Horses As Teachers

When I started teaching college composition, I realized that my pointed wit and abrupt comments, all too well known to my friends and spouse, would spook most college students. The answer came to me as I worked to calm a particularly insecure, over-reactive horse: treat my students as if they were horses--steady and encourage the insecure ones, use vigorous energy to get the sluggish ones going, and so forth.

Using the same body language and energy level I'd use in the arena or round pen worked even better than I'd hoped. The first few years, I used it consciously, but now it's automatic. Too few of us realize how knowing horses can be of help to those who must work with people.

Given that, I was delighted to see this article: "Open Up, Say 'Neigh': Horses Help Teach Med Students."

"Stop Pulling! Stop Pulling!!"

I just watched this video of a bolting horse and I felt like I was channeling this rider's instructor, mouthing her words, feeling her concern.

Although I can't quite tell what started the bolt on this video, it's quite common for beginner riders to go off balance and tip forward after even a small jump. In fact, it's an inevitable part of learning, but more serious problems then arise because a horse understands leaning forward as a request for more speed. English riding instructor Heather Moffett, cleverly and appropriately, calls this curled position the "fatal crouch." The situation typically becomes even worse when the rider tries to slow down the horse by pulling. Again, it's a natural response. People instinctively want to bend forward to protect their soft bellies and to use their hands to force a stop. Unfortunately, this clashes with the horses' instincts to go faster when humans tip forward and to flee in terror when people grab and pull at their mouths. So, if a rider wants a recipe for a bolt here it is: Lean forward and pull.

Anyone wanting to see how experienced riders slow a horse down has only to watch a televised horse race. After the finish line, how do jockeys slow and stop their horses? Do they crouch and hang on tight? Hardly. That's what they did to get their mounts to try to break the sound barrier. To slow and stop, they stand straight up and slowly lengthen the reins.

Going back to the video, it also shows how pulling can also cause a horse to rear. This far more dangerous situation is from seconds 30 through 38 on the video. The horse had stopped, but the rider's adrenalized tension and lack of experience likely caused her to pull when the horse fidgeted. Luckily, this rider respected her instructor enough to follow her instruction to "stop pulling." Almost anyone who's ever taken a riding lesson understands how much bravery and discipline it takes to surrender to instruction and respond appropriately when the body is screaming clutch the reins and hang on for dear life.

Learning to disregard instincts is among the most difficult challenges for a rider. This is one reason my students typically spend months and months on the longe. And even when they go off the longe line, they ride in bosal hackamores or natural horsemanship halters for a long time before their introduction to the snaffle. A beginner can do enough damage with even a halter, but my no-bits-for-beginners policy helps keep my horses sane and,in turn, keeps my students safer. Meanwhile, they learn that even riding with a halter means working on lightness.

It takes a couple of years to develop a good seat, but it's generally a lot longer before a rider grasps--pun intended--the limited role of hands in good riding.

Who Are You? -- Part One

The English have this proverb: "Show me your horse and I will tell you who you are." Still one of the best lines I've ever heard, it deserves several posts on the history, psychology, politics, ethics, and meditative aspects of horsemanship.

I'll start with a personal story. My husband grew up in a wealthy Southern enclave, a place where women wore gloves and hats to shop and not just on Sunday. He once described his hometown as a place where people could live long, full lives without ever knowing what others thought of them. This most likely describes the ideal of a community where gatherings were superficial or politely guarded to promote a tolerant yet non-intimate type of social harmony. Such an ideal is, alas, far less likely between those brought up in less proper communities, and almost impossible between horse and rider where the horse will be direct and honest even if the rider isn't. In other words, the intimate relationship between horse and rider reveals the inner self whether the rider knows it or not. Aside from basic horsemanship skills, this relationship shows our ability to communicate, our basic assumptions on the use of force, fairness, reciprocity, and a whole bunch of other things. In short, it shows much about our personalities and even our politics.

Of course a few riders of extreme patience and skill avoid too many awkward and intimate revelations of their flaws and those of their horses. These few make themselves and their mounts look good no matter what problems they’ve encountered. I’ve seen some examples. A local woman regularly exhibits a Shire at the local county fair. In his early years, she rode him as both a dressage horse and a western reining horse. And now, showing him as an exhibition horse, she still makes a member of the coldest of the cold breeds look light and easy! On the international level, Many years ago, I watched a televised interview with veteran eventer J. Michael Plumb where he complained how dull and uninterestingly unpleasant his Olympic mount Bluestone was. I was surprised. Watching him on the cross-country course, I would have sworn they were a happy, harmonious pair. Those who have been lucky enough to see Reiner Klimke's victory lap with the heralded seventy-five consecutive flying changes on the once notoriously difficult Ahlerich will know what I mean. Such tactful, persistent skill in riders is rare indeed. At the very least, it shows a nearly miraculous connection with a horse. At best, it may well show the most noble, patient aspects of a human being.

Most of us can expect our horses to tell the world—at least the world of horsemen—exactly who we are. Non-horseman may argue with this. In fact, one of my daily vocabulary emails arrived just now with this as the daily quotation:

         The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older
         and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete,
         gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never
         attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not
         brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught
         with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of
         the splendor and travail of the earth.
                        -Henry Beston, naturalist and author (1888-1968).

With the horse, Beston was wrong. While most of the elements Beston describes are true, the horse did not arrive “finished and complete.” Man selected and shaped the horse, and, for better or worse, that selection and shaping of the species and finally the development of specific breeds, for work, for war, and for display, allowed man to spread across the world and dominate the earth. This shaping and developing also reveals much about the people who changed horses and horsemanship

That's what I want to talk about over the next series of posts.