Happy Birthday!

Dear Friends, dear Readers,

 

Today is Sir Simple’s 27th birthday. While Sir Simple enjoys a birthday lunch, the sun and fresh air of this wonderful April day, it is a day for me to pause for a moment and enjoy the fact:

• that day after day, my horse greets me with a whinny, no matter the time of the day I appear.
• that he lifts his head when I come going to meet him in his paddock. 
• that my horse gets exhilarated when I appear, showing this excitement through running around me, prompting me with his nose to do the things he wants to have or to do. 
• that he follows each of my movements when I are occupied with stable chores. 
• that after he has gone through this phase of excitement,he relax and gets calm and his body radiates well-being and trust.
• that he is always on a quest, discovering his surroundings, either for food or to look at things he finds curious.
• that he knows how to charm me, like getting lots of bananas.
• that he through being him, he stimulates me to think in other lines of thought, to find an understanding of horses and their relationship to us.
• that he has taught me what it is and means to persevere.
• that he accompanies and shares my path of life
• that after a long day at work, he is there, waiting to for me, taking up my mind completely so that I can leave behind work and enjoy the moment.
• that Simple has made my day for almost 20 years now – in good times and bad, by never having talked a single word to me – only through his body.

Thank you Sir Simple, my friend.

Jenny.

 

Do You Want To Win?

Dear Friends, dear Readers,

Do you want to win? Then you should consider following questions and the answers I found.

Have you ever wondered over the fact that almost all horses kept by us undergo training? Either the horse is trained to stand still while groomed, to give the hoof, to be led on a line or to be saddled or to be ridden? There is literally no horse that is not domesticated or maybe even better expressed, socialized, by us humans.

Have you thought what this fact has for a meaning and with which means we work and use to accomplish a change in the behavior of our horses?

To follow that line of thought further, have you ever wondered what the best approach is in training your horse? Have you wondered what the word “train” means? Or do you prefer to use the word “educate” or “develop”? What are the differences in these words and what can they contribute to find a better way to communicate and understand our horse and vice versa? And what does the meaning of these words can contribute to achieve our objectives we have when interacting with a horse?

To train means that you teach a person or an animal the knowledge or skills that are needed to do a particular task or job. Often we understand by training that we prepare us through exercises to attain a certain level of performance. These exercises can be mental (like doing mathematical equations) or physical (like running). Not to forget that we often understand by the word training that is an organized activity, both in how often the training is hold, daily, monthly, e.g. (frequency) as well in the progression, meaning that we first train more simply structured tasks, skills, etc. before we move on to more advanced and complex tasks or skills (Dictionary.com; Sinclair, 2008).

To develop means to grow over a period of time, often by using ones owns capabilities and potential. Our own capabilities and potential are meant to expand or to elaborate to a more advanced or effective level (Dictionary.com; Sinclair, 2008). For example our capability to listen to other people is growing through practicing different methods and we through this we become able to emphasize or understand other people better. This in turn can lead to more conflict-free interactions between us and other people.

To educate means that a person is taught to do something in a better way, usually by acquiring knowledge and skills. These knowledge and skills are acquired through a systematic process where the person learns through reasoning, reflection and action. Education is seen as progression and the more educated you become the higher the standard of learning you have reached (Dictionary.com; Sinclair, 2008). Education is often seen as the task of a country’s government, meaning a government shall create and proved structures like a school system.

Where are now the differences? Where do they contribute to find a better way to interact with our horse? Maybe it is not the much the what but the how?

How do we interact? Maybe we have to look not only at the process of how to train, to develop or educate, but on the process of information processing, and especially on how do our horses learn?

