Embracing Empathy in Horsemanship - Abbie Senesac Lopez

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Let’s elevate. All righty, if you wouldn’t mind telling us who you are and what it is you do. Yeah. So my name is Abby Senasaopez. I am a horsemanship instructor and horsewoman based in southwestern Vermont.

I have a small farm in the southern part of the state. And I did not grow up in a horsey family. I didn’t grow up with horsey parents. I begged my parents for riding lessons when I was 8 years old and didn’t get my first horse until I was 13 or 14. And he was 19 year old thoroughbred that we got with the dollar on the bill of sale.

So I certainly did not grow up with a horsey background, but I always had, I think so many of us just this obsession and this desire to, to learn as much as I could and spend as much time as I could around horses. And knew I always wanted to make some aspect of my living working with horses and never really fancied myself as an instructor. And as I had horses of my own dabbled in different disciplines from the dressage world to hunter jumpers to working western. The common thread I think was that I tended for whatever reason, to be attracted to horses that had trouble. So people call them problem horses or troubled horses.

And I, I found myself kind of naturally gravitating to them for whatever reason. And most of the horses that I have had have been castaways of some type. Either last chance horses that someone really didn’t know what to do with and I was their last stop, or horses that someone didn’t really want because they were worth not worth enough to bother with trying to navigate some of the issues. And between the behavioral stuff and the physical stuff, my biggest area of interest has been in bio mechanics and in anatomy. I have a background as an equine body worker and as a human body worker and have developed a pretty strong interest in bio mechanics and using an informed viewpoint on how horses move, what’s natural, knowing that riding them is unnatural to them.

As well as a very strong interest in really understanding how the horse thinks and trying to, as best we can set things up for them so that we can succeed with them. And a lot of that is, is understanding what motivates them and how they work and how they think and looking at things from their point of view. And so those two things combined has been formed a lot of my teaching and a lot of what I do. So what did It’s interesting that you got into horses a little bit later, but still knew it was something you wanted to do with your life. What did that progression look like?

It was fairly organic actually. I went to school, dabbled in an amateur fashion with horses about my childhood and my teenage years. It was just something that I was really passionate about. My college degree is actually a bachelor’s in E coin studies and Agri business management. And if you had asked me back then what I was going to do, I had wanted to do boarding.

And I watched up after I had gone out of college, didn’t realize that was probably actually not the path that I wanted. But during that time, I was kind of working with a number of horses that both my own and then being called in by friends to, to help with some issues. And I think I had a mayor at the time in particular who was very tricky and very sensitive and really forced me to figure out a better way to work with horses. I had been brought up in that very traditional paradigm of horsemanship where, you know, come to Jesus’s, we’re regular and really not considering how the horse feels and what the horse needs in the relationship. It was a very human centric approach and I think that’s really common in the horse world still.

And she was the catalyst for me to change how I saw horses because I was very good at getting compliance and I could make a horse look pretty nice and put them together, but I was not so good at getting connection. And that’s really what I wanted. I just didn’t have the tools for it. And so I got this mayor and she forced me to figure out a better way. And as I started to put some things together and people saw what I had going, I naturally had people coming up and asking can you help me with this or with that?

Or they would see what I had working a little bit. And so that I think it naturally went from there and I started being asked to give lessons and would you come out and help with this horse. And it really very slowly grew over time to the point where I actually started to teach on a regular basis. And So what does? So this spicy mare you had, what was she doing that kind of made you take a step back and be like, what I’m doing now isn’t working?

So many horses. One of the wonderful things, and wonderful is probably a questionable word, but part of what makes horses easy to work with. The fact that in many cases we can pretty easily force a horse to do something. I just wrote a post about this recently on my business Facebook page, that horses are one of the only animals on this planet that want to get along, just to get along. And so it’s very easy to put a horse in a position where if he feels like he has no choice, even if what you’re asking of him is very uncomfortable to him either physically or mentally, he’ll do it because he just wants to get along.

He doesn’t want trouble. And so it’s very easy to put horses in positions where they’ll do what you ask. They feel concerned and trouble and worry about it. And this mare that I had was not a horse that was going to be bulleted. She wasn’t going to be told that this is how it was.

