Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar

Some of you may remember that at the end of 2007 I took on a rescue Curly gelding that was headed to an auction (and from there, you can only imagine). He had issues about most things, (from loading in a trailer, handling his feet, taking a bit in his mouth, most interaction with humans). I sorted this out with a combination of clicker training, effectively directed energy and clarification about boundaries and my space (vs his space).

The short version is that he was one unhappy guy, but basically a nice horse underneath all of his bluff and bluster. I’ve been accused of anthropomorphism in the past and I’m happy to say that doesn’t bother me in the least, because I believe that animals have a much greater capacity for emotion than most humans credit them. They may not express it in a way that’s obvious to us, but I don’t believe humans have cornered the market on feeling.

Back to Cal: I always learn from every horse and the bigger the challenge, the more I learn. One of the things that I got out of this experience was an awareness of an aspect of the inner workings of the human mind.

Once I felt he was ready to be rehomed, I took a series of videos of Cal: Cal being tacked up; Cal under saddle; Cal seeing a giant umbrella for the first time; & Cal walking over and wearing a tarp). One of the more valuable lessons I learned from the videos is that in MY MIND he still made aggressive overtures and my memory held visions of him at his worst. I had to see the videos to realize how far he had really come. When working with him I would see a flash of ears back out of the corner of my eye and my mind would fill in with the worst behavior I remembered. Not so… the flashes of ears back were few and far between, and only a couple in all the videos I did of him. Once again, I proved that my own sensors don’t always give an accurate read.

There is a name for this phenomenon: Fundamental Attribution Error. When humans interpret the behavior of others, we often make a particularly human mistake. We tend to attribute too much to character and disposition and too little to situation and context.

So, how does this fit into a training blog? Simple. How many times have we all heard remarks such as “My puppy chewed the leg of the couch out of SPITE!”. Or “My dog peed on the floor to get back at me for leaving him home alone! “ Or “My horse won’t stand still when I mount when we’re away from home, just to make me look foolish.” Or “My horse won’t load in the trailer at the end of a show day just to make me crazy!”

In fact, in many cases, the animal does what it does without any personal affront intended. The puppy is bored, and there was that nice couch leg tempting him to see if it was tasty. The dog pees on the floor because… well, it has to pee and no one is there to let it outside. The horse won’t stand still for mounting away from home because it’s nervous or anxious or just needs more training or help relaxing (or both). The horse won’t load because he’s tired and just doesn’t want to exert the energy to maintain his balance in that long trailer ride home. None of these are personal afronts, but humans often take things personally, seeing what we want to see or seeing what we normally see instead of the reality of what is actually happening.

Back to Cal’s story… During Cal’s rehab, I did struggle with feeling his ugly faces and aggressive posturing were personal. After all, I had never done anything to inspire all that, had I? Lesson One for me: I had to see him for what he was, which was a product of his past, he was conditioned to react to humans by keeping them at a distance with his expressions and posturing. It had nothing to do with me personally.

Lesson Two (for me): Considering Cal’s past and defenses, I expected to see a “glass half empty” attitude, so that’s what I saw. Once he began to profit from our rehab work and show a more “glass half full” attitude, I had to not only see how he was changing but also stop focusing so much on the flickers of negativity and see the big picture of how he was blossoming into a new horse.

This came to light when I was watching videos I had created for a potential new home for Cal. I had wanted anyone that might be interested in sharing their life with him to get the full picture, so I created a series of long dull, uncut videos that would show the extent of his ugly faces and how the expressions would come and go. In reality, when I watched the videos, there were only a few flickers of attitude and long stretches of engaged, cheerful, cooperative Cal. Yet during the actual making of the videos, my mind focused on the few moments of attitude and basically not the prolonged periods of pleasant interaction.

The bottom line is that I saw what I expected to see, which was attitude and it felt much more frequent than it really was. My expectations didn’t allow me to notice how infrequently the “attitude” surfaced. I saw what I expected to see.

Sometimes it’s hard not to see what we expect to see, whether that means seeing something better than it is or worse than it is. Reality can be a hard pill to swallow at times, and at other times, it’s a welcome bit of good news!

