CAN YOU MANAGE THE
QUALITY RELATIONSHIP
with
of your
HORSES?
Are You Working
With The Horse
As A Team,
Or Just Putting
Him To Work?
By Alessandra Deerinck
Why is riding one of the most interesting forms of sport? Because it brings
together very different individuals, and melds them into one harmonious
moving entity. On one side there is the horse, on the other there is the human
being, which is also the one creating and wanting the situation. Interacting
with horses is not like doing so with another human being like in
team sports, where the rules are understood and accepted by the players.
When being with a horse, people want to control what
is happening, and train horses to respond to cues, which
does not take in consideration the horse’s side of the action.
People also often have in mind to build a bond with
the horse, but based on human concepts that horses do
not immediately understand. Actually, the fact that we
humanize horses adds to the problem. Because horses
are live creatures, they actively participate in the situation
regardless if human beings acknowledge their input or not.
The fact that the equine input to the relationship can have
dangerous results, and even instill fear in the human adds
more to the problem.
In order to properly interact we always have to keep in
consideration the way the horse sees the relationship created
by the interaction. That is because only a relationship
that is shared equally by the participants actually supports
their interaction at all times.
Between human and horse, there is a gap in the communication,
which happens mainly by spoken language
between human beings and by behavior between
equines. Communication through behavior is something
that always happens between human and horse, even if
we interact by trained behavior, so, we better become
aware of it. Learning how to have a true relationship with
horses is only possible if the human feels responsible for his
behavior, and is willing to study horse behavior. The time
spent in learning how horses naturally behave enables us
to understand and support the horse according to his own
needs, so the horse can truly become an understanding
and willing partner.
What truly makes a difference in training people and
horses to succeed together is to empower them both to
interact without the need of someone else’s mediation,
which means coaching them to learn to effectively communicate
between each other while doing something they
both enjoy. The way to reach this goal is not just by conditioning
the horse to respond to cues and teaching people
pure techniques and strategies, or fixing isolated problems,
TRAINING & Showing
and having students practice routines that supposedly
create a result. A real support to the human and horse
relationship is giving people and horses a direct system
for communication that can allow them to understand
each other in any circumstance, on the ground and in the
saddle. Most of all it has to be bilateral, meaningful to the
human, but also to the horse.
Human Horse Sensing is designed to support spontaneously
the human interaction with horses in any circumstance
during groundwork as well as while riding. Human
Horse Sensing creates a dynamic interaction, modulated
in time by behavior through movement, and perceived
by human and horse through the senses. The relationship
between human and equine is structured as a social
relationship. Most importantly we leave coercion out of the
interaction, and the leader appears to be such from the
way he behaves.
Freedom of choice in the interaction with others is a behavioral
trait of any live individual, and the interaction with
horses while they are free to choose their response is an
important situation to explore. Safety is critical in working
with horses that are free to move, and Human Horse Sensing
goes in depth regarding this topic. After all, when we
interact with a horse that is free to choose his response, the
action we will get is how the horse really feels about the
request we made. The horse, that learns by being trained
in a situation of free choice, will be much more likely to display
the behavior in other instances when we would ask for
it. Knowing how to interact with our horse, in a situation of
freedom of movement allows us to establish a true relationship
that can support human and equine in the time spent
together in any equestrian discipline.
An interaction that is easy to practice, and a good way
to start our time with the horse is to see how he feels about
us in terms of trust. Trust is one of the social values that Human
Horse Sensing system of communication uses, and
we go in detail when teaching how to manage it. This very
desired quality in relating with horses is also easy and quick
to assess, if we know that the horse behaves naturally as a
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