Are listening and hearing the same thing? I think not. Hearing is perceiving sound vibration through the ear canal onto the ear drum, which conveys external stimuli to the sensory system called the brain. So, hearing is said to be one of the five bodily facilities for transmitting sensation.
While the act of listening can happen in many different ways. The dictionary defines “to listen” as to pay attention to someone or something in order to hear what is being said, sung, played, etc. For me the key here is to pay attention. But, pay attention to what?
Animals communicate in very subtle ways that mostly rely on their being able to correctly interpret body language. For horses, communication can take on many different forms or combinations of forms, such a look in the eye, a postural change, a flick of on ear, tightening of the mouth, change in heart rate or respiration, to name a few ways. This is just the tip of the ice berg on how they communicate within their own kind as well as how they experience interspecies communication. They are masters at reading human body language and being able to correctly figure out what we want from them.
As humans, we seem to rely on verbal communication as our primary means of expression. So, what that can imply is that we miss a lot of the unspoken stuff. The unspoken stuff can be the meat and potatoes of what is really trying to be conveyed. Have you stopped and really noticed how the people you are talking with are standing? What they are doing with their appendages? How do you feel when you are around them? What are the tiny muscles in their faces telling you? Do they interrupt you? Do they pause physically before answering or responding? What is their overall posture? How do you feel when you are around them?
So, how does this pertain to you and your horse? Let’s explore how well you communicate with your horse while on the ground and in the saddle. From the ground using your powers of observation what do you notice about your horse? What draws your attention? What do you notice right before the horse “misbehaves” for the vet or farrier? What changed?
Do you notice the expression in his eye? Does he have a ‘soft’ eye or a ‘hard’ eye? What is the context of this change in the physical expression of his eye? Does he have soft triangles above the eye or a smooth eye brow area? Is he squinting? Is he rolling the eye back? Has the third eyelid come out of the corner of the eye?
How is his breath? Does he breathe deeply as though sighing in relief or does he take swift yet shallow breathes using only the top 25% of his lungs? Do you see his rib cage expand and contract all the way back to the flank?
What about is his heart rate? Is it his “normal” 28-33 beats per minute or his normal pulse? Is his pulse rate higher or lower, racing, thready, weak, or bounding? Sometimes you do not even have to “take the pulse” as you can see it bulging in the jugular vein of the neck.
What are his ears doing? Are they pricked forward, listening to something far off in the wind? Are they at neutral, half mast, mildly back listening to something in the background, laidback, pinned flat back against the neck?
How’s his posture? Relaxed, with a hip cocked and resting a toe, at attention, sleepy, highly alert? What does his muscle tone show? Tense muscles ready to jump or run? Relaxed muscles that are soft and pliable?
So individually there can be a lot of subtle cues as to how your horse is feeling at any particular moment. Then, to complicate things, you need to account for the amazing and seemingly limitless combinations of all of the above ways to communicate and you soon have a more complete idea of the language of equus, without a single spoken word having been uttered. If only we could be so astute.
As riders, how do we communicate with our horses in a way that clearly defines our desired result? How do we express our desires into easily understood requests to our equine friends? With TTouch we have all heard about “Chunking It Down” to make everyone successful. This is a perfect way to start. But in order to chunk it down, we need to be listening to what our horses are saying to us. How far do we need to chunk it down? Where to start is a question often asked. The answer is amazingly simple, yet extremely profound and it is often stated as “start where you can start”.
This is called “task analysis” in the teaching realm. Task analysis is defined as the analysis of how a task is accomplished, including a detailed description of both manual and mental activities, task and element durations, task frequency, task allocation, task complexity, environmental conditions, necessary clothing and equipment, and any other unique factors involved in or required for one or more beings to perform a given task. In other words chunking it down into attainable and understandable goals.
When I ask a question while working with a horse for saddle training, I am prepared for a multitude of answers, to any question that I might ask, all of which are correct. These answers can be everything from “what” to “hell no”. Usually though the answers I receive are more likely to fall into a couple of categories which I call the “yes”, “I can’t”, “I don’t understand”, “I am not physically capable at this time”, “please chunk it down”. Rarely is there a solid “hell no”.
But, in learning to ask the questions, then being willing and able to listen to and explore the answers with the horse I am working with we are usually successful in a gentle, fun, progressive and mindful manner of training that will lead, hopefully, to the horse’s overall longevity and enjoyment with riding.
Most times these lessons start un-mounted with very simple and yet profound implications. This simply comes back to the “task analysis”.
Case History: Anna and King
King is a TWH gelding with a lot of attitude and a super work ethic. This horse is happiest when he is fit and in full work being ridden several times per week. At times King can act like a bully, but that is mostly due to him lacking self-confidence, both on the ground and occasionally under saddle. This horse loves a confident handler.
I had an amazing a very fun ride on King the previous day. He worked in beautifully and we were able to do a lot of quality work on transitions from flat walk to running walk and in canter. We were working on some lateral work consisting of leg yield and shoulder-in to haunches out. We were beginning to work counter canter transitions and he was really going well. King and I had a blast that day.
The next evening, as Anna prepared to ride King she noticed he was a little “grumpy” as she tacked him up, which was not entirely unusual. She chalked it up to him being “mad at her” for being gone for a few days. As she mounted him, he fidgeted slightly (which he never does). Then as we began his warm up he was a little behind the bit and not using his back or lifting his shoulders the way he normally does. As Anna continued the warm up she noticed that King had begun to “hang on the bit” and get heavy onto the forehand. When she parked him out on the center line he fidgeted. At that point we called it quits and ended the lesson, deciding to check him out from head to toe for soreness issues.
I want to stress that King was not lame and he was slowly improving as we warmed up…..but, Anna listened to him and we stopped the lesson, because he was not entirely feeling “right”. These were the several small hints to us that King was having some sort of soreness issue. After a through inspection we found King was sore at the mid-neck C3, close to the base of neck C5/C6 and the sternum area.
We took him back to the arena and watched him roll, and he did not roll all the way over as he normally did and he struggled while getting up. We thoroughly checked out his stall and paddock area and noticed it looked pretty torn up in the paddock very close to the barn door as though he possibly had gotten cast while laying down outside of his stall.
So, how did King tell Anna that he was sore? It was all of the little things. The fidget, the tight back, the leaning on the bit, shuffling his feet, the worried look in his eye and the lack of deep breathing during the ride. Was it any one thing in particular? No. It was a multitude of small and often easily overlooked things. Anna even commented that other coaches would have made her ride through these “annoyances” as they were training issues. Not one thing about this was a training issue. It was soreness! We allowed King several days of body work with myself and then with our equine osteopath. In just a few short weeks King has returned to his regular work schedule and his once again extremely happy to be played with.