Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Charlotte County
"Thinking Like a Horse"
Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore November 8^th, 1998

Spoken Meditation

©Ray and Carolyn Hunt. All rights reserved.[1]

Reading from: The Man Who Listens to Horses by Monty Roberts

Monty Roberts father's way of breaking wild horses, is pretty typical of how it is done:

My father had a special corral built, with six solid posts fixed at equal distances around the perimeter. This way he could break half a dozen horses simultaneously. First he put halters on them. This might involve running horses through a squeeze chute to gain close enough access. Next, he attached strong ropes to their halters and tied each horse to a post, wrapping the rope around the post about six feet off the ground and tying off the end on the rails. Imagine, then, six animals tied thirty feet apart around the edge of the corral. The horses were already terrified and the process had only just begun.

Next, my father stood in the middle of the corral with a heavy tarpaulin or weighted sack attached to the end of a rope. He threw the sack over the horses backs and around their legs, moving from one horse to the next. When the sack dropped on their hips and around their rear legs, the horses panicked. They rolled their eyes and kicked, reared and pulled back against the ropes as though their lives depended on it.

This process is called "sacking out." It continued for perhaps four days, its purpose to break the horses' willpower and thwart their capacity for resistance. In the next stage, a leg--usually the near hind--was tied up. A rope would be caught under their rear pastern and pulled tight to a collar placed around their necks. With the horses now disabled, a second period of sacking out further reduced their ability to resist. They struggled valiantly, heaving their weight pitifully on three legs and groaning in pain at the pressure on their halters. Each leg in turn was tied up; sacking out now took less and less time to sap their spirit.

When my father came to ride these horses for the first time, their rear legs would be tied up again to prevent bucking. He mounted and dismounted, kicked them in the belly, tried any way he could to provoke some fight in them. If they moved, they were whipped.

I stood in the middle of the pen, together with a three-year-old colt not long past the trauma of [a] wild horse race. The colt wore no halter, rope or restraint of any type.

I confidently waited a moment or two to let this unnamed mustang get accustomed to the round pen. He was too nervous to take a single step toward me, although his attention was on me as the main threat currently confronting him..."What I'm going to do," I said, "is use the same language as the dominant mare in his family group." "That language is a silent language, a body language, and the first thing I'm going to ask him is to go away from me, to flee. I'm only doing this because then I will ask him to come back and join up with me."

I moved, quite abruptly, toward the colt. I squared my shoulders and fixed my eye on his eye. Straight away, he went into flight, taking off in a canter around the perimeter, staying as close to the wall as he could. "In his own language I'm saying to him, 'Go ahead and flee, but I don't want you to go away a little. I want you to go away a lot. For now, I'll call the shots, until we can form a partnership. You see, I speak your language.'"

(While varying the pressure to flee, Monty would use his eyes to control the flight of the horse waiting for an ear signal and for the colt to start licking and chewing then drop his head a few inches off the ground, a sign of voluntary submission.)

[When I saw that] It was time for me--like the dun mare--to turn passive, to let this colt come and join up with me. I allowed my eyes to travel to a point maybe fifteen to twenty feet in front of him. I moved my shoulders around to follow my eyes until they were on a forty-five degree angle to his long body axis. I was avoiding eye contact and showing him my flanks, as it were.

Immediately he stopped. He came off the wall and faced me. I maintained my position, my body and my eyeline at forty-five degrees to his. He took a step or two toward me. I waited.

Then he walked right up to me, not stopping until his nose was inches from my shoulder. I could not speak...It was indeed magic: this colt trusted me. No longer a predator, I was his safety zone. The moment of acceptance, or join-up, is what I had discovered, and I felt a shudder of heartfelt emotion. I have felt the same thrill with every one of the 10,000 or more horses I have started this way[2].

SERMON

Knowing very little about how horses are domesticated, when I read this description of how Monty Robert's father broke horses I was appalled. How could a civilized human being treat another creature like this? Yet his father's horse breaking techniques are the rule rather than the exception. The terrorizing of domesticated animals is the norm rather than the exception around the world.