As I have a couple of times before mentioned, the process of learning for horses differs from us humans in the way that we humans have two major ways of processing information, whereas scientists claim, that horses have only one. The explicit way can be described as declarative and here we humans process semantic (facts) and episodic (events) information. In the implicit, the non-declarative, way, which we share with our horses, we process information in five different ways: priming, procedural, associative (classical & conditional), and non-associative (Smith and Kosslyn, 2007).  The parts of the brain where explicit information processing takes place are the lateral cortex, the frontal lobe, and the medial temporal lobe, whereas the implicit information processing takes place in the reflex system, the cerebellum, the striatum, the limbic system and in the cortex. These parts we have in common with our horses (Smith and Kosslyn, 2007, Mc Greevy, 2004).

However all these different ways to process information, meaning the way how we learn, are influenced by one phenomenon: our feelings or emotions.

Emotions or feelings influence each step in information processing from how we experience something to our reaction upon this experience. Emotions influence though not as earlier thought by direct influencing behavior, but through influencing our behavior and actions through giving us a signal which functions as feedback, anticipation or reflection (Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall and Liqing Zhang, 2007).

Emotions are functioning as a signal, they make it possible that we understand our environment, that we can make sense of things and people, they signal us if we can be joyful anticipate a reward or if we have to be careful, and they give us the chance to improve behaviors through giving us a positive or negative feeling if we did right or wrong. And horses have just the same emotional experiences as we have. They know when to look forward when you come to give them breakfast; they know when to be careful when unknown horses or people advance them. Emotions give them the needed clues.

Emotions are categorized in two dimensions, negative and positive ones (If you want to know why that is so, please read: Solomon, R. C. and Stone, L. D. (2002), On “Positive” and “Negative” Emotions. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 32: 417–435. doi: 10.1111/1468-5914.00196)

Scientists found that negative emotions “impact an individual’s attention span” (Biswas-Diener and Patterson, 2011) which is helpful in risky and dangerous situations as it will “narrow the thought-action pattern” (Abe, 2011). You who know horses will have made the experience that most horses chose to run when they think there is a threat, avoiding instead of approaching the threat. However, there are also situations where the horse chooses to approach a situation, and that is an interesting aspect – as we regard this behavior as abnormal. But why does this horse differ from others?

Positive emotions have in the past two decades gained attention in scientific research and the focus is no longer on what momentary happiness or satisfaction do to a person, but what positive emotions contribute in the “domains of mental health, social relationships, and work” (Abe, 2011). Abe (2011) quotes research done by Cohn, Fredrickson, Brown, Mikels, and Conway (2009) which found that positive emotions “undo or buffer the deleterious effects of negative emotions and thereby contribute to psychological resilience and flourishing.”  But positive emotions play also a role in learning, and especially in learning that is linked to experiences. Scientists found that positive emotions facilitate the learning process but also serve as “valuable psychological and social resources for coping with the various challenges” (Abe, 2011)  a person undergoes in his development. Summarized would this mean that positive emotions facilitate learning “mainly by expanding a person’s thought-action repertoire” (Abe, 2011). Positive emotions influence motivation positively and the mood at the time of learning affects not only the encoding stage, but also the recall stage (Pekrun, 1992). So taken together, these studies on the impact on emotions on learning should us motivate to re-assess, re-think, and re-evaluate the learning process, the way how we train, develop and educate our horses.

One of the tools we should use in the process should be the use of positive emotions which will make our horses proud, enthusiastic, joyful, and content. This in turn will make our horses self-confident, they will be able to cope with challenging situations as they have the resources they need and they will thank you it with health, friendship and performance.

The questions we should ask us when we interact with our horses are:

• Which emotions/feelings experience our horses when we take care of them, when we train them, when we perform with them in a competition? And in general, when we teach them to obey our wishes?

• How can we see, feel and hear if our horse is satisfied, happy, interested, anxious, bored, jealous or sad?

• How do these emotions affect the horse, us and the interaction between us both? How do these emotions affect health, social relationships and performance? How do these emotions affect the training and the development of the horse?

• What are the origins of these emotions? Which are originated in the horse and which are originated in its environment?

• What can we do to foster positive emotions and to help horses avoid negative emotions, or to cope with negative emotions in flexible ways once they emerge?

