How You Made Them Feel

For years my training focus was on how the horse behaves. But slowly it's shifted toward what the horse's behavior tells me about his emotional state. Why? Because it’s very hard for them to do what I want or how I want if their emotional state is not quite right.

What I've learned from my own horses and also watching trainers train & watching videos of many of the commercial Natural Horsemanship trainers is that they tend to ignore signs of stress and just push on past it, opting for a behavior that they want, rather then being overly concerned with how the horse behaves. I think they realize the horse is stressed, but think that they need to push the horse past his threshhold in order to make progress.
I'm convinced that a prey animal really can't relax unless he's confident that he's safe. I mean REALLY safe. And it's really very hard to relax if any fiber of your being anticipates being on the lunch menu. That's why pushing a horse past his threshhold is not a very useful technique.

Etude, my driving pony, has a mysterious past that makes him fairly reliable in harness most of the time, but boy does he have some issues with humans. He's shown me that humans can create a reliable performance animal who is still very afraid, not trusting humans in the least, and one who is constantly on his guard. He's actually much easier to get him to relax in harness with a closed bridle, where his vision is blocked, than it is when he's got full vision and can see humans around him. My conclusion is that humans have become a poison cue for him. Now that's a hard thing to overcome - the source of his fear trying to reason with a scared pony!

So, why does this matter? Mostly because I want him to trust me and most of the time he does, but there are certain things that scare him (water out of a hose, wormer tubes, clippers, and any gesture that looks like a preface to someone grabbing his face (flash backs to a twitch perhaps?). I'm slowly chipping away at these but I'm finding that although he made decide I'm ok, it's hard to generalize confidence in my behavior to include other humans.

This reminds me of is a lovely quote by the poet and wise lady, Maya Angelou:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Substitute the word "horses" for "people" and I think this quote says it all. Horses have amazing memories, we need to keep in mind how we make them feel when we make training choices.

It Takes The Time That It Takes

I've been thinking about our culture and the trend to want/expect instant gratification. One of my personal struggles is switching gears & slowing down from the pace of the corporate working world to something more "zen". The corporate world wants me to act with decisiveness and calculated precision, meeting aggressive deadlines and getting the job done right the first time.

And it's not just my job, it's everything in our society that is just full of quick fixes, drive through windows, fast food, & high speed Internet connections. Most of us can't even wait until we get home to use a telephone, so we have cells to call our friends & loved ones while driving or shopping or whatever we are doing. Email isn't even fast enough any longer, and instant messaging on a computer is being nudge out quickly by cell phones used for text messaging. I won't even go into the idea of multi tasking, that is so contrary to what we need to effectively interact with our animals.

At the end of my work day, I shift into the gear that interacts with animals and all of that lightning quick drive to complete a task needs to slow... no, I take that back, it needs to STOP.

The reason for the shift in my own mindset is just because training an animal takes the time that it takes. The problem is that sometimes its just so hard to switch off that momentum stop rushing around. The "rush" feels so normal, after all, it's what I do most of the day. If only I had a switch I could flip to turn it all off.

I don't think this is an isolated issue for those of us who have jobs in corporate America. I think it's more universal than that. We are all so scheduled, kids have to get to school, or after school activities, lessons, appointments, practices for various sports. For adults, so many of us also have some lessons or hobbies we are trying to squeeze in between fixing the next meal, or cleaning some part of the house that has been long ignored.

So, enough about how busy we all are and our sometimes frantic feeling rush from one task to the next, and our expectations that everything move at that same pace.

For horses, it takes as long as it takes because they can't really modify their behavior AND keep a relaxed mental state if they are worried. If they feel rushed, they will worry because when a predator attacks, he is literally rushing them. Science has proven that the higher the anxiety level, the less able they are to learn on an intricate level. They can learn gross concepts, like an object is scary (not a lesson most of us want our horses to learn) but they don't grasp the fine tuned concepts, like a nice energetic but relaxed half pass or piaffe.

What matters isn't just the behavior, they have to be relaxed and happy mentally while doing the requested behavior, or the performance will be marred by unhappy expressions, swishing tails and reluctance on some level.

The catch is that relaxation and the "zen" mental state needs to start with the human, not the horse. As an example, about a month ago, I started playing with trailer loading with a few youngsters. Believe me, this was long overdue, but life got in the way of their planned education. I promised my horses I would let them tell me when they were ready to move to the next step, and I would not force the issue... I would not be tempted by the popular NH idea of making it pleasant inside the trailer and unpleasant outside the trailer. I would not make them choose what they prefer, but rather let them choose when they were ready.

My filly was very concerned about this trailer loading idea. She has always been more sensitive than the boys and she was worried enough that for some days she would just put her front feet up on the ramp and stop. She let me know that she wasn't comfortable putting her head too far inside that trailer because of how the trailer blocked her vision. I reminded myself she would walk in when she was ready, and this was her schedule, not mine.

Ultimately the breakthrough came and she just walked in but she was clearly frightened by being in a box with sides and a roof. She stood in the straight stall, sharing the space with me, breathing hard and looking at the "stuff" in the front compartment. She was so tense she couldn't even take a treat from my hand, but just stood their wide eyed and clearly not at all confident. I let her back out when she choose to and she walked on 2 more times, worried but not enough to stop her from going on.

