agreements” may not always be mutually acceptable; they may be simply a surrender, a situation accepted by the party with less power in order to survive.

I want to write about the importance of making sure you have a connection of trust before you begin to negotiate agreements. Let me tell you The Haflinger Story.

Photo by Doug Swinson on Unsplash

For those who may not know, a Haflinger is a breed of horse. Haflingers are on the smaller, stockier side, generally with a gentle, calm disposition. This particular story, sort of an advice column meme for horse owners, could have been written about any breed of horse. The Haflinger Story is one I read recently somewhere in my social media feeds and then could no longer find. It went something like this.

There was a man who rescued a Haflinger that had been abandoned and possibly abused by its previous owner. As with many horses who have a shaky history of experience with humans, this Haflinger was nervous around people and disinclined to connect with its new owner. Every day the man would turn the horse loose in the riding arena. He would then go about his business picking up poop and such (a never ending task when one has an arena), hoping the Haflinger would see that he meant no harm, begin to relax, and eventually approach him. He did this for weeks, waiting for the horse to accept his presence and connect. It never happened. The horse seemed relaxed over on the other end of the arena, but as soon as the new owner began to approach, he scooted away.

An old horseman leaned over the fence, listening as the new owner described his puzzlement. Then he offered his advice. “See, youʻve got it all backwards. You have trained him that the safe space is over there, because thatʻs where you leave him alone. You need to make it hard for him when heʻs far away, and let him find that the comfortable spot is when and where he comes to stand next to you.”

I used to train horses that way too. The rule of thumb is “Make the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easy.” I still find the approach useful, but in a more nuanced context. What I mean is that playing “hotter, colder” works once you have a willing partner trying to figure out what you are asking of them. Then itʻs a playful game of non-verbal communication. But thatʻs once you have a connection. It is NOT a useful approach for establishing a connection!

Running horses around in a pen and then getting them to “join up” is quickly effective if your goal is submission. It basically creates a shut down animal, not a real partnership (although you can later undo the damage and establish one). Just like staying close to a bullying boss or marital partner, agreeing with everything they say to avoid becoming the object of their disdain and fury, is a human strategy for surviving, not for thriving. Next week Iʻll come back to the physiology of this. But for now, here is my alternative to the old horsemanʻs advice. I believe it works for human relationship as well.

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The horse owner in this story was not a bad person; he had no ill intentions towards the Haflinger. His strategy was ineffective but his desire was sincere. As I have written here multiple times, humans and horses are both wired for connection. Being part of a herd, a team, a community IS our place of safety, of contentment, of contribution. The gauge for this is not what we think; it is how we feel.

Looking at it from the Halfingerʻs perspective, he did not perceive that the human had made an offer to connect; the human had basically offered to leave him alone and he accepted that offer. That is where I agree with the old horseman.

Would the Haflinger also accept an offer to connect? Heʻs a herd animal, he is wired to be more relaxed as part of a herd. So how could the human have communicated to the Haflinger that he wanted to establish a genuine connection, as opposed to the oldtimerʻs advice to make him feel even more unsafe and force him into proximity for comfort? The same way we communicate to another human: “I see you. I hear you. I understand your communication to me.”

I happen to have brought a new horse into my own herd 10 days ago. She is a registered quarter horse, but a sensitive one not unlike my Arabians (that will mean something to my readers who are horse people). Before buying her, I rode her to see whether it seemed she and I could quickly establish a rapport, whether we were suited to each other. Throughout our brief first encounter, whether on the ground or under saddle, we were having a conversation. She understood that I was asking questions (nonverbally) and that I was attentive to her responses and to her questions (starting with “Why is my human on that other horse and you are on my back?”).

Think of it as a first date. Itʻs only the beginning. If you decide you want to continue dating, the real work of learning about each other and building a relationship begins.

When I dismounted at the end of our test drive, the mare gently turned her head toward me and touched me with her muzzle, the kind of gesture a mare makes to connect with her foal. I took a step away and she followed. Her owner and I looked at each other. The mare and I had made a connection. This was one of two horses I was going to try, but we both knew there was no need for me to ride the other one.

Once Hottie (registered name Sheza Obvious Hottie) arrived in my pasture, she immediately began communicating with my other two horses, establishing her boundaries, finding her place in her new herd. The new herd including me…and with all of us right now she is mainly observing, keeping her distance.

My other two whinny back when I call their names. They come rushing to the fence or the gate to greet me. They beg me to scratch itchy spots they canʻt reach. They ask whether they can come out to play. I donʻt expect that from Hottie. We are at the beginning so I am ok with it if she does the opposite, retreating at my presence. Thatʻs neither bad nor good behavior; itʻs just communication about how she is feeling at this stage. There is one thing I do each day with her, from wherever is her comfortable distance that day. As she observes me, I let her know that I see her doing that. That I am aware of her awareness of me. That I am putting myself in her (horse) shoes. That is part of what it means to be a herd.

A horseʻs personal space extends much farther than ours. From a football fieldʻs length away her head shoots up from grazing as I move about filling the water trough. I stop each time it does, and only begin moving again when she goes back to grazing. After a few repetitions she might yawn, or at least “lick and chew” like a contented dog does. Those signs of relaxation tell me she knows that I see her and correctly read how sheʻs feeling; she finds my awareness of her awareness reassuring.

Today Hottie was initially out of sight, so I walked up the hill until I could see her grazing in the very top paddock. She did not move away as I approached. I paused to acknowledge I saw her as she indicated each layer of her personal space. I stopped when her ear flicked towards me at the inner layer of her boundary and waited for a moment for her to communicate how she was feeling. This time Hottie picked up her head and extended her muzzle towards me in invitation. I extended my arm forward and offered her the back of my hand, connecting muzzle to muzzle so to speak. After a moment, she dropped her head with a sigh and I took a couple of steps forward and scratched her withers as she went back to grazing. Then I turned and walked back down the hill.

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In the beginning of any relationship, trust is built and rebuilt every day. After a while, Hottie and I will have a solid foundation, one that can tolerate mistakes and misunderstandings, one we can repair when we damage it through our clumsiness or own “stuff” being triggered. Because none of us is perfect.

See you back here next week for more thoughts on the Haflinger Story. If you feel like it, please take a moment to let me know you read this…click the heart if it resonated, leave a comment if it prompted something in you even if itʻs that you disagree. There is also a button here for you to share the post, maybe with someone you hope to make a connection with.