Comfortable or Uncomfortable?

Anthropomorphizing is what we call it when we attribute human feelings and emotions to animals. We humans do this a lot. Some of the most popular animal videos you’ll see on social media are of animals acting like people. We enjoy anthropomorphizing animals. We’re not so interested in animals who, well, act like animals. That’s not so fun, somehow.

The thing about this is, for those of us who work with horses, anthropomorphizing can kind of cripple our ability to work with the horse as well as we could. We can spend so much time taking what the horse is doing and running it through our species-centric anthropomorphic filter, that we’re not in the moment with the horse any more, and worse yet, we’ve completely made up a fiction about what just happened and why.

Species-centric anthropomorphizing is also often what’s behind some of the unhelpful bad-mouthing we do about horses, like, “He’ll take advantage of you if you let him,” “Show him who’s boss!” “He’s so lazy, he hates working,” “He’ll cheat you,” “He’s a dirty stopper,” etc. Those are all things that are more about how people act than about how horses act.

So I was thinking about this, and how hard it is for a human to REALLY “walk in the horse’s shoes.” I mean, humans are just very species-centric. It is terribly difficult for us to really figure out what it’s like to BE a horse. But, what I started to do was try to kind of “pare down” how I was seeing what the horse was offering at any moment, so I could simplify it for myself and hopefully cut down on the quantity of anthropomorphizing I was doing.

We know from the work of people like Dr. Steven Peters, that horses do not have the cerebral cortex that would enable them to have complex thoughts and emotions. Most of a horse’s brain matter is dedicated to motor skills and sensory perception (which makes sense for a prey animal). So they really only can experience the most simple emotions.

But we humans can spend a lot of time, in the moment with a horse, trying to identify his emotions, and then perhaps even constructing elaborate (and likely fictional) stories about why he’s doing what he’s doing in the moment or what he’s feeling in the moment. This tendency in the human can really take lot of time, and horses need feedback NOW in order to learn well.

So I decided to try something in relationship to this. When I could, I decided I would try to simply see the horse in any moment, as “comfortable” or “uncomfortable,” period. Nothing else. That makes every moment a “yes” or “no” question to myself. “Is he comfortable?” Yes or no? “Is he uncomfortable?” Yes or no? This makes the “flow chart” of “what to do next” that’s going on in my head while I’m working with a horse WAY easier to navigate.

If he’s anxious, he’s uncomfortable. If he’s in pain, he’s uncomfortable. If he’s confused, he’s uncomfortable. If he’s distracted, he’s uncomfortable. If he’s afraid of the human, he’s uncomfortable. If he’s herd bound or buddy sour, he’s uncomfortable. If he’s traveling out of balance, or in an unnatural posture for a horse, he’s uncomfortable. If he’s spooking, he’s spooking because he’s uncomfortable. If he doesn’t know what’s acceptable and what’s not, he’s uncomfortable. If he can’t find a way out of being uncomfortable, he becomes even more uncomfortable.

What makes a horse comfortable? Well, PEACE. Finding peace, knowing peace is out there, knowing he can reach it. Knowing it’s a promise. That’s what makes a horse comfortable.

There’s this part of this horse work, it’s about the art of taking a horse who is uncomfortable, and getting him to be comfortable, and studying that change. There’s a neurochemical aspect to that, and there’s a postural part to that, and there’s a learning theory part to that, and there is, if you like, a “spiritual” part to that. That’s a big space there, that transition from uncomfortable to comfortable. That really important space can get cluttered if there’s too much “stuff” there clogging it up.

So here’s just something to try, as you do what you’re doing anyway in your horse work. Distill it all the way down to “comfortable” and “uncomfortable” and see what happens. To do this, we have to watch and feel, and figure out what a horse shows us that means he’s uncomfortable. Does his eye get pinched? Does his back get tight? Does his tail clamp down? Do his ears get quick? Does he stop blinking? Can other people see it before we can? Can we see it at all? Can we feel it? Distill it down to “yes” or “no”.

I would be so interested to hear what you observe if you try this, both what happens in you and what happens in the horse. I know what I’ve experienced, but I’d love to hear what you find if you try it.

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