She expected that you were going to step up and you were going to prove that you were worthwhile to listen to. And if she did not feel that you were up to snuff, she wasn’t going to do a darn thing you asked. And so she really put me in a position multiple times over the course of a couple years where it was just clear that I needed to find a better way to to interact with her. The ways that I had were not going to work. And again, go back to getting compliance.

She was not a horse that was going to become an obedient horse. She expected a partnership. She expected leadership. She expected empathy. She expected me to listen.

And when I did not listen, she said, you better figure it out. So I got dumped from her a few times. She showed me a new a certain in terms I needed to change some things and she was very much the catalyst for me finding the mentors that I have now and making my way down this path and ending up sitting where I am. Yeah, it’s, I resonate with that story a lot because I compete in the upper levels of eventing and I’ve done some show jumping and it I’ve had great horses in my career, but I’ve also as a young professional in the sport. We’re getting the oh, this horse keeps bucking off its owner or this horse stands up when it goes and massage arena or problem after problem.

And I’ve always been very empathetic to the horses. And I got this mare a few years ago and she bucked me off on course one, like on a gallop path, put me on the ground and I was like. Oh. She’s really naughty and it sent me down this path of natural horsemanship. It’s one of those things where now I look at even the verbiage we use around horses, like in dressage, one of the marks you get is for submission and what’s such an aggressive.

Word. Where like your horse must submit to you. And when I teach now, I use the word acceptance. They need to accept which comes from a place of understanding versus they’re just blindly doing it because we’ve added pressure. And it basically said no, you’re not allowed to or you have to back off or you have to do XY and Z with said pressure.

And I, when I find people that are having the conversation of there is a better way to do it, I’m just like, OK, we need to talk because the conversation needs to be shifted from your horse. First and foremost. Horses don’t have to do anything right? Like we, they do things because they want the relationship with us and they want the, they like the food and they like the cookies and they’re willing to work for us, but we should want them to work with us. And that’s what like through my listeners are probably sick of hearing me say this, but I always creep the Facebook pages when I or, because usually that’s how I find guests is through social media.

One of the posts that you did very recently was about the loving a horse versus abusing a horse and it, it was just such a, an interesting perspective for me to read. Would you mind just going over that for the listeners? Yeah, it’s funny, that post had been sitting, I think internally for me for a while. And as a writer, I’ve always written as just something I enjoy. I, I do not throw my hat as a professional writer by any means, but I find it just a really very personal way of getting words out to people who might not have access to much resources in their area in terms of horsemanship and are just looking for a community like you mentioned, a community of like minded people who are looking for better ways to navigate our relationship with horses.

And so that post for me, I had been hanging on to for a while because number one, it’s difficult to put yourself and when you put into the to the public eye, especially as someone who’s in a professional capacity, you don’t always know how things are going to be interpreted. And it’s always interesting to me what posts get a lot of likes and attention and what posts are that get fewer. But that post was something that I think I as a human realized a long time ago. And it’s very much informed my relationship with horses. But I think horses ultimately taught me that lesson, that when we are interacting with someone, whether it’s a person or a horse or a dog or any other being, we can have an intention in mind that to us feels as clear as day that we loved, appreciated and respected that person or that horse or that animal.

We can believe that we’ve taken care of them. We can have intended all of those things. And yet how are actions, how our words were received by that animal can be the complete opposite. And so the idea being that abuse love and people often times don’t love to use the term abuse, That brings up a lot of emotion for people that we would get a very specific picture in our head of what it means to abuse a horse. And nobody who loves animals wants to be called animal abuser.

And so this is not about judging people or blaming people or calling people bad versus good in terms of their horsemanship. It’s recognizing that the way something lands is not always in your control. And so we talk about the way the horse feels a lot in the horsemanship schools and culture I am a part of, and how we don’t often recognize or talk about enough the way that the horse feels when we go to do things with him. We asked them to do a job. We assume that because we care for a horse in a certain way that we make sure they’re fed well and that they’re clean and that their tack fits well and that their stall is clean.

