Speak softly and forget the big stick

Copyright © 2009 Lif C Strand
www.spiritualhorsemanship.com

I’ve been remiss in posting to this blog for some time now – there’s been lots going on here and I’ve gotten way behind in writing. I did want to update you on a few related topics.

Our little orphan colt, Despereaux, has left the ranch and is now in Nebraska, on his way to his grown-up life. Not so little any more at 5 months, the colt dealt with being weaned from his foster mother, Jess, very well. He handled the long trailer ride with his friends just as well (he traveled with Sandy, the mini-horse mare; Rue, the colt’s aunt/full sister to the colt’s sire, SE Kokopelli Kid; and Cantor, the llama).

I’ll miss the little guy, but Su misses him more.

Su (Suletta HCC) at 26 years of age is not likely to have more foals even though she lives with Koko full time. When Jess left, I needed to put the colt in with horses that would pay attention to him. I tried him with the other mares, but while they tolerated him they didn’t seem invested his welfare - although he did hang mostly with Kelsey, who is now the lead mare of the mare herd. Good survival tactic.

I needed to be able to feed the colt supplementary food for a while, and since Koko and Su get their soaked pellets with secret supplements every morning, it seemed like a good idea to put the colt in with them. (Everyone could be put into separate feed pens, of course, but that’s not how horses naturally eat – more on that some other time).

Koko is now 12 years old – a mature stallion in the prime of his life. He looks great, he feels great, and he knows that he’s the Big Kahuna on this ranch. But he wouldn’t hurt a baby and I knew when I turned the colt out with him that Koko would be just fine.

Su pretty much ignored the baby in the beginning. She wouldn’t share her food with him like she would have her own foal – not an issue since although I feed horses together, I always make sure there’s more piles of food than there are horses - but she also didn’t drive him away if he wanted to hang with her. The colt did want to be with her, so Su got used to him being there for the short time between Jess’s going home and the colt’s leaving for his home in Nebraska. I thought that's all there was to it.

I hadn’t realized how much she wanted to be with him, though, until he left. Su had been barreling into the pen where the colt was already eating breakfast in the mornings – after the colt left, however, she just plodded in, her hooves dragging in the dust. She looked around for him hopefully each morning, of course not finding him. There was a bit of spark missing from Su’s eyes - she wasn’t truly depressed, but clearly missing the little guy.

Horses are very accepting of things when they have to be, however, and just like the colt will grow up just fine out there in the world, so, too, has Su moved on in her life.

But I think she really would like to have another foal.

About the big stick


The colt and the others had just left. I needed to move some fencing panels around and I wanted Koko and Su to get out of the pen they were in and go into another pen that was normally not open to them. I still had a dressage whip in my hands that I’d had when I was moving Cantor the llama around – I was using it properly, “as an extension of my arm”, because with that llama I like to stay just out of spitting range (he’s in rut right now and kind of crabby).

Koko and Su just wouldn’t cooperate. I waved my arms, I advanced and retreated, I swished the whip in the air, I was losing my temper and all they did was run around like they didn’t have a clue. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong until I realized I still had that whip in my hands, and that the whip was making all the difference.

These weren’t llamas in rut, they were my horses, my herd. I was their leader and I was suddenly acting whacko. I wasn’t communicating what I thought I was communicating at all.

My horses and I have an excellent working relationship – there was no need for the extra emphasis of a whip in my hand, or an “extension of my arm”. No need for the threat, because that’s what a whip is - even if a horse has never been struck with one before. I was using a strange tool that we had no agreement on the meaning of, and I was waving it around in an incomprehensible manner. Of course they thought I was whacko, and they wanted nothing to do with me. Communication was not a happening thing and wasn’t going to happen as long as I was continuing to “talk” to them in gibberish.

With Cantor, to be plain about it, I was pushing him with the whip. I was using fear of that whip – whether it was fearful because he knew what a whip could do (I doubt he does) or fearful because it was totally unfamiliar (more likely) didn’t matter – I had earlier driven him in the direction I wanted using that fear.

It’s not the way I want to be with my critters. And my horses, Koko and Su, were having none of that, thank you very much.

