My inspiration, Penny (not a photoshopped belly, I swear)
As somebody who spends a lot of time on trot sets, hours of walking fitness, and general boredom by myself in the barn, I’ve become a podcast devotee. I will gladly talk your ear off about how I nerd out with NPR shows like This American Life, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, and Fresh Air. I listen to TED, which if you aren’t familiar, seriously, get with the program. In my daily iPod adventures, I stumbled across a really fascinating piece by Malcolm Gladwell about the dog whisperer, Cesar Milan. You know, the guy with the TV show about taming uncontrollable mutts (and also their equally ridiculous owners) with a simple gesture and seemingly apparent fairy dust. He can take dogs who kill other dogs, or dogs who bite humans, and rehabilitate them effortlessly. He just seems to have “the touch”, and holds a deeper understanding of the canine communication system than your average human.
Of course, in the horse world, we are all familiar with the idea of horse whispering. Robert Redford brought the romanticized notion into every American living room with his movie, Monty Roberts visited the Queen of England, and recently the movie Buck was released (ironically Buck Brannaman was the inspiration for The Horse Whisperer). All of these people have been touted as having magical and untouchable powers to communicate with horses. They see things that we can’t see, and somehow fix them in a shockingly short amount of time. They throw a wild horse in a round pen, and within an hour they’ve got it cantering around with a man on it’s back like it’s no big deal. So, what’s the secret? How do people like Cesar Milan and Buck Brannaman have “the touch” and the rest of us just can’t seem to grasp what our horses are telling us?
I discovered something called Laban Movement Analysis through the podcast about the dog whisperer because they brought in a specialist to watch videos of him interacting with dogs with the sound off. They found that his body language was unconsciously conveying calmness and obedience to the dogs through simple movements. The analysts were unbelievably impressed with Cesar’s fluidity and stability, and mentioned that he seemed to be dancing with the dogs, instead of moving out of sync as most of us do.
LMA is a system that provides a framework for observing and understanding human movement most commonly used by dancers, actors, athletes, physical and occupational therapists. In general, we understand that the vast majority of signals that we send to each other during interactions are nonverbal. Our facial expressions are obviously highly important to conveying emotions, but also our gestures and our body language can express so much more than our words. If it is so important to humans, when we fill the space with sounds and words and still find so much information in body language, can you imagine how many signals we are unconsciously sending to our horses?
That's the smirk of a very satisfied child, having successfully tamed the wild beast
When I was three, I got a shetland pony named Penny. My mom had two other horses on the farm, and although Penny was clearly the boss of me, she was second in the pecking order out in the field. After putting up with a few years of being trampled, dragged about, and generally ignored by this fat little thing, I decided no more! I did my own five-year-old version of movement analysis, and went and sat in the field and observed the horses interacting with each other. I knew that my mom’s mare, Lady, was the absolute boss. Lady got to the water first, she decided where they went in the field, and she definitely didn’t take any guff from Penny. I discovered that Lady wasn’t a brute or a bully though, she simply had certain ways of asserting her domination through gestures and postures. Although I couldn’t go and pin my ears back and make a nasty horse face, I could certainly learn something from these basic body language cues. I figured out simple things, like poofing up my chest and stamping my feet could convey my serious intentions, and how approaching a pony sideways while looking elsewhere could trick them into being caught.
I am by no means claiming to be a horse whisperer myself, but I never forgot the lesson that first pony taught me. When baffled by behavior, first observe, then use their language as best you can. Sometimes our interactions with our animals are akin to shouting at a person who doesn’t speak English: a little ridiculous. We forget to pause our normal reactions and think about how many unconscious signals we are sending with our bodies, and I think this is a great shame. The vast majority of “misbehaviors” that we find in our horses are truly just miscommunications.
When we find people who understand this, and have “the touch,” what do we do? We give them a TV show, like Cesar, or a movie, like Buck. We fly them out to our farms and make them teach clinics, watch their every move and try to figure out what it is that makes them so much better at understanding. So, Eventing Nation, next time you find yourself in a pickle, and you’re facing your horse with a clear block in the road, take time to try to figure out what they are saying before you bombard them with your usual repertoire of tricks. What does their body say to you? What can you say back to them? Channel your inner Cesar, your inner horse whisperer, and you’ll find a whole new realm of comprehension.