(these questions originate from Perkun, Petz, Titz and Perry, 2002)

I think it is time that we make use of what scientific research shows in the past decades: positive emotions foster growth and development. And isn’t that the overall objective, no matter if we are riding through the forest or attending an international jumping or dressage contest?

We can only win. Let’s begin!

Wishing you and your horse happy and light days ahead,

with best regards,

Jenny Friedl.

References

Abe, J. A. A. (2011). Positive emotions, emotional intelligence, and successful experiental learning. Personality and Individual Differences, 51, 817-822.

Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., DeWall, C. N., & Zhang, L. (2007). How emotion shapes behavior: Feedback, anticipation, and reflection, rather than direct causation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(2), 167-203.

Cohn, M., Fredrickson, B. L., Brown, S. L., Mikels, J. A., & Conway, A. M. (2009). Happiness unpacked. Positive emotions increase life-satisfaction by building resilience. Emotion, 9, 361- 368.

McGreevy, P. (2004). Equine Behavior. A guide for veterinarians and equine scientists. London: Saunders.

Pekrun, R. (1992). The impact of emotions on learning and achievement. Towards a theory of cognitive/motivational mediators. Applied Psychology, 41, 359-376.

Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Titz, W., & Perry, R. P. (2002). Academic emotion in students self-regulated learning and achievement. A program of qualitative and quantitative research. Educational Psychologist, 37, 91-105.

Sinclair, J. (ed.) (2008). Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced Learners: Major New Edition. Hamburg: Harper Collins Edition.

Smith, E. E. & Kosslyn, St. M. (2007). Cognitive Psychology. Mind and Brain. New Jersey: Pearson Education.

Related articles

• About Learning, and A New Way To Look At It
• Shifting The Mindset
• Légèreté – lightness of being
• A gift – or the power of learning
• Simply connected

Shifting The Mindset

Dear Readers, dear Friends,

we love to describe horses: Think about the huge amount of stories numerous books, films, and our own experiences tell. There is probably no characteristic not used to describe a horse way of behavior: curious, warm, amenable, provocative, wild, stubborn, recalcitrant, caring, anxious, stressed, just to give a few examples.

Maybe in your mind now will turn up a picture of a specific horse you know when you hear the word “curious” or “stubborn”. This classification of an animals behavior makes it simple for us to describe it, to give it an identity, and by this, we think, we do know the horse.

But do we really know a horse by describing it with adjectives? Adjectives that come from our world, of our world which is a construction of our senses and perception, of our earlier experiences, of the stories told by parents, friends, teachers and others? Does these words give us any understanding, any knowledge about a horse? Does these adjectives, these descriptions help us to understand the horse better?

What would happen if we would observe the horse from its own perspective? Would we see another horse? Think of all the horses which we perceive as anxious, stressed, kicking and biting, stubborn or provocative … are these horses from their own point of view really so? Or is our world making these horses anxious, stressed or stubborn?

Have you asked yourself if an anxious horse really is anxious? Or did we make it anxious by making it live in an environment which is so long from its true nature? Is the way it has to live with us creating this anxiety? Does our training, our routines create anxiety for this horse? Does our understanding of dominance, of training methods, of what is right and wrong, of  which rules have to be obtained and applied, does it create a world that is after our liking? But is it also for the benefit and well-being of the horse?

Horses are not like us. They come from another world, a world of wide open spaces. Horses see different. Horses hear different. Horses smell different. Horses taste different. And horses feel different. But not only their perception differs from ours, also the way they communicate differs from ours.

The world of the horses has changed, most of them no longer roam wide open spaces. Instead they live with us, sharing our way to live in houses (stables), sharing our way of day-to-day-routines, sharing our understanding of what is right and wrong, sharing our rules and principles, and sharing our needs, visions and objectives.

I know my horse Sir Simple for almost 20 years now and the longer I share my life with Sir Simple, the more I begin to understand that we two are coming from different worlds. I am more and more able to leave my understanding of how I perceive and understand “my world” behind when I am around my horse. Instead I learn and train myself to observe with open senses, trying to see, to hear, and to feel with the senses of a horse. I learn to exclude my way of understanding, to shift my human mind to an equine mind.