The common assumption has been that wild animals have to have their spirit broken in some way before they become domesticated. The trainer must reduce the animal to a subservient position through reward and punishment. The idea that animals might be willing to cooperate with us without fear and abuse has come to our attention most recently through the movie, The Horse Whisperer that came out in the movie theaters this past spring and will be out in video this coming week.

The movie stars a horse and young rider who are seriously injured. The girl loses her leg and her prize horse, named Pilgrim, while recovering physically becomes wild and unrideable. The spirit of both the girl and the horse are broken so the mother, Annie, a brittle New York magazine editor, leaves her workaholic husband behind, drives thousands of miles to seek out Tom Booker (Robert Redford), a laconic, lanky horse whisperer with a special ability to reach troubled animals[3].

The Tom Booker character is modeled on a genre of horse trainers like Monty Roberts who understand and take advantage of how horses think and communicate with each other. Monty as a boy spent days tracking and watching wild mustangs in Nevada. It was through his astute observation, he learned a great deal about how horses communicate with each other. Because they are herd animals, they do a lot of communicating--but not the way we do with words. Horses communicate with each other with their bodies.

His training insights came watching a bad tempered colt which was causing a great deal of trouble harassing other animals. While stallions fight to control breeding rights of the herd, it is the matriarch of the herd, who controls the social order within the herd. The matriarch in this case was a dun-mare. She slowly worked her way over to the troublesome colt and suddenly drove him out of the herd into exile. Then the dun-mare stood sentry keeping the colt out. Needing the security of the herd, being in exile was terrifying to the rambunctious colt. Only when the colt was willing to submit to the dun-mare and ask for forgiveness lowering his head, licking and chewing, did she eventually let him back in again. What Monty learned watching wild horses was how to communicate as if he was that dun-mare. By using his body and eyes as a horse would, without violence, he could communicate to a horse being started (not broken, started), "Yes, you can trust me because I know how to speak your language."

Monty is not the only person to have discovered how to communicate with horses. The term "horse sense" has come to mean common sense but originally it was applied to those individuals who seemed to have an uncanny instinct to understand horses and get along with them[4]. The movie and the book from which it came are based on the work of a fellow named Tom Dorrance, the father of today's horse whisperers. This expression itself is odd since these horsemen and women use their body rather than their voice. One story I found was the expression started with Irishmen of legend who exerted otherworldly influence over their animals. These trainers today are generally collected under the label, Natural Horsemanship.

Pat Parelli, one of the leading Natural Horsemen, describes it as:

A philosophy, a way of thinking, a way of approaching horses. The definition varies a little depending on what trainer you learn from, but they will have these things in common if they are to be considered natural;

The training is based on communication with the horse, which means a mutual understanding. It means looking at things from the horses point of view, and not forcing the horse into things but let the horse learn what to do and how rather than using mechanics to accomplish this.[5]

Expecting that a person and a horse can have a mutual relationship may seem a little odd considering the relation between horse and Homo Sapiens in the natural order. Horses are prey animals and we are predators. From the time before recorded history to the present we've been eating horses. When a horse just looks at us he immediately knows from the close placement of our eyes we are hunters. Overcoming this natural distrust requires us to build trust and to show the horse we will not harm them. Whipping them and tying up their legs isn't helpful in building trust.

Natural Veterinarian Dr. Robert M. Miller explains:

Psychologically, physiologically and anatomically, the horse is a sprinter. It is timid and flighty. It has remarkably fast reaction time. It is extremely perceptive.

Other species have different primary survival behavior linked to their anatomy. Dogs bite. Swine slash. Cattle, goats and sheep use their horns. Porcupines bristle. Turtles and armadillos retreat into their shells. Rattlesnakes strike. Skunks... well, you know.

One of the remarkable things about horses is that, despite their flightiness, they can, with remarkable speed, become accustomed to frightening stimuli so that they totally ignore them.

It is necessary for flight-oriented animals to very quickly become desensitised to frightening but harmless stimuli. Otherwise they would spend all their time running away and never have time to rest, eat, drink or reproduce.

The horse's sense of smell, and its hearing are similar to our own, except that they are far more acute.

