#55 Horse-centric Thinking vs. Human-centric Thinking with Mary Ann Simonds

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:00:01-00:00:11]
On this episode, we're talking with Mary Ann Simonds, an educator and consultant for equine behavior, equestrian psychology, interspecies communication, and more.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:00:12-00:00:24]
What kind of relationship do you want with your horse? And if you want that really deep relationship where a horse would rather come to you than go off with its horse friends, then you have to give it a reason to like you. And it's not food. It's safety.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:00:25-00:02:01]
Welcome to the Equestrian Connection podcast from WeHorse. My name is Danielle Crowell and I'm your host. Mary Ann Simonds has worked as a researcher, educator, coach, and consultant for over 40 years in the fields of human and animal behavior, communication, consciousness, and ethology. Lecturing and consulting nationally and internationally, primarily on horse-human interactions, her work blends the application of science with intuition, integrating cultural issues, and finding solutions for the well-being of people and animals. She has produced numerous educational materials, including videos and books, and has a new book, which is called A Horse by Nature, recently out, and we'll be discussing it today. Currently living in Wellington, Florida, Mary Ann has retired from a rigorous teaching schedule with the Institute of Integrated Sciences and the Whole Horse and Equestrian Science Institute to focus on writing and speaking. Her pioneering work has focused on stress management in animals and how humans influence animal behavior, both in the wild and in captivity. Integrating a whole systems approach to interspecies psychology, Marianne has worked with governments, communities, businesses, nonprofit organizations, and universities. This is a jam-packed episode that you're not going to want to miss. So if you're ready to hear more, let's get started. Mary Ann, I am so excited to have you here on the WeHorse podcast. Just before we were getting started, I was like, oh my gosh, we have to stop chatting. We have to start recording because there's so much magic that you're discussing that I can't wait for our listeners to hear. So welcome to the podcast.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:02:01-00:02:07]
No, thank you. And I'm excited to be here, too. So I know we could talk a lot longer than the podcast, so we'll try to keep it succinct.

[SPEAKER 2]
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Yes. I always like to start at the very beginning and get a little bit of history about our guests. So what brought you to horses?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:02:16-00:05:16]
Well, as you know, because you did the bio or read the bio on me, but my whole life has been about horses. I always thought because I was adopted that maybe I just came with the horse gene that a lot of people have. You know, it's a disease. It's a mutation, I'm sure. So I started yelling, not yelling, but, you know, asking for horses as soon as I could talk. And my parents were very accommodating. When I was about four and a half, they gave me riding lessons and it just never stopped. So I grew up in California, always getting the horse that nobody else wanted because we couldn't afford a lot. But finally ended up with a very unusual horse that was an orphan cult. And he ended up being, you know, doing very well in the junior jumpers and everything. And, uh, so I grew up in California, but being in a barn where we all loved our horses. And I think that was great because we talked about our horses as individuals, personalities and what we would do and who liked what, who didn't like what. So there was never a separation in the barn that I grew up with and the high riders that it was a horse or a, you know, but back then we didn't call them meter 30 horses, but say it was never a four foot horse or five foot horse. It was Clyde or Monty or Gypsy or, you know, they had names and we would go swimming in the canals. And then we'd go to the horse shows, go to Cal Palace and Del Mar and Santa Barbara and did all the horse shows and go right at the beach and then go show. And so. We had really our horses were our friends. And so that really stuck with me. And it was certainly my saving grace. So I was fortunate. I got to do all the shows and have fun. But I was always dedicated on the horse. And I think the main impact that sent me off to studying wild horses was seeing a horse at a horse show at Santa Barbara that kept throwing its head. And the trainer, I could tell, was really trying to figure it out. They tried a different fit, and he had draw reins and different things. And finally, the trainer was getting frustrated, so he told the student to take the crop and hit the horse between the ears. And the horse fell to its knees and rolled its eyes back. And I'm like 11. Oh, my gosh. But I rode over to him, and I remember I was crying because I was so scared, you know, to say something to a different trainer. But I just looked at him and said, why would you hit a horse that has a headache? And the look in his eye was just like, I never even thought of it. Like it never even occurred to him that a horse could have a headache. It would be throwing its head. So he sent the horse back to the barn, thank goodness. And I realized then and there, I need to know how do I know that? How did I know that horse had a headache? And so that's why I went off to study wild horses in Wyoming and then, you know, do graduate work in horse-human interactions and healings and try to figure out what is that cognitive consciousness that is what we call cognitive mythology, that connection, that good horse has. Sometimes they can't talk about it, but they have it. They just know it's that intuition. So a lot of my research has been around the integration of intuitive, you know, scientific intuition, I guess you'd say, or intuitive science, putting it together into applied techniques in the horse field.

