Check out these 3 relationship changemakers
Are you struggling with your horse?
Perhaps their behaviour is getting more difficult to deal with, or maybe things are 'just ok', but you are longing for a more connected relationship with your horse.
Below are the 3 biggest relationship changemakers I have experienced with my horses.
1. Taking the time to understand how horses learn.
There are few things more frustrating that when a horse just doesn’t ‘get’ whatever you are trying to teach them to do. If it happens a lot, this can make our whole relationship with our horse feel frustrating, annoying and just like a lot of hard work.
I found that the single biggest changemaker in this regard was when I took the time to learn the different ways in which horses learn. It was, and still is invaluable. Before this, it felt like I was ‘throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick’ and my choices of spaghetti were limited to suggestions from horsey friends and instructors who (no disregard to them) didn’t understand learning from a scientific perspective. To continue with the analogy, when I took the time to understand how horses learn, it meant that I knew about a much wider variety of spaghetti types, I knew the stickability of each in certain situations, which varieties to avoid and how long to cook it to get the stickiness that I wanted. I now knew WHAT to do, all I needed to practice was coordinating my arms to throw the spaghetti just so, in order for it to stick as planned.
Essentially, getting crystal clear on the different ways that our horses learn, from a scientific perspective, meant that not only could I evaluate different training options and select the technique that best fit the situation, but I also knew how to apply that technique correctly, to make sure it was effective. It made things much clearer for me and for my horses. It also made it very easy for me to decide which techniques I wanted in my toolbox and which ones I didn't. Win-win!
Let’s face it, having success with our horse training makes us happy and if we are feeling happy most of the time we are around our horses, then that is going to make us feel pretty good about our relationship with our horse.
2. An ability to interpret what the horse is saying
The majority of horse communication is really subtle and most of us are never taught to notice it or how to interpret it. Taking the time to learn how to understand what your horse is saying when they are giving really subtle communication signals, can have a huge impact on your relationship together, and is SO WORTH IT.
I like to think about horse communication in terms of green, amber and red light behaviours. We all want to avoid red light behaviours – these are the big, scary, dangerous behaviours like bucking, bolting, rearing and pulling back. The observant amongst us might even notice some amber light signals, that warn us red light behaviours are on the way. It’s in the green light zone that we want to learn to hang out with our horse though. This is the zone where relaxed communication happens and our horses tell us about how they feel about things without the emotion and danger of the red light behaviours. It is the best place for our horse to learn new things and it is the safest, calmest zone. Learning how to listen to your horses communications in this zone and how to help them to stay in the green light zone is invaluable, for your relationship and your safety.
Students on my Learn to Speak Horse program tell me that hands down, learning how to understand and respond to what their horses are telling them in the green zone, had the biggest impact on their relationship with their horse.
3. Understanding what motivates our horses’ behaviour
Behaviour always occurs for a reason. Oftentimes though, we misinterpret the reasons that our horse does something, because we can only see the behaviour through our ‘human lens’ and we attribute reasons a human might do the behaviour, simply because we don’t have the ‘horse lens’ to see through, to understand why our horse is doing the behaviour.
One example of this is whenever a horse is described as naughty or manipulative. Horses don’t have the mental capacity to be either naughty or manipulative, but humans excel at it, so it is top of mind for us to think of these things as drivers of behaviour if we are looking at horse behaviour through our ‘human lens’.
Instead, to truly understand our horses and to find the root cause of any problem behaviours, we need to learn to think like a horse. A key component in learning to think like a horse is understanding the Equine Hierarchy of Needs, because our horses will behave in ways to try and meet any unmet needs.
When we understand the Equine Hierarchy of Needs and can think like a horse, it gives us the ‘horse lens’ we need, to correctly interpret their behaviour. That is why learning about the Equine Hierarchy of Needs is a key component of my online program Learn to Speak Horse, because it is crucial for us to understand how to think like a horse, in order to apply the ‘horse lens’ and correctly interpret their behaviour and body language communications to us.
Taking the step of learning about the Equine Hierarchy of Needs and being able to apply the ‘horse lens’ to interpreting horse behaviour is truly relationship changing for you and your horse. In fact, one student describes this process as like having an image come into focus, because she suddenly had so much clarity about what her horse was saying by his behaviour and body language signals.
© Sara Jackson 2022