I think that a horse's sense of smell is every bit as good as a dog's, and that means that is it beyond our conception.

Imagine being able to smell the ground and identify who had recently passed that way. What's more, horses, like dogs, can smell fear or anger in a human. That used to be thought to be an old wives tale, but today we recognise that we emit chemicals called pheromones in response to our emotional state.

Only in our fingertips can we approach the tactile sense that a horse has all over its body. Imagine being able to feel a single fly that has landed not on our skin but our hair, and then being able to shake it off. Horses can, right through the thickness of a saddle and a pad, feel the most subtle body movements of a rider, called proprioceptive changes.

These eyes are also remarkably adept at detecting motion. That's why a horse will see a cow hidden in the brush when its ears move before a human will. It's also the reason that horses get nervous and spooky during windy weather when everything is moving. Obviously eyes like these are vital to the survival of a grazing animal in its natural habitat. Typically, if a horse interprets a visual stimulus as a threat, its reaction is to run first. It runs a prescribed distance of several hundred yards (in the wild) which biologists called flight distance. Then it turns, faces the perceived danger, snorts, and attempts to further identify it with its senses of smell, hearing and sight[6].

A few more fascinating facts about horse psychology from Dr. Miller:

Unlike all other common domestic animals, the horse:

• Is the only species which, in its wild state, depends upon flight as its primary survival behavior.
  
• Is the most perceptive of animals.
  
• Is the most easily dominated animal.
  
• Is the only animal to exert dominance and determines hierarchy by controlling the movement of its peers.
  
• Has the fastest response time.
  
• Categorizes every experience in life as something to fear and to flee, or something not to fear and, hence, ignore.
  
• Has an infallible memory. A horse never forgets, but forgives.

What has this all got to do with people? Learning the value of mutual understanding using Natural Horsemanship can change people's relationships and lives.
This summer I saw a television show demonstrating the natural horse starting and training techniques of Ray Hunt. Using many similar skills of these other natural horseman I've mentioned, he was able to help troubled horses. The show had cameo interviews with the students who worked with Ray. I was struck by the way learning his techniques with horses was changing their relationships with the people in their lives. Especially those authoritarian types who liked to crack the whip over their family were challenged by discovering the power of mutuality.

I'm going to read for you a quote from Ray and instead of horses, imagine he is talking about a co-worker, a spouse, a child, a friend:

Working with the horse is a way of life for me. He's my livelihood, my hobby, my passion. If given a little thought, a little understanding, and a little common sense, the horse gives back in full measure. If the human can give 5%, the horse will come from the other side with 95%. The horse never ceases to amaze me with what he can get done with very little help from the human.

The horse is a thinking, feeling, decision making animal. He has a mind, and each horse has a distinctive personality. He is no different from you and me. The one thing I would like the human being to understand is the responsibility he has to the horse. The way you present things to the horse has a significant influence on the outcome.

Loving the interdependent web isn't separate from loving other human beings and other non-human beings. It isn't an either/or choice.

Natural Horsemanship is just one example of the benefits to humanity of living in harmony with nature. May we respond to the call of nature for mutuality before its too late.

Closing Words

Pat Parelli wrote these words about the pursuit of excellence in natural horsemanship. I think they are more generally applicable for us as well:

Care more than others think is wise
Risk more than others think is safe
Dream more than others think is practical
Expect more than others think is possible.
Go in peace, make peace, be at peace.

Copyright (c) 1998 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.

[1] http://members.tripod.com/~ejwarren/bookstore/Rayhunt.html
[2] Roberts, Monty, pp 29-32 (excerpted)
[3] Hinds, Julie, From the Redford stable, San Jose Mercury News, 5/13/98
[4] Miller, Robert M., D.V.M., Fundamentals of equine psychology (on web)
[5] http://members.tripod.com/~ejwarren/horsepages/natural_horse_man_ship.htm

[6] Miller, DR. ROBERT M. MILLER is a veterinarian, lecturer and author of the Western Horseman books Imprint Training the Newborn Foal and Health Problems of the Horse. He has been a regular contributor and cartoonist for Western Horseman for more than 32 years. He is now at work on a new book on the psychology of the horse.