Anyone who
has watched horses in a herd interacting with one another has witnessed an
extensive amount of communication taking place via body language. Horses don’t have any kind of sophisticated audio
language that I’m aware of unless they communicate with some sort of sub-audible
frequency that is imperceptible to human ears and hasn’t yet been discovered. Their
entire vocabulary consists of a few basic sounds that are pretty easy to interpret. What is much more sophisticated and complex,
however, is their physical communication.
Horses are masters of body language.
They pay attention to the slightest movement another horse might make
and understand what this movement signifies.
We humans on
the other hand have come to rely so much on verbal communication that we tend
to forget how much information body language can really communicate. This is especially true when working with
horses. We may not speak the same body
language as horses, but they are masters at this stuff. It doesn’t take long for them to learn a new
language and start interpreting every move you make. Because of this, we have to be keenly aware
of what signals we give to our horses when we work with them.
Horses’
ability to read and assign meaning to every move I make has caused me to develop
a particular aspect of my horsemanship that as a human I wasn’t initially aware
of, my attitude. I’ve come to realize
that my attitude is one of the most influential components of my communication
with horses. Now, I’m not talking about
my own personal attitude and things like staying positive or being open minded. This is more interpersonal than
intrapersonal. What I’m talking about is
the attitude I convey to my horse. Once again,
horses are masters of body language and because of this they will pick up
whatever attitude I convey.
Of course,
your attitude can negatively influence your horse’s behavior. If I’m working with a horse that is excited
and nervous about something, I am likely to get a little excited and nervous
too. Well guess what happens when I get
excited and nervous in this situation. My
horse sees the way I’m acting and thinks to himself, “I knew there was
something to be worried about! This must
be even worse than I thought.” I just
confirmed all of my horse’s fears, plus added to all that nervous energy that
was already floating around.
Fortunately, with a little practice you can
learn to convey a different attitude in this same situation and affect your
horse’s behavior in a positive way. Whenever
I’m working with a horse that is excited and nervous about something, I always
try to behave in in a way that would be equivalent to asking my horse, “What
are you so worried about?” Now I may
know that a particular situation is terribly frightening to a horse, but I don’t
ever want to let him know that I know
it’s scary to him. I always want to send
him the message that he is the only one who is excited and would probably be
better off to just calm down like everyone else. To help myself with this, I often find myself
verbalizing the message I’m trying to convey.
I don’t do this because I think my horse understands what I’m saying, I do
it because I’m a human and I best understand verbal communication and this will
help me to say the things I want to say with my body. I’m also not always aware that I’m doing it
and I probably look like a crazy person when I do it.
This power
of attitude is effective in many different situations and should be practiced
in everything you do with your horse. When
I’m asking my horse to do something he thinks is difficult, for instance going
over a jump for the first time, I want to have the attitude that this is really
no big deal. I want my horse to think
that I’m not worried or excited about this and that I may not even really care
about it. It’s almost as though I’m
saying to my horse, “Oh, is there something in the way? I didn’t even notice. I was simply asking you to go in a straight
line in which a jump happened to be set up.”
On the inside, I might be all excited and hoping that he goes over the
jump, but I don’t want to let him know this.
As far as he can tell I couldn’t be less excited about the jump. This practice works when I’m giving a horse
its first bath. I act as though the
water is such a non-issue that I’m not even aware of it. I want her to think that the water just
happened to spray her on the leg, not that I purposely intended for it to
happen. There’s no reason to be scared
of it because nobody else is. Of course,
I will have the discretion not to spray her directly in the face right away,
but if I accidentally do, I want to act like it was no big deal.
Make sure
that when you work with your horse you remain aware of just how perceptive he
is to your body language. The most
effective way to control your body language is to try to convey the attitude
you want your horse to believe you have.
It isn’t necessarily easy, but you can do it if you just stay aware of it. Good luck.
