Horses Don’t Lie

In his book Horses Don’t Lie Chris Irwin has this to say about how we affect our horses behaviors.

“In other sports, if you’re not having your best day, it doesn’t bother your equipment. Your golf clubs don’t care if you slice and your surfboard doesn’t care if you fall off.

Horses, however, care intensely. Remember, they’re counting on us to provide clearly consistent leadership-we are the ones who are supposed to know what we’re doing. So when they sense a wobbly, unbalanced, on-the-edge-of-control rider it troubles them. It shakes their trust and leads them to rebel against what they are being asked to do. And as typically seen, here’s where all sorts of horse behavior problems begin.”

Often when our horse is acting up we just assume it’s him who is having a bad day when in reality most of the time we need to take a look at ourselves first before we lay the responsibility on our horse. While this isn’t always easy to remember when we ask our horse for a nice slow lope and he goes into an out of control canter we’d do well to check in with ourselves first before we discipline our horse.

The Power in the Horse Human Relationship

A Horse Has Powerful Physical Force but Even More Emotional Force on the people whose lives they touch.

I’ve been involved with horses for many years but it was a long rainy winter some 6 years ago when I really learned the power in the horse human relationship.

When my 4th sister, Ruth, died I retreated from life. While I didn’t make a conscious choice to retreat I retreated just the same. Life was dull and gray and I  no longer thought about the future and meeting goals or building a career or even building and maintaining relationships. I simply existed moving through my day to day chores only because I had to or my horses would starve or at the very least be left in dirty stalls.

For several months following Ruth’s death I went through the motions of working my horses while hardly paying them any real attention. But gradually I began to sense and feel them on a deeper level than I had before.

I knew about body language and that we communicate with horses and humans with 80% body language and only 20% verbal language, so that was no surprise. What was a surprise was finding out they responded to my body and mind energy.

I learned that even my thoughts carry energy and as I think it my horses respond to it. I began to learn a whole new way to communicate with my horses and with people.

Day by day my horses began to teach me about a higher level of communication than I had known. They began to soothe my very soul and taught me that life here on earth in the physical form is after all only one form of life, but not the only form of life.

They began to lead me instead of me them and they began the process of taking me down an entirely different path than the one I had previously been on.

Did they help me to heal? Yes but more than that they taught me life is more than what we see and even feel. We can’t see a horse’s instinct but instinct exists. We can’t see this whole other realm of being, communicating and living but there is a higher level of life.

While I’m not sure how to explain it and what words to use, I do know that it exists and my horses helped me to get in touch with it that long winter.

If they can do this then how much more can they teach each of us. It’s a good thing to slow down and find out.