I got distracted and trailer loading went on the back burner for some weeks. Yesterday, the trailer was hitched anyway and it seemed like a good thing to revisit. I was sure the filly would only walk in about half way and stop and I felt that was OK if that's the best she could offer. Instead, she just walked on, all the way inside with no hesitation, looking curious but not frightened. We repeated this exercise a few more times, and I rubbed her wither, back and haunches and she stood quietly and without fear.

What she needed was time. She reminded me that by letting her take the time she needed, she's happy about getting on and has no fears connected with the idea of very limited vision on the inside of the trailer.

I know if my experiment was evaluated by any of the NH trainers, I would be considered a total failure for taking so long to get her loaded. They tend to take such pride in fixing issues fast. Yes, many trainers could have loaded her more quickly, but my priority is relaxation and calm. I feel it's unacceptable for her to be frightened, high headed, feeling the need to escape. Just the process of introducing something so new was stress enough, I didn't want to add more. So, I'll stick with taking the time that it takes.

Opposites Attract

The other day, a friend was talking to me about relationships and what she looks for in a guy... her criteria was contrary to how I would have described her. We talked about this and clearly we could both see that oddly enough, in many cases, opposites DO attract.

This started me thinking about horses and humans, perhaps the ultimate in "opposites". The obvious is the prey vs predator angle, but it's oh so much more than that. Or maybe I should have said so much more detailed than that. Here are a few thoughts on this:

Approaching other Creatures:
Humans (as predators) stalk in their body posture, approach tends to be direct, eye's focused on the subject or target, a direct line to the target.
Horses (as prey animals) often don't take the direct approach, they tend to be wanders, following their current whim, and direct eye contact means aggression to them. If they move directly at another horse or creature, it's meant as aggression.
This means: when we look at a horse, in our normal, direct manner, they read that as aggression and potentially triggers the flight tendency. When we walk directly toward a horse with forward vision and body posture, they may this as a predator "attach" posture. Granted, some horses learn to ignore some aspects of this but as a rule, this holds true.

Noticing Details:
Humans (as predators) don't notice the tiny details. We tend to see more gross, larger movement and postures, specifically because as a predator, we don't NEED to see the tiny details.
Horses (as prey animals) very existance in the wild depends upon noticing the tiniest change in the environment.
That means: Horses notice when something changes, there is suddenly a jacket draped over the fence post that wasn't there yesterday or the day before. As humans, we often don't notice or interpret the tiny cues we put out there nor do we always catch the signals that horses give us. Just as they notice tiny changes in posture, expression, position, they also use those tiny changes in their own communcation.

Defense Mechanisms:
Humans (as predators) primary defense is to push back or apply pressure when things are not going our way.
Horses (as prey animals) primary (and only) defense is to flee when something is amiss.
That means: When things begin to go wrong, the natural human behavior is to push, increase pressure or volumn (or both), which causes the horse to want to escape. What we should be doing, counter to human nature, is to back off, and give the horse MORE space so that he never feels the need to escape.

Learning Speed:
Humans (as predators) don't need to be terribly fast learners, because making a mistake for a predator generally doesn't result in death. Moderate learning speed is sufficient. This learning pace evolved because as a predator, hunger is the motivator to suceed, a moderate motivator at best.
Horses (as prey animals) must learn VERY quickly from their own experiences, otherwise their last experience could literally be...well, their very last on this planet. This learning pace evolved because as a prey animal, survival is the motivator to suceed. Facing life or death is the strongest motivator possible in most cases.
That means: Horses need very few repetitions to commit something to memory, including behaviors we might prefer they don't remember. It only takes a few repeititions for a horse to have a new behavior firmly entrenched. This is great IF the trainer is very clear about what they want. Not so good if the horse is busy noticing how to evade something while the human is thinking they are learning somethign else entirely.

Memories:
Humans (as predators) don't have the greatest memory. A keen memory isn't required for survival and often our memory is clouded by our interpretation of what happened or our emotions.
Horses (as prey animals) developed a keen memory of details in order to survive in the wild. They need to remember how things should look when everything is fine so that they can detect changes that should trigger alarm.
That means: If a trainer is clear and communcates well, horses can learn new behaviors with as few as 3 repeititions. If the trainer is not clear, it can take much longer. One of the failings of humans is that we often do the same thign over and over again, and expect a DIFFERENT outcome, regardless of the lack of sucess in prior repetitions. This tendency greatly hampers the horse's ability to connect the dots and get the point. Also, horses remember when they are treated badly or frightened seriously, and those memories can bubble to the surface literally years after the event, perhaps they horse has changed owners several times since the fearful moment happened and it will continue to worry the horse because of his keen memory. When we have a horse with training "issues", it is showing us all of the poor training and unfortunate events in it's past, regardless of the time or number of humans involved. Why something happens isn't as important as changing the outcome for the horse so that he can learn he no longer needs to hold on to this memory.

So, I have to conclude, opposites do attract, at least for some of us, otherwise we would only be interested in sharing our lives with other predators, who speak our language and share so many of our qualities.