Listening to Horses

Ask not for whom the horse poops, if you're petting him, he poops for you.

“No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.” -Herman Melville

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For two Sundays now, two friends and I have been participating in classes run by Ann Romberg at the rescue, This Old Horse. The classes are called, “Listening to Horses.” Here I’ll discuss only pertinent details of the class; if you ever get a chance to take this class or one similar to it, please do it.

The first Sunday

The first Sunday was friendly, educational, and well paced. The six of us students got to know each other a little bit. The overall goal was to give us each a chance with each of the three horses, Sandy, Cassidy, and Frost, to learn how to greet a horse.

All three of these horses are old—over 30! Sandy is sweet and gentle and needs to move around often to find a comfortable position. Cassidy is confident, standing still most of the time, chewing hay, and observing the room. Frost seems more alert than the other two and is concerned about others. She is concerned about Sandy and will go over to her. She is concerned about the humans; at the end of class, she comes over to us humans where we are sitting on folding chairs to greet a few of us, as if to check in to make sure we are good. These are horses with bowed backs and open hearts.

My impression of Sandy

You know how some people who love horses have a peculiar way of talking about horses, as if they’re sacred entities from another planet? (Luckily no one in the group seemed to be thusly persuaded.) I personally don’t go in for that, but I do have immense respect for horses’ strength, power, grace, intelligence, and gentleness. I think we’re all animals and we must learn to respect each other, and one doesn’t have to worship the other to do that. A relationship of mutual attentiveness seems a better pursuit. In that way, I believe I’m fairly grounded rather than floating around with unverifiable notions about animals.

Yet I was affected by the class.

These three horses are present just for us. They taught us how to greet a horse in their language. They taught us.

The horses taught us how to greet in horse language.

I love every minute with the horses and everything about the class. I even love the smell of the horse barn. Yet after class something in me is lurking and not wanting to be seen, like a troll hiding under a bridge. When I am alone at home again, I can examine that thing, that emotion. There are no words for it for a long time and I have to concentrate on it to come up with appropriate words, though I don’t know that they precisely and with 100% accuracy capture the emotion: “I do not deserve to have these three horses’ attention like this.”

From a rational perspective, this is obviously not true, but emotions are not rational, so simply deciding it’s not true isn’t going to be enough. This emotion is coming from somewhere and I want to figure that out so it won’t interfere with my ability to connect with horses.

I go super-rational: examine my premises and my logic (and put it in a syllogism, if possible).

What do I believe about horses?

1. Horses have purpose and they do important work. (This I learned from my dad, who plowed with horses as a youngster.)

2. Rescue horses deserve to be pampered and taken care of (so they shouldn’t be taking care of humans).

3. Therefore, humans, including I, should be taking care of rescue horses, not benefiting from them.

There’s a missing premise that I wish isn’t there: I want to do well in everything I do and being overly analytical and/or concerned with how I’m doing could be interfering with my ability “to be grounded in my body and present in the moment.”

There’s another missing premise: horses benefit from interacting with kind humans and may even benefit from doing this kind of job.

This was enough to get me through the week and to the next class.

The second Sunday

Once again we are in the aromatic horse barn on a Sunday afternoon. I breathe in deeply and feel at home. Three different horses are waiting for us. Boo, a dark gelding, is described to us as a “healer,” because he seems to know just what a human is feeling. Lucy, a brown mare with old branding numbers on her neck, who is very calm and very sweet, stands quietly. Joey, a black-colored thoroughbred (sorry, I’m not equine-savvy enough to catch what kind) gelding, who is comical and playful, is very interested in the bag of hay hanging in one corner of the arena.

The focus today is on embodiment—being conscious in our bodies and noticing how the horses react to us. Ann guides us through two exercises, as we take turns doing the exercise and watching the other three, to see if we can notice any reactions from the horses, too.

The exercise goes as follows:

1. Greet the horse, as we learned last week.

2. Stand a couple feet from the horse and check in on each of your senses (sight, hearing, smell, touch).

3. Start petting the horse. Does “the task” (of petting) make it harder to be in touch with your senses?

The second exercise is the same except instead of checking in on your senses, we are to check in on our bodies’ interiors, starting with the feet going all the way up to the head. This is a great technique for slowing down one’s thoughts and for meditation in general. A horse may react when you come to an area with a problem or pain, is explained to us.

Lucy I went to first. She reminds me of Sandy. She stands so still, I can concentrate on my senses easily. I notice the birds who make the horse barn their home and decide they can carry my busy thoughts away. Lucy prefers to be pet on her head as she has many sore areas on her body. Scratching her ear sets her at ease. The ear feels perfect in my hand. When I reach over to scratch the other ear, however, she doesn’t like that I reached over the top of her head, so I go back to her right ear to make it up to her.

Joey is the second horse I go to. I jokingly call it “the Joey experience” because he has been such a character, frisky, curious, and very actively engaged with each of his previous humans. We greet well. He nibbles up my arm and looks into my eyes.

My impression of Joey

When it comes time for me to stand still and check in on my interior body while listening to Ann’s instructions, all does not go according to plan. Joey is active. I pet his face and put my hand back down, trying to follow the instructions. Joey and I dance. Twice Joey walks around and moves his butt in front of me. I admit to being a little nervous about getting kicked. I’ve never been and don’t want to be. After each time he moves, I walk to a spot next to him and try to reset myself in congruity with the instructions.

Finally it is time to pet the horse. I walk up to him, he checks back to see who is touching him, and I pet his side with both hands. My left hand rests on his shoulder and my right hand glides all along his side. I keep thinking, “Thank you, Joey.” He is so warm and so soft. After a little while he groans, low and loud. Then he poops. And I smile because last week someone said that a horse farting or pooping while being pet means they are very relaxed. Afterward he sighs. I keep thinking, “Thank you, Joey.” I don’t want to stop petting him when time is indicated. When I do stop, Joey stomps a front foot—he also doesn’t want me to stop.

In the debrief, the poop is discussed, particularly: the significance of the size of the poop and who the poop was “for,” Joey or me. Can you imagine? Ten adults (and three horses) considering the significance of the size of a poop. The wisdom from years of working with horses that Ann offered is: because it was a small poop, the poop wasn’t because Joey had something to release, but because I did.

It made sense. No, hear me out. I talked with Patty,¹ who was Joey’s handler that day, and she offered some of her own observations about the interaction I had had. The act of turning his butt to me can be seen as a sign of trust, because a horse can’t see behind himself. I explained I had a headache though I was trying not to think about it, but of course, that means I was thinking about it. Patty thought having too much going on in my head may have caused Joey to walk around a lot, because he wanted to move away from my busy thoughts. She asked if Joey touched my head at all, but he hadn’t; sometimes a horse will touch the body part that is giving a person trouble. When I started petting Joey, though, I stopped trying. I simply focused on Joey’s beautiful coat and warmth. I didn’t feel the headache while petting him. Our dance is on me, a result of one of my “hidden premises”—I try so hard to do it right, whatever the task or goal.

This is all a gift, a benefit, I can accept from Joey. With his poop, Joey showed me that my head had finally cleared and I had finally entered that moment fully with him and did deserve his attention.

Thoughts?

Has a horse ever bestowed a similar experience on you? Would you like to take such a class?

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1. Edited to correct the name. I apologize, Patty, I got you and Molly mixed up.