Like we assume all of these things to the horse equal the horse feeling loved. But have we met the horse’s needs? Have we listened to what the horse has said? Have we really taken a look at the animal that we have a relationship and recognize them for what they are versus what we feel they need? Have we really taken the time to listen?

And as a human, I’ve experienced that in my human relationships. And it can be very hard for people to hear that you’re a close friend or we’re talking, whether it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a human or a horse. It can be very hard for someone to hear that they did the best that they could and yet you still felt that the way that they treated you or the way they interacted with you And. And it. Yeah.

And that’s a really difficult conversation thing for people to have in the horse world because many of us, many people that I’ve met purport to love their horses. And I believe that they do. Whether the horse feels that way is another story. And I definitely got some feedback on that post that it, it hit some other people too, that. Wow, I had never considered that.

I didn’t even have control over that. How? Someone felt, yeah, no. It’s so interesting, especially because I think as humans, like it’s so easy for us to under or not even understand, but we feel sad or we feel happy, but how much internal work are we doing to understand why we’re feeling that way? And then if we do the internal work, I think it just makes us more empathetic to everything outside of us that like you said, in human relationships, sometimes you can try to put your best foot forward, but it doesn’t resonate with that other person.

And if you haven’t done the work to understand others perspectives, you’re going to take it personally understanding. Oh, OK. What can I do to make you feel valued, to make you feel whatever they’re seeking? I think it can be the same way with the horses in Yeah, I know I landed on his back six times and my 8 jump course, but I gave him a cookie after It’s Yeah, you have to do better. And sometimes I think especially it’s such a hard line with some.

I was just, I told my trainer today that I was having this podcast with you. And she’s a very old school classical dressage trainer. So for her, like it is all about the riding the horses correctly. That’s all she strives for. And he wants to make the horse a better version of themselves.

And so we started talking about riders who don’t necessarily try to get better. They’re they accept, oh, I’m just off balance or oh, I’m just, and it’s a little bit of a different, this is more of a physical thing, but it all impacts the relationship that you have with that horse because it does. And yeah, I think I saw another post of yours which I think went pretty viral. Which was the the skeleton, the spine or the yes I was like I knew it was petty or Poly or by the. Polar Mayor.

Yes. And it’s we have something in my area called the Bone Room. I know well and actually Saxon Alexandra, who is my friend and the guardian and Pam’s work and has spent a lot of time in Ache and secting and looking at those skeletons. And so we had Lucinda Green came and did like a multiple day clinic here and I went and audited the clinic and she was, she went to the bone room like her first night here. And I asked her, I was like, what did going to the bone room make you feel about how you’ve trained?

Not just not like you’ve trained horses partly, but like when you actually look at what we’re doing to them, like, how does that make you feel? And she was like, honestly, we need to be way nicer to our horses, more understanding of by the time they start communicating pain with us, it’s gotten pretty bad. And I was like. Yeah. And it goes back to, unfortunately, a lot of us, whether we came up through 4H, through Pony Club, through young riders, like whatever channel you came into, horses or none of those, you just always had horses and you enjoy them.

There’s no baseline requirements for riding. There’s no baseline requirements for having a horse. And so there are so few of us that really were given a solid foundational understanding of what is a horse like, how do they think what is natural to them, what is not natural to them? Just a basic understanding of the fact that a horse is a prey animal. They are an animal that’s constantly adjusting to their environment.

They’re a herd animal of these very basic things that that you might be able to read about or watch National Tooth Graphic or Discovery or whatever and you find out. But we don’t often think about the fact that we’ve taken an animal that was never designed to be with people, never designed to be ridden, never designed to bear weight on its back. We’ve put in a domesticated setting, we’ve changed his feeding patterns, we’ve changed their herd dynamics. We’ve confined them to smaller spaces than they would ever naturally live in. And then we asked them to do a job for us.

And none of that is natural to them and they don’t have tools for it. They weren’t born knowing how to interact with people and had to be ridden. And so we we neglect to learn all that we need to learn to be able to assist them with the job we’re asking them to do. And then we wonder why we have horses that end up with behavioral issues that end up with pain issues that end up with injuries that end up with really serious pathologies that potentially could have been prevented, but we just didn’t have the knowledge going into it. And so I think the work that Pam and Diane and the what Peggy the pole pony mayor’s skeleton has to teach us about the importance not only of riding well, but also of good husbandry practices and understanding the kind of animals that we’re dealing with in the, in this sport and this hobby that we love.