Embarrassed, I tossed the whip over the fence. I stood still. I apologized – yes, I did, and out loud, too. We all breathed and calmed down. I walked over to the gate of the pen I wanted Koko and Su to move into and I bowed my head a little and gestured a request with my hand – really, just like a doorman would at a grand hotel. I stepped back.

And Koko and Su just ambled over into the pen like they’d wanted to do just that all along.

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“World transformation begins with self-transformation,” says Cesar Milan. To achieve that, he says, you need a co-pilot: “My suggestion is you have somebody next to you that is willing at any time to transform the moment. That is called dog.”

Or Horse.

Learning and Choices: How To Charm The Snake

It’s evening and the horses are eating their dinners. The sky is gorgeous with clouds still rosy from sunset, their glow almost obscuring a thin crescent moon. The bay and chestnut and gray noses are buried in green alfalfa hay, the sounds of contented munching audible from where I stand. Suddenly all the horses’ heads rise in unison at a noise from the scraggly, stunted juniper tree nearby. Something is in there!

Foxy twirls and bolts away, snorting and wide-eyed. Koko takes a few steps towards the bush, his nostrils flared. The other horses, all well away from the action, stand like statues, watching the juniper intently.

Jess, in her pen closest to the monster, spins to run but she has nowhere to go. She heads away at full speed towards the steel fence panel and I hold my breath, but she slides to a stop and rolls back to her pile of hay, then back to the fence again. The colt, head held up high, nose in the air, runs mindlessly next to his foster mother – he’s going wherever she goes, just as fast, just as far. Jess finally slides to a stop and freezes in place, muscles quivering, her attention focused totally on the bush, to the spot where the monster will burst from.

My dog, Hobo, steps out of the bush, panting, a smile on his face. He’s missed catching the pesky ground squirrel, but I can see he thinks it was by just a whisker. I shake my head, glad I wasn’t sitting on Jess or Foxy when Hobo went hunting.

The Reptile Mind is a good thing for a horse, in that it automatically and instantly takes control of his thinking mind and his body when immediate response can literally make the difference between life and death – those times when pausing for thought can get a horse eaten. However, when working with your horse, sometimes the things his Reptile Mind reacts to may not really be a danger at all. The result can be a very bad thing, indeed.

The simplest incidents can trigger a horse’s Reptile Mind – it could be the flapping of a loose piece of plastic, putting on a raincoat, a log alongside the trail, a dog running out from under a bush. Obviously, not everything that sets off Reptile Mind is sudden – a horse can panic just from being pushed to get in a trailer, or, in the colt’s case the other week, needing to jump out of the one that he walked into himself.

The same incident can elicit different reactions in the horses. In the case of Hobo in the bush, Koko, by biology, cannot just turn and run away – it is his job as a stallion to defend the mares. Foxy, timid and reactive by nature, is the first to flee and to go the farthest. The other mares stand and wait because their lead mare, Su, is unconcerned. Jess is closest to the juniper tree where the monster is, and, new to the herd and separated from them at dinner time, can’t rely on the lead mare. She’s trapped and wants to escape, like Foxy. The colt has no choice – he is young enough that he must follow his foster mother when it comes to things like danger.

To flee or not to flee…

We all know our minds operate on the conscious as well as the unconscious level. Fear experienced on the conscious level is learned fear. For example, you fear putting your finger in a flame because you’ve learned by sorry experience that it will hurt a lot. Your conscious mind has accessed memories of the pain from being burned in the past, along with the negative emotions the pain elicited. The negative emotions elicit fear. Now your fear keeps you from putting your finger in the flame so you won’t be hurt again.

The unconscious mind is the province of the Reptile Mind (limbic system), which causes you to jerk your finger out of the flame when you feel pain - an involuntary physiological reaction. In addition to jerking your finger from the pain source, your limbic system also stores the negative emotion associated with the memory of experience you just had. Your thinking mind will use this in the future in the form of fear.

For horses, anything that is unknown or unidentifiable must be considered dangerous and therefore fearsome – this is a hard-wired survival strategy for prey animals that keeps them alive. And of course, situations that remind a horse of those that have been dangerous in the past are fearful, as well. Sufficient fear triggers the Reptile Mind, involuntarily throwing the body into immediate reaction so it will survive the danger – even when the danger is not identified (or identifiable).

