One of the things I have heard coming from the mouths of other trainers, instructors, and clinicians is, “I learned it from the horse,” or “Everything I know was taught to me by the horse.” Lots of professionals and a few amateur horse people give complete credit to horses for all that they know about horses and training.
It’s the claim that a person got their knowledge about training and working with horses straight from the horse’s mouth that I want to discuss today.
Don’t get me wrong. I do believe a person can only transition into a skilled practitioner if they listen and are perceptive (and receptive) to a horse’s response to the work. It would be both ignorant and arrogant for a person to think they know more about working with horses than any horse on the planet. They are the ultimate judges of when we get it right and when we get it wrong. So I absolutely believe in the power of horses to be our professors, our instructors, as much as it is for us to be theirs. As we try to shape their behaviour, they are constantly shaping our behaviour. It is how it should be if we are to reach our full potential as horse people.
But there are considerations to be made when giving full credit to a horse for the things we know.
The first is that when a horse talks to us, are we always listening? And the second, do we have enough knowledge to interpret what a horse is trying to tell us in the way the horse intended? By excluding outside inspiration and teaching, we are saying to the world that we were born with a greater understanding of the mind of a horse than anybody else. We don’t need to learn from the mistakes of other trainers because the horse will tell us everything we need to know.
When I hear a trainer or clinician espouse that they learned everything from the horse, I see it as simply a nice idea with which to sell their knowledge to an audience. But the truth of it relies on a person’s ability to accurately understand the lesson to be learned from a horse’s response. This is a big assumption, and I believe it has led to many myths and lies in the training world.
A room full of trainers can watch a horse respond in some way, and you’ll possibly get a room full of variable opinions as to why it happened and how it could be altered. They could all claim that their knowledge comes from watching and studying horses. But if every horse person went to the same college and had the same professors, how can there be so many answers to the same question?
The answer is that people’s interpretation of what they see when they study the behaviour of horses is never unbiased. It is always skewed by both their present knowledge and understanding and their history.
You have probably heard the expression that if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. This is true in studying horsemanship too. If all we know about horses comes from a particular discipline, philosophy, or trainer, then we see everything in the context of that experience. We probably can’t see it from the angle that another person with a different background might. And we certainly can’t be sure it is how a horse sees it.
This entire ramble is to make the point that it is not enough to be content with the knowledge and experience we already have. It is not enough to be comfortable that we are learning to be skilled horse people directly from the horse’s mouth. We can’t know that what we are learning is what a horse has to teach us.
To avoid the pitfalls of being comfortable with our abilities, we should ensure we listen to and watch other talented horse people from a wide range of experiences and disciplines. Their interpretation of what a horse is trying to tell us might be very different from ours, AND they could be right! You don’t know until you put it to the test. It is too easy to believe we understand horses because we don’t have too much trouble with them. But sometimes that is more a testament to the wonderfully co-operative nature of horses than it is to our level of skill and understanding.
When I was younger and first heard somebody spout how they learned everything they know from studying horses, I was impressed. I figured that is how it is supposed to be. But now I am not so young and not so impressionable, I almost always dismiss these people as idiots. They are idiots if they truly believe their own rhetoric, and they are even bigger idiots if they think their ability to understand horses is greater than that of others who approach horse training differently.
I have had several mentors in my life who have strongly influenced my philosophy and training, yet I continue to try to be aware of what others are doing and teaching. I have been doing this for quite a while now, so most of the time I see approaches I am not surprised at or overwhelmed by, but occasionally I see and hear something that opens my eyes and starts my little brain whirring and eager to try it on the next victim I get my hands on. In any case, I feel I owe it to the horses to make sure I get what they have to tell me as right as can be, which means keeping myself open to testing new ideas.