How important that is to the horse, first and foremost. And what would you say good husbandry practices are? I always go back to as much as I can, and I’m quoting Harry Whitney here, who is who I’m down here to see right now. It come down every year, and he has been a mentor of mine for about a decade. As far as I’m concerned, he’s the best, best kept secret in the clinician world as far as someone who understands clear as day how to work with a horse in a way that’s meaningful to the horse.

Harry talks about that. He was looking at things from the horse to his point of view, and if you understand how a horse feels and what he needs in order to feel content, then you can answer a lot of the questions regarding husbandry. Horses are herd animals. They’re designed to to be in social groups. So keeping horses in herds, keeping horses turned out in groups, making sure that they have access to adequate socialization, and that can both mean other horses, but also appropriate herds can cause as much stress as they can alleviate stress.

If you’ve got animals that that are not going to get along with one another and you can find them to a small space, those horses out on the range could get a mile from one another and probably be OK. But we put them in confined areas and then we cause issues for them because they don’t have enough space to get out of confrontation. Making sure that you add you offer horses adequate turn out. They’re not designed to be stabled. And don’t get me wrong, I think it’s important that our horses know how to stall and know how to do so comfortably and calmly and with relaxation because you might need that at some point.

It’s a tool. But keeping them confined, it is not how they’re designed to be. Keeping them movement moving. I think it’s Kathleen Lindley Beckham, who’s a student of Buck Brannaman’s that I’ve met in the past. She often refers to the three FS, forage, freedom and friends.

Knowing how a horse digestive system is designed and limiting how much concentrated feeds you’re offering them or designed to live on those roughage and movement and constant access to the basic things that they need to be comfortable goes a long way in helping them feel better about when you go to ask them to do something. You’ve at least taken care of the basics and you could go on from there. But those are the three that often get neglected to a certain degree. And there is movement, I think in the equine industry to to normalize those things. But it’s still really common in a lot of places that horses live stalled much of the day.

They are getting large grain meals or not getting access to to hay consistently and they’re either not turned out or turned out by themselves. And that’s just how they were designed to live. Yeah, no, it definitely is. I, I’ve clients and we have very nice show horses and some of my clients have moved from other parts of the country where they were in rigorous programs with other trainers who was basically like, OK, your horse is in a stall 16 hours a day. They get turned out from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM and that’s, and if they run, they come inside and if they get hot, they come inside and you know it.

Then those horses are consistently the ones they need shoes on. They need all these supplements. They, they need a calming supplement because they’re not getting the sun. And it’s, I had on a guy on the podcast who owns Canna Horse ACBD company. And a lot of the things he’s saying is that the horse industry has become, it’s like any industry anywhere where there’s big players that through financial gain can direct the narrative of where the industry goes.

I think we’re really seeing that like how many I I had on this is a great example. I had on 2 nutritionists, 1 was a functional nutritionist and 1 was Agri. And I think they refer to them as like agricultural based nutritionists. Both went to school to study veterinary that equine science I guess is the term. But I had gone into both podcasts thinking, OK, what are the differences in these two schools of thought?

And then what I ended up coming away with was both of these people agree that OK, horses need hay before anything else, horses need hay. And then we end up, OK, so we all agree, right, Horses need hay. And but the message just isn’t quite getting everywhere yet that OK, your horse is skinny. We’re going to put them on more grain. And it’s are they skinny because they’re lacking calories?

Or are they skinny because they’re stressed out because maybe their saddle is rubbing a certain way and it makes them uncomfortable and they’re internalizing it. And there’s we view things in such human thoughts that it’s no, your horse might be skinny because they’re spending all this time thinking and internalizing, and by throwing more green, you’re actually creating a tougher nervous system to work with. And maybe your horse just needs an extra few hours of turn out. And it’s it like any other relationship? I think sometimes to your point about we look at it from a very human perspective, we forget that we are in a relationship with an animal.

