The Unexplainable
Published by Cari Zancanelli under on 9:26 PM
There are things we can't explain. I have always fully accepted the mystery of life. Keeps things from getting boring, right? But more so it encompasses the spiritual part of life. We want to understand everything...to a point. If everything was fully understood the mystery would be gone and so would the magic.
My last post was about Herd and making a connection with Luna. Since I began working on this relationship with her I've also been seeing blog posts and things from other horse people, mainly trainers. They all like to down play the "love" part of having a horse, which is ironic when compared to dogs. People openly love their dogs, they tell others and write stories and make movies about it. It's so obvious that there is an emotional connection between many dogs and their owners. Have you ever seen a movie or read a story about a dog that sits by the grave of their owner if they die first?
According to popular tradition, horses apparently don't have this capacity. Even the more open bloggers and some trainers are reluctant to say that horses do things out of love. It is important to separate training principles from emotional connections, but once established, it's difficult to separate the two.
Just as in relationships we have with people are often those of connection and love, this doesn't mean they will do everything we ask of them. If there is mutual trust, then it's easy to ask things of the other person. As with animals, if there isn't trust in the relationship then there will be problems with the training.
How do you build trust? Consistency. Patience, calmness. As Neil Davies says, "never scare your horse". If you take nothing else from him I think that's a huge takeaway because much of "traditional" training involves purposely scaring horses. "Desensitization" is purposeful scaring of the animal until it accepts the thing it's afraid of, which is called "learned helplessness". I once was trying to get a yearling to accept a horse blanket and she was terrified. I kept holding it up to her back and she'd run in a circle, snorting and pawing at it, sweating. We were getting nowhere after a good 20 minutes of this. It wasn't working and both myself and the horse ended up frustrated. This was an "Ah Ha!" moment for me, a moment when I really saw that this method was not only NOT working, it was making things worse!
If you are the cause of fear, you are always holding the scary thing and forcing it on them you become the source of the fear. It's you demanding that they accept it, not that it happens to be in the environment and you're walking by.
Trust builds connection, spending time builds connection, taking time to groom or scratch or do whatever your horse enjoys doing builds connection. Even if you're a terrible rider, or you know nothing, or you think you're a bad horseperson, you can still have trust and connection. A lady I once gave lessons to really had a strong connection to her horse. I would do training rides on the horse and set boundaries and things that she wasn't doing as a rider, but that horse did not care how well it was being ridden. When the woman arrived at the barn I knew immediately because her horse would stop to watch her walk all the way from her car to the arena. He loved her.
I know that horses can and do love their people and vice versa. Not to acknowledge that is to ignore the beauty and richness of why we ride and why we love horses. Can I explain it? No. Do I think my horse does things for me because he or she loves me? Sometimes, yes. Do horses refuse to do things we ask and still love us? I think so. Do I do things because I love my horse? Yes, everything I do is for love. I can't tell you why I was born loving horses. There are many of us that feel the same and have always felt that way. It's immediate and so deep that it was never a question.
There is so much out there about training, and very little about the connection. I am just recently discovering those people who train with joy and positivism. I'm excited for the future for once!
My last post was about Herd and making a connection with Luna. Since I began working on this relationship with her I've also been seeing blog posts and things from other horse people, mainly trainers. They all like to down play the "love" part of having a horse, which is ironic when compared to dogs. People openly love their dogs, they tell others and write stories and make movies about it. It's so obvious that there is an emotional connection between many dogs and their owners. Have you ever seen a movie or read a story about a dog that sits by the grave of their owner if they die first?
According to popular tradition, horses apparently don't have this capacity. Even the more open bloggers and some trainers are reluctant to say that horses do things out of love. It is important to separate training principles from emotional connections, but once established, it's difficult to separate the two.
Just as in relationships we have with people are often those of connection and love, this doesn't mean they will do everything we ask of them. If there is mutual trust, then it's easy to ask things of the other person. As with animals, if there isn't trust in the relationship then there will be problems with the training.
How do you build trust? Consistency. Patience, calmness. As Neil Davies says, "never scare your horse". If you take nothing else from him I think that's a huge takeaway because much of "traditional" training involves purposely scaring horses. "Desensitization" is purposeful scaring of the animal until it accepts the thing it's afraid of, which is called "learned helplessness". I once was trying to get a yearling to accept a horse blanket and she was terrified. I kept holding it up to her back and she'd run in a circle, snorting and pawing at it, sweating. We were getting nowhere after a good 20 minutes of this. It wasn't working and both myself and the horse ended up frustrated. This was an "Ah Ha!" moment for me, a moment when I really saw that this method was not only NOT working, it was making things worse!
If you are the cause of fear, you are always holding the scary thing and forcing it on them you become the source of the fear. It's you demanding that they accept it, not that it happens to be in the environment and you're walking by.
Trust builds connection, spending time builds connection, taking time to groom or scratch or do whatever your horse enjoys doing builds connection. Even if you're a terrible rider, or you know nothing, or you think you're a bad horseperson, you can still have trust and connection. A lady I once gave lessons to really had a strong connection to her horse. I would do training rides on the horse and set boundaries and things that she wasn't doing as a rider, but that horse did not care how well it was being ridden. When the woman arrived at the barn I knew immediately because her horse would stop to watch her walk all the way from her car to the arena. He loved her.
I know that horses can and do love their people and vice versa. Not to acknowledge that is to ignore the beauty and richness of why we ride and why we love horses. Can I explain it? No. Do I think my horse does things for me because he or she loves me? Sometimes, yes. Do horses refuse to do things we ask and still love us? I think so. Do I do things because I love my horse? Yes, everything I do is for love. I can't tell you why I was born loving horses. There are many of us that feel the same and have always felt that way. It's immediate and so deep that it was never a question.
There is so much out there about training, and very little about the connection. I am just recently discovering those people who train with joy and positivism. I'm excited for the future for once!
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