Disrespectful?

I’m not entirely sure when this word entered the lexicon of the average horse person, but when I was a kid, and throughout my first professional equestrian career (show horses), we didn’t have this word. We had others, believe me, but this wasn’t one of them.

It seems to me that this word, interestingly, turned up in horse people about the same time “natural horsemanship”, the Ray Hunt tradition, and other “alternative” philosophies in horse training became popular.

Now, scientifically, I’m not sure that horses have the cerebral cortex necessary to experience a “feeling” as complex as “disrespect”, which is defined by Mirriam-Webster as 1. “to lack special regard or respect for” and 2. “to show or express disrespect or contempt for.” I feel like when horse people use the word, they mostly mean the definition found in #2, that the horse is expressing contempt. Contempt is defined as: “a lack of respect for or fear of something that is usually respected or feared.” Hmmmm.

One of the basic tenants of many of these more “thoughtful” methods of working with horses is that horses can do two things: they can respond to us with learned behavior, or they can respond out of instinct. When we label what a horse is doing as “disrespectful”, we’re either calling a learned behavior “disrespectful” (which is not the horse’s fault someone taught him that, even inadvertently), or we’re calling his instinctive behavior “disrespectful” (contemptuous).

I think when people describe a horse’s actions as “disrespectful”, they’re really describing how THEY feel, not necessarily how they think the HORSE feels at the time. A lot of “disrespectful” horses are clearly frightened, in flight, fight or freeze, or simply doing what they got a release or reward for doing at some point in their lives. But when a horse runs away from us and kicks out, that makes US feel “disrespected”, so we call the horse “disrespectful”. But how does that horse feel in that moment? Confused, scared, exhausted, painful, excruciatingly painful, distracted, lost, unsupported, anxious, worried, overwhelmed?

I know the behaviors we’re talking about when we use the word “disrespectful”, and I’ve felt that feeling that I feel when a horse does something, and I feel in my body like he’s “given me the middle finger”. I need to realize that feeling is in ME, not in him. What is it they say, “No one can MAKE you feel anything.” We are responsible for how things around us make us feel. Horses especially.

I choose to replace the word “disrespectful” with the word “disregard” if I have to use a word for it. Many, many, many horses have found humans to be inconsistent, confusing, emotionally incongruent and unhelpful in critical ways, so they develop a “disregard” for the human. In other words, the human is so difficult to make sense of that the horse simply dismisses them. If pushed, this horse will cycle through flight (try to get away), fight (kicking, biting, striking, pushing) and freeze (locking up).

This horse can literally look right through a human like they’re a ghost. They will look over, under, and around a person rather than look AT them and really SEE them. They’ve lost faith, they’re not disrespectful.

If you’d like to work on seeing a “disrespectful” horse differently, and perhaps in a more helpful way, training-wise and relationship-wise here are some tips that have helped me over the years:

*Horses can do two things: instinct and learned behavior. People can accidentally teach horses some freaky things.

*Observe behavior and differentiate how we are feeling from how the horse might be feeling, keeping in mind that the horse is capable of only the simplest emotions (see Dr. Stephen Peters for more on this)

*Label/describe the horse in the simplest terms: “comfortable” or “uncomfortable” (this is a game-changer!)

* The horse is doing __________, he is not doing it TO YOU.

*Choose your words carefully, even in your head. If we are habitually describing our horse in words that paint him as a “bad person”, we need to think about that seriously.

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