Why What Trainers Say Matters

They say that if you want to study body language all you need to do is watch television with the sound turned off. A similar thing happens with horse training: if you close your eyes and focus on listening to what a person says, you can learn a lot.

I am a firm believer that the language we choose when dealing with horses reflects on a grand scale our inner feelings about them and how they should be treated. If we look at some common words used by many traditional trainers will illustrate my point: "make," "kick," "tell," and the all too common phrase, "show the horse who's boss." These words all indicate force and the general conception that the human is going to get a horse to do something come hell or high-water.

Let's look more closely at the word "make." If I would like you to do something with me and I politely ask you to do it, i.e. "would you please help me pick up this sofa?," that is very different than if I try to make you do it by hitting you with a frying pan. In the first instance I was as polite as possible, in asking you to help me. Hopefully, if I ask nicely enough you will help me, and I will get my sofa moved. If, however, I whack you with a frying pan, you will either help me and hate me for it, or simply refuse to help me at all. If you are a horse like my wife, you will grab the frying pan out of my hand, hit me over the head with it and I still won't have my sofa moved.

We see the frying pan method of horse training happen all the time. Horses, unlike humans, often don't have the ability to say no to someone trying to force them to do something, so they either comply or they can't wait for it to be over.

Some time ago we were at an eventing show when I overheard a trainer yell to a kid competing on her horse, "kick harder, kick harder." In addition to feeling sorry for the girl's horse, I felt sorry for the girl, for being taught by an adult to be so rude and horrible to a prey animal. Young children should be taught kindness and compassion toward animals, not force and coercion. And unfortunately, this attitude is all too common in the world of horses, and particularly when competition is involved. Competition can turn normally nice people into frying pan wielding monsters.

So the next time you are with your horse, or you are taking a lesson from someone, or you are just watching someone else with their horse, pay attention to the words they use, and when you do, realize that the words they choose directly represent the way they view horses in general. And ask yourself if you were a horse, how would you like someone to speak to you?