If I am not understanding why my partner’s acting the way that they are, I’m going to ask him like, hey, what’s going on with you? And different than the horse? Obviously he can tell me a way. That’s probably pretty clear to me what’s happening. We don’t have that ability with our horses.

And so it’s all the more reason why I tell my students and why I harp again and again in my writing, in my teaching, on the fact that your best source of information in this relationship is your horse. What does that mean for the human? It means, number one, that I feel pretty resolute on this. There is not a human on this planet that I’m going to believe over my horse. If my horse says something is not working, I’m going to trust my horse.

Yeah. I don’t care if a vet tells me they’re fine. I don’t care if it tells me they’re fine. And the mentors that I have would be the first to say to me, if I tell you something and you go and try that and your horse says, no, don’t believe me, Go believe your horse and figure out a way to navigate that. And that puts the person in the position where we can’t just ask her horse, hey, does this hurt?

Hey, how does this feel like it? It’s we have to develop an understanding of animal that we’re working with. We have to be willing to try things. We have to be willing to go against the grain, which can be really hard in this industry where you’ve got 10 people with 20 different opinions and two nutritionists which feel two different ways and three vets that feel three different ways. And the research says this, and it’s really hard sometimes to feel confident enough when you know that there’s so much you don’t know to say I’m going to listen to my horse.

And so being comfortable, taking some chances, trying some things, experimenting, using your imagination to come up with solutions, you will never be wrong listening to your horse. But that’s a really hard thing to do sometimes in this industry where there is so much noise about what you should and shouldn’t be doing and a lot of judgement about it too. Unfortunately, yeah, no, it’s definitely and I social media has really exasperated a lot of opinions right. There is no, I have seen excellent horsemanship at the five star level of eventing and I’ve seen horrendous horsemanship at 5 star level of eventing. Yet there’s both things can exist at the same time and both of both camps have people that believe in what that person is putting out there.

If it works for your horse, then yeah, you can’t really say. But again, is it working for your horse? And that’s the that’s really where I feel the horse industry is starting to come around. Is this, I call it like a horse first approach? To me, eventing is we’re all passionate about the things we do, but I feel like eventing is the best horse sport because it really puts the relationship of the rider and the horse to the ultimate test in terms of if you have a horse that you get to take all the way up to the level and you have to draw off the edge of the world, If your horse doesn’t trust you, they’re not going to take that lead.

And that’s really what separates the you got there to the, oh, you can do it again and again. And, and that’s I have this thing where when I go cross country schooling, one of the first things I do is a draw because I go, how is my relationship with my horse today? And if they say no to that draw, then I have to go, I have to workshop. I have to figure out what’s the missing piece? What’s going on versus going and doing a whole bunch of stuff and then going to the drop and realizing, oh crap, I shouldn’t have done all that other stuff?

They weren’t ready for it. They don’t. They might have felt confident enough in themselves to do it, but this is a partnership so they need trust in me as well to do it now then. Maybe they were able to do it yesterday, but today is a different day. And again, we go back to humans thinking like humans instead of humans trying to put themselves in the horse’s shoes.

I don’t have the same horse out of the stall or out of the pasture this morning that I did yesterday. It’s a different horse, different day. And being able to be flexible enough to completely set aside any agenda I might have had actually ends up being the quicker path to doing what I was hoping to be able to do. Because I’m showing the horse over and over again that I’m willing to meet him where he’s at and attend to how he feels and take care of the things that bother him and that he needs. And for a pretty animal, for an animal that relies on the relationships and the support of others as an integral part of their safety, that’s huge.

It’s one of the things I think sometimes that we forget the most as as people. And you see it all the time on on you reference social media. And I sometimes honestly try and take away the means and the video because I see so many examples of people who don’t understand why their horses do what they do and almost make fun of or minimize the horse’s feelings about things. And yeah, we know that plastic bag in the corner isn’t going to kill it, but it has an into the horses evolution. Yeah, that he doesn’t know that.

