What makes it so difficult for us to communicate with horses and why is our attitude towards them so important?
In order to change our attitude towards our horse, the starting point is to change our perspective. It seems trivial, but the biggest obstacle is the genetic barrier between us and the horse. What genetic barrier, you might be wondering? Don't worry, I've met second level instructors who couldn't answer this question.
A very strong genetic barrier: they are prey, we are predators. Ah ok, you will think…so what? It is one thing to understand it, to know it in theory. It's one thing to understand it, I'll try to make it as clear as possible.
Overcoming the genetic barrier between prey and predator
Have you ever heard or said "but it's the same piece of plastic that was there yesterday" or "come on it's just a puddle" or "it was a jump like the others"? These are phrases that we predators have to say very often. “Why doesn't it get on the trailer overnight anymore” I could go on and on… yet let's try just for a second to change our point of view.
You are a prey, your DNA requires you to be attentive to dangers, you are "pushed" into an artificial world, full of shapes, movements, places, objects totally unrelated to your nature. To understand their point of view you have to try to make an effort. The fear they feel is totally different from the fear we know, it's not the emotion we feel before an exam, before a competition, before a test. It's not remotely comparable. They experience the fear of dying daily and frequently (more or less, obviously, depending on the character, the environment in which he grew up and the training he had). And we, let's face it, how many times do we really experience it? Very few times in life. And this is ingredient number 1. For a horse, feeling safe is the most important thing, more important than food, more important than play, more important than everything.
And we must try to open ourselves to this awareness if we want to be good trainers (spoiler: even if you ride a school horse, at any moment the horse is learning something, whether it is positive or negative, while riding or walking it you are training, even unknowingly). We are interested in recognition, gratification, material things, the new saddle pad. They are interested in one thing mainly: safety.
From Fear to Trust: The Importance of Emotional Security
If a horse doesn't feel confident, it won't be able to learn anything at that time. Because his brain is thinking about surviving. And if they're in that state of mind they don't think about not getting hurt, they don't think about anything - they go into pure instinct. And trying to control them with coercive tools won't make the fear go away.
If a horse is afraid to pass the barriers on the ground at a walk, trot and then at a gallop, it will never be serene in jumping. If a horse is afraid of the saddle and the girth, he will give very dangerous reactions. If a horse is afraid of man, well…we'll never really have a partner.
And how do we make a horse safe? He has to trust us, and he can't trust us if we are at the mercy of our emotions. How can we be good leaders if when they show us that they are in trouble we get angry with them?
To convey security we must learn to be as least emotional as possible. For me it was one of the hardest things ever. But this is precisely the beauty of horses, it seems to us that we are working with them, in reality they are the ones who show us which aspect of ourselves we should work on.
Changing horses is easy, changing ourselves a little less. But if you are still here reading you are probably part of the second category, or at least you would like to be part of it and you are wondering at this point: how do I know what I have to work on? I will try to give you some ideas in the next article.
Edited by Isabel Mandy, for Fedda.
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