By Neil Pye
We talk a lot about learning to understand horse behavior—how to be with horses and what makes them tick. Unfortunately, it takes quite some time to become aware of the ramifications of our human behavior. Often, the biggest impediment is poor old humans not understanding our impact on these skeptical creatures.
You often hear it talked about in the program, but it's not until you get some practice playing with horses and going through Levels 1 and 2, and have some experience and struggles that it starts to sink in.
Parelli has inspired you. You want to be good with horses. You want to achieve. You want to make progress. You want your horse to do what you want. Wait a minute, there’s a lot of me in there, but not much mention of what’s in it for the horse.
You’ve done nothing wrong, but that omission is common for us predators. A practicing predator is ambitious. We have goals and timelines. We're always planning. When we get into the program, it's only natural that we strive and get inspired. We learn many things, but it takes a long while, and just reading this article will not stop it either. But at some point, you might remember Pat discussing your responsibilities, the first being not to act like a predator.
Easy to say, hard to do. What does, don't act like a predator mean? Well, it's far beyond not being bad or mean to your horse, which at first seems to be the obvious inference.
There are probably ten articles I could write about types of predatorial behavior, but the biggy is our direct-line nature.
You don't know how direct line you are until someone points it out to you because it's all we know. Direct line is probably the number one thing of being a human, and that sort of direct-line approach has served us in our everyday world, business world, and perhaps our social world. Unfortunately, it has no cache to a simple horse who cannot comprehend your ambitions.
There seems to be very little in his uncomplicated map of reality for him.
Just that awareness alone sets you on a less direct approach and allows for a more balanced and beneficial relationship for both horse and human.
Your work ethic will repel your horse, and instead of developing a relationship with your horse, your approach will do the opposite. You need to genuinely start to think about what his needs are, not just yours.
Unless you adapt your approach and start to learn to pepper in your teaching rather than pound it in, you will put your horse off.
When you think you're onto something in our human world, you want to strive to achieve even more. The horse perceives your perseverance as pressure; without a retreat and chance to process, he will become concerned for his safety.
Horses have learned from their past, but they live in the here and now, and unless we meet them there in the present and put in a little bit at a time, they're just not going to understand us.
Unlike us dreaming about the future, horses are happy living, feeling safe and comfortable in the now.
The funny thing is, if we adapt, we'll start to see results.
If the human changes, the horse will make the change. Your horse will start to sense some understanding and empathy in your communication.
The desired product and progress suddenly appear by peppering in versus pounding in information because we've simply included the process that suits his needs.
What a concept.
Till next time, keep it natural.