Maybe you think this is difficult to achieve, but actually it is quite easy. And simple. Keep asking yourself questions in this process. Like, how does if feel for the horse what I am doing with it? Can my horse enjoy what I am doing with it? If not, what can I do to make it easier for my horse to enjoy? This kind of asking gives you the chance to see, to hear, to feel with the senses of a horse and through this, you will improve your understanding of the horse and its world.

I cannot bring back the wide open spaces to my horse, Sir Simple, but I think I can give my horse something which is as valuable as the wide open spaces. I can make use of my “human” ability to think, to observe, to empathize, to stay open against my horses needs, wishes and way of living. Through this I get a chance to learn more about my horse and its world. And if I am willing not only to perceive but also to do something, I can make changes to the better of horse’s living conditions, improving the quality of life for my horse in this “human” world.

There is however a bi-effect: by learning to shift your mindset a new world will open its door for you, a world worth-while to discover.

Keep on thinking, seeing, hearing and feeling, asking yourself questions.

Bon voyage!

Jenny.

 

The Challenger

Dear Readers and Friends,

here comes a challenging post about my horse’ behaviors. Not challenging for myself in e. g. handling him, taking care of him, no, but in the way that he is challenging himself. Continuously and constantly and in lot of different forms and ways.

Maybe this has to do with Darwinism, the evidence-based theory, about how species develop through adaption to their environment. Many times Darwin’s theory is shortly presented by stating it as the survival of the fittest, and we often interpret it in the term of high-quality and quantity performance. Who runs, swims, flys faster than others, who dive deeper than other, who flies higher, longer, just to give you a understanding of it how we can interpret Darwin’s theory. But what I observe is that there is another way of surviving in the way of the fittest.

It’s what I have to come to think of in terms of challenging oneself continuously and constantly in every little aspect of life. Sir Simple has opened that door of consideration for me through his way to challenge himself, to be on a constant search due to curiosity and the need to make sense of different situations. He uses each opportunity and possibility to challenge himself.

Here are a couple of examples:

1)      If we go for a walk in the forest, he isn’t content with just following the bigger paths cars and trucks use, which are even and broad, no, what is interesting and appealing is to follow the small paths done by a deer or any other forest animal. These paths are so small, they are going beneath and around trees, they go up and down, they are stony, muddy, and slippery, short, they are uncomfortable in many ways. Yet, Sir Simple takes each chance he gets from me to use these paths and to investigate them. Why is the question?

2)      If he is in the stable and even if he has received all his food and most horses wouldn’t spend any attention on other things besides eating, Sir Simple watches for opportunities to open the door of his box to investigate the surroundings. He is choosing between the comfort of having a full belly and the discovery of new things. Why is the question?

3)      The same behavior I could observe when he is in his paddock. Least chance Sir Simple gets, he goes investigating. He does that even when we meet the biggest animal in Swedish forests, the moose. Instead of reversing for that majestic animal, he is curious. With a question mark in his whole body he stands there, listening and paying attention to his surroundings, yet not in an anxious way, rather in a questioning and positive way. Why is the question?

These observations have triggered my thought process and I have reflected a lot about it. The answer I found is that through constantly and continuously challenging himself to investigate, with a positive restlessness, following his curiosity, he learns to adapt to new situations, and at the same time, he tries to understand what is going on. And finally also of course understands situations.

Seen in that way, Darwin’s theory, changed not only the perspective on how I saw upon the theory, but through applying the theory in the way of how I was perceiving and thinking of adaption and development, I could see that Darwin’s theory isn’t about the performance which demands Olympic attention and performance on a high level, it is a performance which is so subtle and elusive that we more or less miss it. It is a performance that demands engagement each day; it is a performance based on curiosity, and on challenging yourself to be engaged and curious.

It’s the challenge to be curious to look behind the next tree in the forest, to look for ways to gain a better understanding of situations, which then leads to the ‘aha’-effect and if we keep challenging ourselves to new questions. It also has to do with enjoying your life, with a lust and zest for life.