I did rehome Cal and I’m happy to say that not only did I learn a lot about rehabbing difficult cases from him, he learned a lot about giving humans another chance from me.

The best news is that Cal is not only in a great home but here’s an excerpt the latest email I got from his new human:

“Cal is simply wonderful. You were right when you saw something under all that bluster. He's still funny old Cal with those ears but he's SO willing and he SO wants to do the right thing. In fact, the only mistakes being made in this relationship are mine. I absolutely love him to bits!!!
I've learned to be much much lighter with my hands and ride with a loose rein most of the time. He's a lot of fun to ride. Last week it even warmed up enough for us to leave the arena and ride up the road and through the trainer's bush and fields - the snow was up to their bellies and Cal just plowed through it. Such a good boy! Have I mentioned that I love him?”

I’m not sure it gets much better than that. Life is a series of lessons and teachers that join us on our path to wherever we are headed. I feel fortunate that Cal and I could share what we had to teach each other during our time together and most of all, that he’s finally found a home where he is loved and happy!

May all horses in need be so lucky!

Asking the right questions…

Across the internet I see horse trainers that have hung out their personal shingle with the answers to your “horse problems”. Some are selling books, some have DVD sets, videos, special halters, lead ropes in various lengths, tie rings, special harnesses, bridles, bits, saddles, bareback pads, sticks, wands and whips, and some market training packages containing "all" you need to answer your questions and solve your problems. It’s all about what you might add to your tack box of solutions. We are a culture of people looking for quick fixes and instant answers. Answers… that’s what we search for. Would a different saddle fix the problem? A new bit? Or maybe NO bit?

Some of these trainers have developed an almost cultish following, and some have created a marketing machine that has literally swept North America (possibly the world!) with its ability to tap into what horse people seem to want most often, and offer it for sale. What is it that horse people seem to want the most? Pure and simple, it is a formula to solve problems, a rote pattern to follow in order to find that illusive bit of indefinable attitude that we seem to have labeled “respect. In short, these marketing geniuses are selling Respect-In-A-Box that can be delivered to your door or mailbox.

“Respect” has taken on an almost mystical meaning. Like some unattainable, un-measurable aspect of our relationship with our animals. It’s what always seems to be missing when horse does something that displeases a human. What’s wrong with that horse? It doesn’t have enough RESPECT. But what is that really? Do we want the horse to just stay out of our space? Do what we ask? And what does “do what we ask” really mean? Comply without question? Not express any opinions? Never resist or evade?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not being critical of those that market their goods and services. What I’m suggesting is that before looking for an answer, perhaps the move valuable place to start is by asking the right questions.

Animals have been depersonalized by science and by the food industry. Unfortunately, that depersonalization seems to have carried over into other aspects of our lives with animals. At the risk of being accused of relentless sentimentality, I’ll say that animals have personalities, feelings, emotions, preferences, and reasons for doing what they do. Of course, many scientists argue that animals don’t live in a world complete with emotions, but they have also been unable to prove that animals are devoid of emotions. Certainly anyone that has spent any time with horses knows that they form emotional attachments with offspring and also unrelated horses and even other species at times.

At any rate, before buying that next quick fix or subscribing to a trainer with “answers”, I think it would be useful to ask a few questions first.

Culture Clash

If I were to discover that I have a long lost second cousin from a distant land who I was going to have the chance to meet, I would certainly try to find out about my cousin’s culture and what would make him comfortable in my home. I’m not suggesting that if I found out he loves to eat goat’s eyes as a bedtime snack that I would run out looking for a goat’s eye’s supplier and learn how to prepare them, but I wouldn’t disrespect that preference, but I would politely explain it’s not readily available in US grocery stores!

The first question I’m proposing is that we try to understand the other “culture” and what makes the other individual comfortable. I venture to say that being treated roughly is not the answer to what makes a horse comfortable. And what might WE be doing that brings out poor behavior in our horses? Do we use aggressive body language (we are predators, after all) that pushes them away when we want them to come closer? Do we get in front of their movement on the ground forcing them to face us instead of move forward on the lunge or round pen and then wonder why they are being so obstinant?

