“I believe the real magic of horsemanship is what horses teach us about relationships”
- Chris Irwin in his book Horses Don’t Lie -
“when we learn to understand about horses, we learn to understand about ourselves”
- Kelly Marks of Intelligent Horsemanship and Monty Roberts’ teacher of his methods in the UK -
“a horse is not only good fun, it is also a beautiful-looking psychotherapist who lives on grass and doesn’t charge by the hour”
- Perry Wood in his book Real Riding -
The simple answer to the question why are horses so good at assisting humans in this way is because a horse is a horse and it will always behave as such, because it is in its nature, part of its psyche.
Horses are high flight response prey animals their survival out in the open depends on them living very much in the here and now, reading the body language of other horses and acting first – thinking later. Their lives depend on this, if one horse says “RUN!” the others will run first and then look to see why.
They communicate by use of subtle body language and are highly sensitive to the body language of others including humans.
Horses are absolutely open and honest in their communication and in the expression of their own feelings.
Horses act like mirrors reflecting back to us not what we attempt to portray to the outside world but what is on the inside, very aware of any incongruence and responding or not as the case may be. Therefore there is no fooling a horse with false bravado or machismo – they don’t care if you are the head teacher or the dinner lady. If you mean what you say and say what you mean you have their attention. If you feel like running away inside then the chances are the horse will run!
Like humans, horses live in social groups, their survival depends on being part of a herd that gets along with one another, where unnecessary conflict or expending of energy is to be avoided as it may cost them their lives if they do not have the energy to run when they really need to.
Trust, respect, cooperation and passive leadership play an important role in the herd, and this is what they look for in the human and again tell you very clearly when they see it and when they don’t.