Releasing what you love: horses, entitlement, and truths

I went to the barn today for the first time since July. I went with my friend Thyra and as we drove away, I found myself weeping. And it wasn’t because I don't love horses. If you've known me even a little bit since I started riding at age 6, you likely know that they were my first love and my longest burning passion.

Have you ever loved something so much that you needed to let it go - at least temporarily? That's the position I found myself in with horses this summer. I had a job doing something pretty dreamy: combining my loves for horses, people, honing intuition, classical dressage, centered riding, yoga, and mindfulness. I was working with a handful of clients who were receptive to my alternative approach. And my approach is alternative. I spend a lot of time breathing - a lot of time giving the horses space, making gentle gestures, and watching for small, clear cues from them. To the untrained eye, it’s like watching paint dry. To me, it’s the most fascinating conversation I could have. Energetically, horses are utterly sensitive and on-point. They know what we’re about more than we do most of the time. They know our intentions and our heart rate, and they know we’re predators with eyes in the fronts of our head and that they are prey.  Having an actual conversation with a horse - asking what they think with my breath and body  and waiting for a response - is talking to someone who is SO much smarter than me and is still willing to give me the time of day and hear what I have to say. With horses, as with people, it’s best not to ask for permission unless you are going to respect their answer, be it a “no” or a “yes.” And in a nutshell, this is what makes my approach to horse handling a slow, subtle affair that doesn’t appeal to the traditionally schooled rider.

Few of the trainers and riders I’ve spent time around over the years are what I’d consider explicitly cruel. And none - not one - considered themselves intentionally cruel. And yet as I’ve gotten more sensitive and aware of how horses tick on the physiological and subtle levels (see my training mentor Anna Blake's explanation of calming signals - if you're  a horse/animal person and haven't heard of them, you may have your mind blown), my threshold for tolerating traditional horsemanship has continued to lower. I’ll add here that I agree with Anna Blake: horsemanship is a spectrum that runs from a mollycoddling approach lacking entirely in boundaries and clarity (this is dangerous) to violent, abusive tactics (also dangerous). Somewhere in there, I have found many sweet spots where the horse is relaxed and actively engaged. Being willing to wait for these sweet spots is a hit to the ego. Especially when I first started to transition to a positive, consent-based approach to horsemanship, it was excruciating to flush my goals for the day down the toilet in favor of the tiniest baby steps. With the horses I worked with, they usually involved not even getting to the point where I was riding. Because horses are prey animals, and most of them have been desensitized and handled by people who aren’t considering this fact. Horses' personhood is rarely taken into account in our broader equestrian culture and much damage comes from that; there’s a lot of trust to be rebuilt with humans. And frankly, most humans aren’t willing to put in the time it takes to really listen. Not to each other, and certainly not to horses. It doesn’t sound pretty, but my view is this: many riders in the US behave as if horses are slaves who are required to work - required to do what the human says and carry the human regardless of their opinion. Stop by the typical lesson barn or boarding facility. You won’t hear anyone talking about slavery, but you will encounter a lot of entitlement and demands, even as carrots and hugs are doled out. I am not talking about a black-and-white phenomenon where the humans are monsters.  I’m talking about a world where many of us were raised to see these breathtaking, sensitive, ever-patient animals as subservient and required to earn their keep, and to see ourselves as entitled to touch, hug, smack, kiss, saddle, and bridle them whenever we wanted.

This is an entitlement I am deeply familiar with. I have hit horses and yelled at them. This is not okay, though it is what I was taught. Just as it was what my teachers were taught. Only in my last few recent months of working with horses did I finally start to feel my sense of entitlement to the horses’ time, space, and labor start to melt, slowly being replaced by something far more subtle and thrilling. Like I said, I grew up in barns where regardless of the kind of day they were having, the horses were required to move forward with a rider atop them, else they got a sharp WHAP with the whip. Some seemed content to do that. And many, I realized in hindsight, were shut down. Have you ever heard of learned helplessness? It’s when a creature (animal or human) stops trying to assert his will and just does what his captor insists. It’s easier to do what they say than to put up a fight. I have seen this happen on a spectrum from generally stoic horses whose humans ignore or can’t hear their attempts at communicating “no” to horses with lifeless eyes, in spite of having every imaginable physical and nutritional need met.

So today I stopped by the barn because, in retrospect, I guess I felt braver going with a dear friend who knows my story and supports my sensitivity towards what feels totally normal to everyone else at the barn. My reaction to traditional horsemanship isn’t a condemnation in itself. It does bring a tremendous amount of emotion, though, and that emotion is uncomfortable because it can turn easily to judgement, which is undesirable. My reality is this: I can feel the horses - their frustration, cauterized emotions, and boredom. And of course, their joy and their playfulness. But that's less evident much of the time. These horses aren’t being abused in the typical sense. Most of them, their spirits are being ignored. These bridges to the divine are not being listened to - it simply hasn’t occurred to their stewards to pause and ask “Is it okay if I put this halter on?” and deeply listen for the answer. For me, few things could be more heartbreaking, because the potential when we listen to them is endless. It's like seeing a dancer paralyzed; an artist with nerve damage in her hands; a singer gagged. And I have given myself a very hard time about my sorrow in relation to horses in our times - told myself I’m being too sensitive, making up problems that aren’t there…because maybe if I gaslight myself into disavowing what I see, I’ll be able to hang out at the barn.

I have never had a horse of my own, and certainly don’t have my own barn. I’ve always ridden other people’s horses (usually the “problem” horses who became that way due to harsh handling).  In this sense I am fairly beholden to my environment when I want to spend time with horses. And even when I have free rein to handle horses in ways that feel consensual, peaceful, and in alignment with my values, I am faced with a dilemma: this horse is typically handled in a different fashion from how I engage with him. How can I engage with the nuance and consent-based respect that I’ve cultivated over years of study, knowing that someone else is going to be whacking him with a crop to keep moving in a lesson tomorrow? I’ve been working on not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, on seeing the divine in all things, and in being compassionate towards myself and others. And from this work, the answer came clearly to me this summer: this is not a time for me to be spending with horses. Not in the environments available. And so I visit and it is joyful because they are my first and a true love and the way they smell and breathe and sigh makes me ecstatic. And then I weep because at least for today, I cannot find space in my heart to hold all the truths in front of me.

Click here to read Anna Blake's post The Future for Horse-Keepers: Isolation or World Change?, which inspired this writing.