Even if horses can’t form a question like we can, they can inquire and investigate. All animals have that potential and ability. The thing maybe which differs between animals and of course humans, is how they use this potential and ability. The question is put on us, the human beings, what do we do with our animals and their constant way of challenging themselves. Do we encourage it? Do we experience pleasure when they are going out for a conquest, so little it might be ‘worth’ in our ‘eyes’?

Horses will never discover America, or new planets, but they can learn us a lot about the way of making discoveries and zest for life. They do it by constantly and continuously challenging them to follow their curiosity.

And if I now finish this post with a challenging question: Which do or should we regard and appreciate more: The one who is discovering new things or the one who teaches us how we can discover new things and enjoy ourselves in the process of it?

Well, it might be a matter of taste:-)

Wishing you a good and challenging day ahead,

With best regards,

Jenny.

About Learning, and A New Way To Look At It

Dear Friends, dear Readers,

you certainly know by now that I am interested in learning. I have seen my horse Sir Simple under so many different situations through the past years. I have seen him improve skills like coping with adverse situations or improving his ability to influence me, but I have until now not understood how he really does. Well, I have understood so far that he his an excellent observer, that he never gives up and that he uses each possibility he get to improve himself. That are the visible signs I can see – but what I try to sort out, is the invisible process which is going on in his mind. The way the information takes, from his senses to his brain and how it is processed and how it is stored and then used again in a suitable situation.

You remember certainly that I quoted a learning theory, or better a theory we also use to try to ‘educate‘ our horses in some of my posts: Learning is synonymous with behavior change (McGreevy, 2004). This theory is a  leftover of behaviorism, a perspective in psychology which influenced our view of the mind and behavior sustainable and quite effectively. It says that environmental factors govern our actions, which means that we are more or less a product of the environment, meaning we are reactors to the environment. Behaviorism contributed with basic laws of learning which says that we can by manipulating environmental factors, change behavior towards the behavior we aspire (Passer, Smith, Holt, Bremner, Sutherland & Vliek, 2009).

This theory of learning influenced also the way of training horses and of course the way we look at horses – as a reactor to the environment. In a way this ‘understanding of horses’ serves also our purpose to use horses in competition – they are ‘only’, if I may say so very critically, a reactor to the environment – they have no own will as all they are, is a product ‘produced’/'manufactured’ of/by the environment – or if I may say so critically again, us – we – the human beings. That is very suitable and useful perspective if I think in the terms of I am the teacher and you are the student. The teacher is supposed to have knowledge, whereas the student is supposed to have no knowledge – also a unbalance in knowledge. In term of horse training it can be said (very simplified of course) that the human being is the one who knows and the horse the one who does not.

I wonder if this kind of theory has led us kind of astray or does it make easier for us to use horses in sports and competitive events? Because as far as I know, most people wouldn’t call training horses education. And certainly a lot of people really don’t ‘educate’ their horses in the way which we try to educate our children – to become a person of their own, a person with self-confidence and self-insight, the capability to develop and maintain good social relationships, a person who takes responsibility of his/her own actions, who supports others and yet has a free will. Surely most of the horse owners don’t think in such terms, the terms of humanism I want to say.

So the behavioral theory of learning might be more useful in training horses as we are more interested in wining a competition and therefore we only pay attention to the physiological part of developing a horse’s body to expand his capacity of strength, endurance, and coordination. Of course we also spend some time habituating the horse to new environments (like show arenas, etc.), but we do this just for the purpose of the bigger purpose – wining a competition.

You might wonder now what has all this do to with the head of this post – learning and a new way to look at it. In my work with undergraduate students I am all the time interested how can I contribute that the student’s experience learning in another way. Experience that learning is a process of their own doing, not a ‘behavior change due to environmental factors’, but is a change in the meaning of experience. For that purpose I am constantly searching for evidence or a theory which matches my assumptions and observations and that I am getting behind the obvious and visible behaviors to the processes forming the basis for how humans and animals learn.