And so to that, even if we know that, it’s no big deal to take what he feels seriously and to help him through that, you’ll make a friend of a horse really fast. And at that point, I think it was either Tom Dorrance or Ray Hunt who said something like, I’d like to get to the point with my horse where I could ask him to ride up a telephone pole or down a badger hole and he would do it for me. Not that I would ask him to do that, but I’d like to think that I could. He has that much faith in me. And certainly whether you’re riding upper level eventing or you’re working cows or you’re you’re cross country trekking, to have a force that knows that he can count on you is a heck of a tool for sure.

What is natural horsemanship to you? I had a feeling you were probably going to ask me that. I don’t use the term to be honest with you. I don’t describe what I do as natural horsemanship. I, my, my personal feelings on it is that it is a it’s the term that I think has become very commercialized.

I, my mentors, have all kind of been in the same school of thought about being very particular and concerned about the horse’s point of view and looking at things from the horse’s point of view and really looking to understand how a horse is. And if you go back and you look at some of the things that Tom and Bill Dorrance or Ray Hunt and then now Buck Brennan is the really well known one are doing a lot of that, the images, the videos, much of it which didn’t have audio with it of some of these early guys doing this stuff. And they were really the first ones or the most well known ones to bring this type of working with horses to mainstream horse culture. There are a lot of people who saw what they were doing and I think had an they thought they knew what was happening. They saw it in videos or maybe they went and go went and saw these guys work or saw pictures of it and they got an idea of what they thought was happening, but they were missing all of those smaller minute details that really got the horse to be where he was in what they were seeing.

And so they took what they thought was going on and then they developed these practices. And so a lot of the stuff that you see, and I’m not going to need names because I’m not interested in in quibbling about who’s worthwhile listening to. I think people need to make up their own minds as to to what feels good to them. But really common practices around round penning horses, for example, and driving horses to move a ton in a round pen is something that came from people watching what these guys were doing and assuming that’s what they wanted. And you can certainly drive a horse in the round pen, and then you can back up and you create this vacuum and they get sucked in and they come to you and it looks really spectacular.

But that’s very different than getting a horse to where they might be moving around on their own because they’re looking for comfort and then in small ways, finding ways to get them to start looking you up. And then pretty soon they start to figure out that when they look you up, things feel better. And then they actually want to come to you. Versus pushing the horse to run and run and run and run until they’re so tired that they’re desperate for an out and then you back up and, and why they got there. It’s a subtle difference in terms of how the horse looks to the point where people mistake the two.

But how the horse feels, again, we go back to how does the horse feel is completely different. And so for me, a lot of what in the natural horsemanship world or what people call natural horsemanship these days is an adaptation of I think the original ideas. Some of it might be great, some of it might be a little bit misapplied. But either way, for me as a writer, as someone who’s a word nerd, like I really particular when I teach about the words that I use, because our thoughts influence our words and our words influence our actions. And how we speak about our horses absolutely influences how we treat them for sure, and how we think about them and how we relate to them.

And so the word natural to me just doesn’t make sense because we were never meant to ride horses. Biology never intended that. And so the idea that anything that we do with a horse is natural is just not, not to me, an accurate representation. Josh Nickel, who is a gentleman out of Canada who I really appreciate his approach, makes a little bit sense to me. Yeah.

I have not found good words to describe how I work or what I do. It’s to I. I basically just say I work with what the horse is telling me. They’re they communicate through body language and snorts and ears. And it’s, it is so I, and I hate the term natural horsemanship because I remember when I was a kid and I just, my mom would be like, oh, my mom’s a fox hunter and she would be like, that person does natural horsemanship.

And I’d see them waving their carrots stick in the air. And I was like, well, yes, this person. And so when I think of natural horsemanship, that’s what I think. But yeah, there is no like better or other term that I’ve really heard that I’m like, that gets the point across. We have relationship horsemanship like if that makes sense.

So when you’re working with horse, So what when I’m working with horses that some people refer to as problem horses, I look at this is a horse that’s living in fight or flight. They’re not in a state of Zen, right? That’s my end goal is I’m trying to get them here and they’re either here or here. What are some subtle and maybe even not so subtle signs that your horse may be in fight or flight? And then what are some tools you have that some person that when they’re bringing their horse in from turn out or whatever it may be something that’s that can start that relationship building.