Who's the Boss?

This brings me back to the age old question of dominance and treating a horse the way other horses would treat him. This is the justification that so many people use and perhaps the polite way of saying they intend to use “punishment” in training horses).

I don’t want a horse to treat ME like I’m a another horse, and seems like we’d be pretty silly to think they can’t tell the difference between a human and another horse OR to assume that they can’t develop the emotional control to refrain from hurting us. That whole idea is ridiculous to me – it comes from humans who think they are “thinking like a horse” while putting limitations on the horse’s ability to comprehend… I don’t believe the answer is to “think like a horse”, but to understand how they learn and try to understand a bit more about their emotional lives. That insight is what will help us communicate with horses more effectively, not assuming the horse has limitations.

The hierarchy in a herd can shift and the hierarchy isn’t consistent across the board. What I mean is that a horse that is #4 in the pecking order in one situation might be #2 or even #1 in a subset of that herd. And certain personalities are challengers, looking for their chance to move up the ranks. It’s not like #1 is always #1 in all cases for the lifetime of the herd, horses can move up and down the ranks. Nothing in the horse world (or dare I say in any “world”) is so static, the nature of life is a non-static environment. Expectation that life is static is bound to result in disappointment. Some horses with more dominant personalities are going to see a dominating (with violence) human as one that horse might defer to *today*. But only the battle was lost, not the war. I don’t want my relationship with my horses to be a *war*. Logically, I don’t want any horse seeing me as a potential higher ranking mare that could be displaced in the ranks with a good opportunistic bite or kick!

Learned Helplessness

Now, if a human is diligent enough with beatings, they can create a creature that adopts an emotional state that psychologists have labeled “Learned Helplessness”. This is a condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to act or behave helpless in a particular situation, even when it has the power to change its unpleasant or even harmful circumstance. Battered women who refuse to leave their husbands are often considered in this state of clinical depression. In a twisted way, I think this is what the cowboys were after that coined the term “breaking” a horse. They wanted to “break” the horse’s ability to fight back and convince the horse it had no choice. Again, this doesn’t fit with my idea of a relationship, but it does come closer to guaranteeing a subservient attitude, if that is what a person values more than creating a partnership with her horse.

Asking Questions

I think much of the answer to most human/horse conflicts is not around what are the answers, but rather, did the human ask the right questions?

So, what are those questions? Beyond understanding the horse, his culture, and his emotional life, I think we need to look at our horses and ask what WE want and need from them. It’s not about if these things are possible, these questions are purely about what drives us as a human to want to have a horse in our lives. It’s not about the horse we may already have, just pure and simple, what do WE want?

Do we want a friend? A partner? A slave? A creature that behaves as consistently as a machine? Or do we enjoy the interaction? The unpredictable nature of horses? Do we want to commune with nature? Do we like the surprise of what they might teach us or of uncovering how they look at the world? Do we want a horse that will make us shine in the show ring? Do we want one that can be competitive in some particular area? And of these things we want from our horse, how are those things prioritized? Is the show ring success more important than all else? Or is the partnership top priority and any show successes just icing on the cake?

Once those questions have been asked, the next set are about if the horse in our lives is capable of offering what we want. If a person really wants a horse so consistent that it behaves like a machine, then few horses really will fit this “role". After all, horses are not machines. Certainly anything inexperienced and young is less likely to meet that expectation. Also any personality with much of an opinion isn’t a good fit.

Why does this matter? Because there isn’t really such a thing as a quick fix in the horse world, there are gimmicks and lots of things to buy, lots of ways to spend money that may or may not help, but no real quick fix. Sometimes we just have to figure out if what we want is reasonable to expect, or if we need to rethink what we want or rethink if the horse we have is able to meet our expectations. We need to understand we can't squish a squre peg into a round hold, nor should we want to. At a minimum, by asking a few questions first, we might know what we’re trying to fix, or if it’s even possible to fix it. After all, odds are the “problem” horse probably doesn’t think he’s the problem, he probably feels the human is the problem. Odds are, I would agree.