And lastly I did find a theory, thanks to my enthusiastic and invigorating students! And this theory is based on evidence, so it’s not just a chimera, a fantasy of our imagination or wishful-thinking:-) Novak and Gowin (1984:x) claim that “learning is a change in the meaning of experience” and emphasize also “the significance of feelings” in the process of learning. “Human experience involves not only thinking and acting but also feeling, and it is only when all three are considered together that individuals can be empowered to enrich the meaning of their experience” (1984:x). And here finally, I think I have found another puzzle bit in my search for understanding equine learning better.

To most of you it is known that horses do not own a very developed pre-frontal cortex where reflective and logic thinking is situated, meaning that horses can’t think in a reflective and logic way. Therefor using for example Kolb’s experiential learning model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_A._Kolb) can’t be used for horses – as it uses the explicit way of information processing – analytic and rational. So Novak’s and Gowin’s  (…) theory that feelings play a major role in how we learn, opens a new door. This open door is also supported by an article published by Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, and Zhang (2007). They meta-analysed around 300 articles about emotions, cognition and affect and concluded that emotions are necessary for learning, as emotions serve as a feedback system. But unlike the Direct Causation Theory of emotions, Baumeister et al. (2007) claims that behavior pursues emotion and explains it as follows (2007:173):

“Emotion provides feedback about recent actions and, by implication, about the adequacy of the current if-then rules on which those actions were based. Positive emotions generally validate the existing rules because those emotions signify that what the person did turned out well, and so the existing rules were presumably effective. Negative emotions signal that one’s behavior was not successful, and hence they suggest that the if-then rules need to be revised. The emotional state may stimulate counterfactual thinking and other ruminations about how one could have gotten better results had one followed a different if-then rule”.   

Baumeister et al. (2007: 174) concludes that “emotion serves as a stimulus for cognitive processing“. Here, dear readers, attention is required. Lots of people say or claim that horses have not a well-developed pre-frontal cortex, therefore cognitive processes like thinking can’t be very well-developed. Well, you are partly right. But cognition is not only thinking, it is also attention,  retrieving memories and schemas from long-term memory, and generating responses – also all processes where information is processed to make sense of us and our environment. So, I think it is important to understand that a horse’ emotions stimulate processes like attention, remembering, and responding.

That means, to come back to the theory of learning and education, emotion gives the horse meaning to a situation and much more important, it will influence over how the horse will master its learning. Novak and Gowin express that with following words (…: xi) which I quote as I think I could not find a better way to describe it:

“All [of you] have surely experienced sometime during their schooling the debilitating effect of an experience that threatened their self-image, their sense of ‘I am OK’. We have found repeatedly in our research studies that educational practices that do not lead learners to grasp the meaning of the learning task fail to give them confidence in their abilities and do nothing to enhance their sense of mastery of events”. 

Dear Reader, if you know ask yourself the question, if you agree with me, that horses can have feelings, meaning they can feel pain and joy, how many times have you observed when people handle/train horses that they have given or confirmed the horse confidence? Or could you observe that people handling/training horses try to give the horse a meaning in what it is doing? Maybe you’ll ask now how can I give a horse meaning in its doings? After all, a horse hasn’t the sense to understand meaning? Well, I think asked in that way, you are probably right. But if we go back to feelings. I think and claim, that a horse has found a meaning in doing something, when it shows confidence in its task and trust toward its person. When the horse is relaxed and at it ease. Then for me, the horse understands the task and has a sense of meaning. However, if you don’t agree, please go out into the field and observe and come back with a constructive comment.

So, my conclusion about learning theory, or the what I prefer to use ‘educational’ theory, is that we need to administer a new thinking in our way to handle horses, a way that is more complex and is more reflecting the word education than the word training. And here, Nowak and Gowin once again have the word (1984:xii):

“[Training] programs can lead to desired behaviors such as answering math problems or spelling correctly, educational programs should [however (my addition)] provide learners with the basis for understanding why and how new knowledge is related to what they already know and give them the affective assurance that they have the capability to use  this new knowledge in new contexts.”