Your timing is good with this question because I literally come down every year to Tennessee and this is exactly the stuff that we talked about. And it is the foundation of where pretty much you have to start with a horse in order to be able to get somewhere wherever you have in mind isn’t. And so one of the first things I look at is where is the horse looking? What are they looking at? Because whatever he’s looking at is what he’s thinking about.

And if I can get to his brain, you can move the feet all you want, you can direct the body, you can get a horse bent around and pretzeled up and you might even get him looking pretty good. But you can have a horse you know is moving One Direction but looking in another direction. And so understanding what is drawing your horse’s attention, understanding what is consuming their thoughts, understanding where are they looking and what are they thinking about. And sometimes you might not even know exactly what they’re thinking about. You just know that they’re not thinking about you is the 1st place I usually start with most people, whether they have a quote problem horse or not.

Your horse can’t be in a frame of mind to learn anything from you or really accept you as someone who could help them with their problems. If they’re not thinking about you, that fire rate, it might be because there is something in their environment that is concerning to them and so they’re feeling like I might need to protect myself or my safety is threatened and that happens all the time. A lot of times it’s less that there is something in their environment that is scary. And more that the horse has just learned how to either tune the human out because the human has not noticed when they need help. And so the horse learns pretty quickly that the human is not going to help.

So they might be with you, they might be attached to you, might be sitting on them, but they are constantly scanning the environment because they figured out that you’re not going to be very useful if something happens. Or the horse just might not be thinking about what you’re thinking about. You go to pick up your right rein to turn right and your horse is thinking about his buddies in the pasture to the left. And now you’ve got a conflict on your hands. And how you handle that conflict will inform how the rest of your ride goes.

And when I watch people lead their horses, when I watch people ride, one of the first things I’m looking for is, are they aware of what their horse is thinking about? And then are they taking steps to try and redirect the horse’s attention back to them, address the things that are concerning? Or are they completely unaware of any of those things and they’re trying to force a conversation that the horse isn’t even a part of in that? Moment interesting and what are some sort of basic ground level things that US riders can start doing to create that conversation? The horse.

So often we’re going to hurry to do the thing that we wanted to do, right? So like we have envisioned in our brain on our way to the barn that we’re going to do this with our horse, We’re going to go on this type of ride, we’re going to school this particular thing. And so we forget about everything leading up to the moment that we get in the saddle, but the routine small stuff that you do every single day again and again, going out to the pasture. How you halter your horse? Where is your horse when you lead them?

How does your horse tie? How do they feel about being tied? Whether you cross tie or single tie, How does your horse feel when you put the saddle on him? How do they girth? Do they stand quietly while you groom or are they constantly fussing and pulling and looking around?

How do they offer their feet to you? Can they offer their feet to you? Are you fighting to pick out their feet? All of these little things that we do 100 times over and over again really inform everything that happens after. And the time that we spend in the saddle is almost inconsequential if you’re not taking care of all of these other little details.

It’s super, super common that I get called out to help with people who had horses that are hard to catch. And the the person’s concern is have an hour and it takes me 40 minutes to catch my horse and now I only have 20 minutes to ride. And my first thought is, why haven’t you worked on the catching? That would be a logical place to start. But we don’t always think about that because we’re so focused on.

But I want to ride and I just got to get this done. The horse is telling you he has concerns about that. So let’s work at that to the point where it’s not an issue and he feels better about it. You can go and you can do something, but see these little spots we miss, and we miss how important they are to the horse and how much easier we could make our lives and their lives if we paid attention to them and got them working well. So that when we did want to go and do something, we’ve got a horse who feels pretty good about being with us.

Yeah, that’s a good point. I always say like very little of the time I spend with horses with anxiety who come to me with anxiety under saddle, is the anxiety actually about the riding. Like so many times the anxiety starts they don’t cross ties, so they’re anxious on the cross ties that carries into the ride. Oh, they don’t want to leave their body that it starts this whole chain of events that by the time we actually get to ride them, of course they’re anxious. They’re like, I left my hay pile and my friend is going to eat it.

