The Silent Conversation

Do you let your horse have a voice? Do you listen to what they have to say, or do you unintentionally talk over them? No quality conversation is one-sided. When we speak with our human friends, there is dialogue. Why, then, do our conversations with horses sometimes turn into a monologue?

Photo Credit: Mutt Love Photography

Horses might be non-verbal in most of their communications, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t saying as much or more than we are. Horses are highly intuitive beings, and they communicate with each other through body language, intention, and feel. They are always giving and receiving feedback to and from the humans or other horses they are communicating with, occasionally verbally but primarily through other forms of non-verbal communication.

The last sentence of the previous paragraph holds a key that is often over looked: horses are always receiving feedback from us, not just giving it. Most of us recognize that horses are communicating their likes and dislikes with us when they demonstrate behaviours such as wiggling their lips, pawing, or pinning their ears, but we aren’t always aware of just how much feedback we are giving our horses in return. Whether or not you are aware of it, your body language, intention, and energy are also constantly telling your horse things, whether you mean for them to or not.

Listening is an art form. When I worked in management and sales, many of the training programs I took revolved around communication. Part of being a good communicator is being able to articulate well, but sometimes being a good listener is even more important. There are two types of listening: listening to respond, and listening to understand.

Listening to respond is a trap many of us fall into. Someone starts telling us a story, and we only half listen to what they are saying; meanwhile, our brain is rapidly relating what they’re saying to something going on in our own life. We can’t wait to interject our own experiences into the story first chance we get. Or, if we feel targeted by something they’re saying, we become defensive and start trying to justify ourselves versus listening to what they’re trying to tell us. We don’t actually hear what they’re trying to tell us, because we are so concerned with making ourselves heard.

Listening to understand is very different. It involves really hearing what the other person has to say; putting ourselves in their shoes, and trying to understand where they’re coming from. This doesn’t mean we have to agree with them; it simply means being able to understand their perspective and feelings.

When we are working with horses, we need to ask ourselves if we are truly listening to what they’re trying to tell us. If your horse nips at you when you’re tightening the girth, do you call them cranky and ignore the behaviour or scold them for it? Or do you ask more questions to find out why they’re cranky, then work on solving the root cause?

Sometimes we are surprised by these reactions from our horses, because we didn’t notice all of their communications leading up to the nipping. They may have been giving us clues for days or even weeks, such as shifting their weight slightly away when we put the saddle pad on, tensing their back muscles, turning an ear to the side. Then when it finally escalates to nipping, we are caught “off-guard” and get mad at the horse for being cranky, when really they have been telling us repeatedly that something is uncomfortable, and we just didn’t listen until they “raised their voice.”

I frequently see this with horses who have anxiety. Often, I don’t get called in to help with training problems until they have become quite severe; partly because people aren’t as bothered by little disobediences as they are by big ones, but mainly because people don’t actually realize there’s a problem until it’s full-blown. Usually by this point, the horse is so anxious it has become dangerous; bulldozing into its handler, biting, kicking, striking etc.

Although the owner might think the horse had a sudden personality change, in actuality, the problem was building for quite some time. It is often related to leadership; the horse is insecure and looking for guidance, and the handler doesn’t notice the horse questioning who’s in charge. The horse will shift their shoulder into the person leading them on the ground or change their line of travel or speed slightly under saddle, and the human won’t correct it or even notice that it happened if it’s subtle.

To a horse, everything means something, whether or not we notice it. So many times we miss their subtle communications because we aren’t paying attention, we aren’t educated enough in their meanings, or we aren’t expecting them to come in the form that they do. Then we are surprised or upset by their actions, when really the horses were telling us all along how they were feeling and we just didn’t hear them.

Not listening to what they’re telling us is often unintentional. We don’t speak their language well enough to notice they’re trying to say something. Other times, though, we are biased in our listening skills. How often do we ask our horses a question, but only listen to their answer if it’s what we want to hear? 

We need to ask ourselves every single time we are working with a horse if we are actually listening to what they’re saying, even if it isn’t what we want to hear. We also need to look at all the potential ways they might be trying to communicate with us. Much of their feedback comes in forms we are far less aware of than they are.

Once we identify their methods of communication, we need to listen to understand. Put ourselves in their shoes, and recognize how they are feeling as well as how they’re interpreting what we are attempting to communicate to them. So many behavioural and training issues are actually due to poor communication rather than actual disobediences. If we can improve our communication and listening skills, we can better help our horses to understand what we are asking and why it’s favourable to do it.

Becoming a better rider isn’t just about improving your riding skills, it’s about becoming a better listener and communicator. The best trainers are excellent communicators. They can read a horse instantly in most scenarios, immediately understanding what that horse is feeling and saying.

They are also excellent listeners. If they run into a problem, they work through it by trying to figure out what is going on in the horse’s head. Each horse they work with teaches them something new, and they’re open to learning.  They recognize that each horse has different feelings and needs and work with them on an individual level, versus trying to fit every horse into the same box.

You don’t have to be a professional to train a horse. In fact, every second we spend around horses, we are training them. Why? Because horses are always listening and learning. Their survival depends on awareness; they must constantly take in everything that’s happening around them and react accordingly. If we don’t follow suit and stay aware of everything they’re doing around us, we will quickly lose their trust and respect.

This means we must always act with awareness and intention when we are around horses. All of our movements, emotional responses, and actions are a form of communication with them, and they are listening to what we are saying. Each day we owe it to them to not only listen to what they’re telling us, but to be aware also of what we are saying to them.