I think it is time that we re-evaluate the learning theory for horses, moving from the behaviorism theory of the horse as a product of environmental factors to the more complex, challenging and demanding theory that the horse is a creature which is able to use emotions as a feedback system to develop and improve cognitive processes – which in turn also demands that we change the way in how we train our horses. I would like that we begin to use the term ‘education’ and in this meaning also evaluate how we best can support the horse in its development and progress towards an educated horse.

References

Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., DeWall, C. N., & Zhang, L. (2007). How emotion shapes behavior: Feedback, anticipation, and reflection, rather than direct causation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(2), 167-203.

McGreevy, P. (2004). Equine Behavior. A Guide for Veterinarians and Equine Scientists. London: Saunders.

Novak, J. D., Gowin, D. B., & Butler Kahle, J. (1984). Learning How To Learn. Cambridge, USA: Cambridge University Press.

Passer, M., Smith, R., Holt, N., Bremner, A., Sutherland, E., & Vliek, M. (2009). Psychology. The Science of Mind and Behavior. London: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Please look for related articles under the category: Learning and Understanding

Simply A Harmonious Day

Dear Friends, dear Readers,

the last couple of days Sir Simple became more and more restless and our daily walks toward the storm-bound coast of lake Vänern seemed not to be sufficient anymore. Simple asked for more. For more work as it seemed.

So I decided to ride him again. Yesterday we did our first tour – and today our second. Yesterday we just went for a distance of approximately 400 meters, today we at least made double as much. When I felt my horse again beneath me, it was like coming home. And Simple must have felt the same positive emotion to be connected with me again. He ‘stepped’ along the path, beside a small pond, asking for a higher speed. I didn’t let him on the first 200 meters, I wanted to make sure that my positive perception that my horse is really well and sound, was not wish-full thinking, but truth.

I felt his suppleness and power, I felt all his four legs moving in a harmonious and powerful way, striving forward, asking for a more energy craving kind of movement. So I let Sir Simple set himself into the piaffe. And he obeyed with willingness and eagerness. I let him go piaffe, after all it is a wonderful motion, the horse centered on a small amount of space, ahead and upward, giving freedom to the front legs while the back legs are keeping the horse in movement.

Once again I was allowed to be part of a miracle, Sir Simple’s resilience has once again won. If you think in Darwinian terms, that the fittest survive and that evolution is shaping life after this principle, than I am struck with awe. I think of all the forefather’s of Simple who survived in a very dangerous, wild and hostile environment, the Alps.  Simple’s forefather’s weren’t spared, they had to fight a lot of days during each year to survive and to help the humans they were working for, to survive. Maybe the early summer days could have been days of recuperation, when the farmers themselves didn’t have to work so hard to survive in the meager but beautiful nature of the mountains.

Maybe that relentless work of these forefather’s has shaped my own horse’ willingness to go on and meet life however it looks like. Today our day was one of cold and sun. Frozen ground and the nearby pond seemed finally to settle down under an ice sheet. After the storms of the past days, nature seemed to enjoy the peaceful day. A sort of relaxation covered nature and its beings, the only one not influenced by this tension-less space was Sir Restless Legs Simple. As soon as I got him from the paddock he understood that we were going out for a riding trip.

His face and body showed how much he liked that prospect. So after having prepared him, we went out into the wonderful nature we both are right now are living in. We went around the big pond, the frozen surface glittering like a mirror in the sunshine. The reed glowing golden in the afternoon sun, the nearby forest green and aloof in the cold air, harbourage to majestic animals such as the moose or eagle, or to the shy and pretty dear or hare, and if talk is right, to a wolf.  Sir Simple wasn’t impressed by the nature at all.