And I want to be with my friend and you’re like, let’s go ride. And they’re like, but I’m having and I always say like when I start working with horses, my big thing is I need to become a part of their herd. That’s I work a lot with herd bound horses. I don’t know why just become a little bit of a niche of mine. A lot of thoroughbreds are hard bound.

I’ve come to notice and lots of thoroughbreds are inventing. And I always say I’m like, they’re you’re not a part of their herd. They don’t see you as their people when in order to get them to a place of comfort leaving the herd, they need to realize that this is also in their comfort zone and you have to start here. Maybe they are anxious on the cross ties, but is it because they’re actually anxious 5 feet away from the paddock gate? And then by the time you get to the cross ties, they’re like I told you I wanted to go back and it’s always it goes back to that.

What is your horse telling you and are you listening? Yeah, Deb Bennett, who is, has been a mentor of mine for about a decade now. Who whose article from Equus I referenced in that post about love and abuse and what that can mean to the horse. She first introduced me to this idea, this analogy metaphor regarding under thinking about his body, where else? And so her and bound horses are bound sour or buddy sour, whose comped is their environment, whose comfort is other horses who don’t see you as a source of comfort.

She uses this idea of the birdie and the thread, and her metaphor is if each of us, us horses, dogs, cats, rats, birds, we all have this little birdie that’s sitting on her forehead and it looks out at the world and it is representative of our thoughts. It’s representative of where we’re thinking about and what we’re thinking about and how hard we’re thinking about it. And if you separate the horse, the horse physically from his thoughts, if he’s thinking about his bodies and his hay pile and his pasture, and you drag his body into the barn and then you go for a walk down the road, you are creating a situation in which the horse is literally feeling like you’re tearing him in half because he’s thinking about one thing and you’re pushing him to do another. And the further he gets from where he’d rather be and what he’s thinking about, the more problematic his behavior. And it’s why there’s so often that kind of fine line with horses.

You get so far away from the barn, you get so far away from their buddies and all of a sudden you get a bolt or you get a buck or you get a spook and they just lose it. And it’s because you’ve taken them so far away from where they’re at mentally that they have no choice. Because they literally feel like I could bring me a really big trouble if I don’t get myself back there. And it’s so hard sometimes for people to understand that because we just don’t, we don’t think that way. And still, I often tell people, most of us have had a desk job.

Picture yourself Friday afternoon 430. Everyone’s getting ready to clock out and your boss comes in and he throws a huge pile of work on your desk and he’s have fun. What’s going to be going through your body? You’re already like mentally checking out. You got 1/2 hour to go.

You’re thinking about your weekend plans and your barbecues and like what you’re going to do when you get home. And now you’ve just been given a task. How many of us are going to be able to focus, feel good about doing what we’re being asked to do when our thoughts are so far from where we are physically? And that seems a lot more relatable to people. And so trying constantly think about what does the horse feel about this and how can I help them feel better so that we can go and do some of the stuff that we want to do and we don’t have that conflict.

But that takes time I think, for people to to constantly see in their daily interactions. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that that was a great analogy. I’m like, oh, I’d quit. Most of us would go nuts because it’s like, I know how checked out I feel this afternoon.

It makes a lot of sense, that internal conflict that you have, and that’s what the horse feels when you ask him to go somewhere and he’s not thinking about where he’s going. You now have a conflict, and what you do with that conflict, informed, was whether he can play some faith in you and you help him feel better or you prove to him that you’re not paying attention and now you’re part of the problem. Yeah. And that’s not someplace any of us want to be. Not for sure.

This has been such a great conversation, I feel like that hour just blew by. If you would mind just telling the listeners where they can find you and your stuff and all that good stuff. Yeah, I am on Facebook primarily reference Equine is my professional Facebook page. My contact information is there. I teach primarily in upstate New York, Vermont and Southern New Hampshire, but I do virtual lessons in a couple different formats.

It’s something I do for folks all over the states, as well as connecting my home region and then moving people Have fun Me through is on that Facebook page. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me. All right. Thanks, Sam.

All right, that’s a wrap for today. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, hit that subscribe button so you never miss what’s coming out next. And if you got something out of it, send it to a friend or share it on social media. Tag me so I can say thanks.

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