Yet the same danger may not trigger a reflex survival response in different horses, or even the same horse at different times. This is because of differing fear thresholds in each horse - a kind of biological set-point beyond which a system cannot handle any further input. On one side of the set-point the conscious mind operates, on the other, the reflex or Reptile Mind. The threshold or sensitivity of the set-point is dependent upon experience/memory, hardwiring, hormones, excitatory or calming chemicals, and various other factors present in the body.

When your horse’s Reptile Mind reacts to a situation, certain physiological events occur, e.g. freezing in place, rapid heartbeat, increased respiration. Stress hormones and other chemicals flood the body and the horse is propelled, willy-nilly, to action. The set-point for initiation of flight-or-fight behavior has been triggered. It is important to remember that once the limbic system takes over, the reasoning, rational mind does not function. There is no choice when it comes to survival response.

The memory of a situation coupled with negative emotion (fear) will cause the same physical response in the body as actual danger – the same rapid heartbeat, increased respiration, etc. Reptile Mind, with no direct connection to the world (the sensory input of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch are not available to the limbic system) cannot differentiate between actual danger and the negative emotion associated with memory of danger (fear), but it will still trigger to the physical fear response, the raised heartbeat and respiration, the flood of chemicals in the body. Fear is no different to Reptile Mind than the real deal so that the end result is the same – the set-point of the fear threshold is tipped.

Charming the Reptile Mind

Ideally you want your horse to have more positive emotions (since they do not rouse the snake) and fewer unknowns to deal with in his daily experience. But in fact, you cannot guarantee that ideal environment for your horse. In real life, the snake is charmed – Reptile Mind is kept out of the picture - by raising the fear threshold, that is, changing the sensitivity of the set-point so that it takes a higher level of stress (physical or emotional input) to create the triggering fear.

The two systems – the unconscious mind (Reptile Mind) and the conscious (thinking) mind work as an efficient either-or system. The unconscious mind takes care of imminent danger, the conscious mind everything else involving voluntary actions. Although the Reptile mind cannot be contacted directly, the conscious mind can have an effect on it. If this wasn’t possible, we all would be at the mercy of the Reptile Mind at all times – we could never learn the difference between what is safe and what is truly dangerous because our Reptile Mind would be “on” most of the time, meaning we’d have no time for conscious mind to operate – to think!.

Learning is the key to keeping the Reptile Mind from taking over. A horse can learn to tolerate almost anything that would normally trigger Reptile Mind. Horses can be used reliably on the battlefield even with the smell of blood, the sounds of explosions and the pain of being wounded, and they can enthusiastically chase after a polo ball even with polo sticks swinging around their faces and occasionally smacking their bodies and legs. Buggy horses in cities ignore honking horns, squealing brakes, speeding vehicles, pedestrians that may dart in front of their faces. This is simply because familiarity, just as with positive emotion, does not cause the stress response in the body and the Reptile Mind response is not triggered.

A horse will learn from everything around it – from his mother, his immediate herd, other horses, his environment and from the humans he interacts with. He has no reason not to want to accept anything a human offers – as long as the Reptile Mind is not roused.

Early handling of foals works because a foal’s conscious mind is essentially a tabula rasa – a blank slate – that you can put anything you want in because nothing, other than instinct, is in there yet. Teach a foal early and work with him often and he is trained for life – for good or bad.

Older horses can be taught anything as well, but if they have low fear thresholds, their set-points must be raised, and this must be done while avoiding rousing the Reptile Mind. Older horses have established memories that will have been learned from all the same sources as a foal, but these memories, older and now established over time, will have more potency.

Charming the Reptile Mind involves both proactive measures and remedial ones in your horse’s life. Proactive measures keep your horse’s experiences positive and avoid the unexpected whenever possible. Remedial measures raise his set-point when the Reptile Mind has reacted, as it inevitably will. Charming the Reptile Mind is actually simple, but it isn’t necessarily easy to implement - particularly if some of the essential factors are not considered.

Next: Herd dynamics, for better or worse.