He walked forward, wanting to cover miles it seemed. After having walked him, we begun with the piaffe again. And I let him go piaffe almost all the way home. It was a special experience, sitting on a horse, feeling connected, warm, feeling carried by a being which is in complete harmony, radiating energy and a kind of invincibility, and being surrounded by a breathtaking serene nature and landscape – are there any other words than as to describe this experience with the following words?

Simply A Harmonious Day

Thank you Sir Simple, my wonderful horse and friend.

Jenny.

What we share matters

Dear Friends, dear Readers,

today Simple and I went for a walk.

Well, you can ask, don’t you do that regularly? And what is so special with a walk? A walk is just a walk, nothing special. Nothing you can’t be proud of like having won a competition. Nothing you can’t earn a living with, especially not supporting a horse. And a horse that isn’t longer working under the saddle … so why keep such a horse? Ain’t worth nothing.

Well, dear friends and readers, many people might think such thoughts and yet, many of us have made the experience what it is like to have friends or a friend. And many of us even have made the experience that animals can be friends. Well, here you, as the critical reader can ask, friendship with animals, how can that be?

Can an animal experience friendship? Isn’t that human wishful thinking? That we wish that our animals experience us as friends, as family, as a ‘being’ to be trusted no matter what comes? How can, asks the critical you, an animal understand what friendship means? Because even we humans have problems with the definition of friendship. The Chinese educator and philosopher Confucius (http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius) meant that friendship is the only relationship that misses hierarchy between two people (Alberoni, 1984) which I perceive as that he means that where there is friendship, there are no differences between two people. And where there is no difference between people, there is an easy and peaceful feeling of trust and familiarity.

If I return now back to my statement that there can be friendship between a horse (animal) and a human, then the horse has to experience trust and familiarity. And how can we measure respectively evaluate trust or familiarity in a horse? After all, a horse can’t fill out a questionnaire which says the result for your friendship to XYZ is 8 of 10 points. However, if you yourself were asked to fill out a questionnaire where you should judge on a scale from one to ten how you experience trust / familiarity to person XYZ – wouldn’t you come with a critical comment and ask, why is so important to see  the quantity of my friendship to person XYZ? For me it doesn’t matter, XYZ is my friend and that is all that matters.

Correctly, we humans are much less critical about human friendships, we have lots of examples through the ages describing great friendships, like the friendship between Patroclus and Achilles, between Eneas and Pallas, between Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and between Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (Alberoni, 1984). These friendships are characterized by ethic principles (respect, integrity, authenticity, etc.) However, if it comes to list up the friendship between an animal and a human, people tend to become distant and critical. These descriptions are turned into myth or up-made stories and science has until now supported us to believe that friendship between animals and humans is wishful thinking. However, this perception is changing and more and more scientists begin to see with new eyes, contributing with their observations and conclusions to the change and that the gap between animals and humans is closing.

And isn’t that what really matters? That what we share matters? And not what differs? We share much more than a genetic pool with animals, or the planet earth, we also share the interest to make contact with other species, we share the need for company and for play together, we share feelings of joy and sorrow together – and we share the ability to make and to hold on friends together. Does that also means that animals have a kind of ethic understanding, do they know what respect and integrity means? How can they understand these terms? Is it for them more a feeling than a thought? A feeling of trust? A feeling of familiarity? A feeling of being at peace? A feeling of being at ease?

I makes me glad when I see more and more scientists searching for new ways to judge animals and their relations to other animals as well as to human beings. I am one of the lucky ones who experiences friendship each day – through my horse Sir Simple. In all our up and downs, in times of challenge and in times of joy, the band of friendship grew thicker and stronger and with it, the insight and understanding. Not only insight and understanding in how a horse experience his world, no, also insight and understanding in how I experience the world. And that is the precious gift of friendship, extending the horizon, discovering new and unknown worlds, inside and outside of me, and all the while having a friend beside you … sharing these moments with you … that is what matters.

Friendship is bigger than we (humans) know…

wishing you, my dear Friends and Readers,

Seasons Greetings,

with best regards,

jenny.

References:

Alberoni, F. (1984). Vänskap. Göteborg: Korpen