[SPEAKER 2]
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We're going to get into a lot of that over the next little while in this interview. But I just want to say that I absolutely love the point that you made about looking at the horses as an individual and giving each one of them a name and remembering by their name and addressing them by their name and as their own unique personality versus, you know, just... looking at them as a thing or an object or an item. So I love that. I love that you brought that up. And with that in mind, of course, we're going to go a lot of psychology and behavioral and that sort of thing in this interview. Can you explain the difference between human centric thinking and horse centric thinking? What is that?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:06:05-00:09:10]
Well, let me give you a little background on why I use those terms to begin with. My undergraduate work in Wyoming, part of it was studying wild horses, but it was also studying the nature of looking at animals versus looking with. And my undergraduate work actually was pretty interesting at the time because now we've proven the science of it that back in the 70s we didn't know why, but it was a double-blind experiment. And what I did is I realized when I was riding around Wyoming, Just having a good time with nature, I saw a lot more wildlife than when I was on the transect trying to look for it. And I realized that my thoughts of looking at something separated me from the system. I mean, we're taught to be active observers, look at the system, detach and take notes. But when we do that, we actually impact the system. So when I was just sitting there, I'd be sitting there pretending I'm a rock, just meditating on a rock. And I had a ground squirrel come up and it sat on my knee and then it actually went up to my head and sat there. But the second I thought, what's it going to do when it realizes I'm not a rock? I mean, it was just a split second. I went, eee! and went running off into its hole. And I realized that it's sensing my own thoughts. So I realized that when we're in human centric, we are in a brainwave. Now we know it's probably beta frequencies. That's very thinking and very distracted and multitasking. And that is not where horses and animals live. And when you live in nature, like I did out in the field with no water, no anything, just living, you lose language. You'd never know it now because I can talk. But really, you lose language very quickly because the language of nature is silence. And it's it's the energetic field of emotions and thoughts. And you pick that up and you don't judge how you picked it up. And there's no vocalization there. So I realized that in studying nature, if I could train people to be more nature centric, you get a lot better observations. So it's the same thing with horses. When we're in human centric, everything revolves around us. Everything is the horse needs to do this. The stalls are this big. I mean, you look at the equestrian lifestyle in our language. It's all human centric. It's our lifestyle. It's not the horse's lifestyle. It's an equestrian lifestyle. What about the horse? The horse is a life and a lifestyle, but we don't think that way. So we're just now starting to think how the horse thinks. But before you can think like a horse or feel like a horse, and that was actually my first video, think like a horse back in the 90s or 80s, 80s? Anyway, one of the first ones. You have to understand who the horse is as a species. How do they sense? How do they interact? Not with humans, on their own. And that's why, you know, in the book, the first section is horses as a species without humans. They've lived for thousands of years in the form we see them today, interacting just fine without us. How have they done that successfully? And so that's what I mean by horse centric. Learn how to sense and see the world the way the horse senses and sees the world. And we have the capacity to do that as humans, I might say. We have to just learn what that is. Yeah. Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:09:12-00:09:35]
Now, with your experience of observing wild horses and now working with horses in captivity, can you talk a little bit about what some of the differences are in behavior that you notice that the horses, specifically in captivity, some of the subtle behaviors that people might not be picking up on that we've come to see as just normal but are actually signs of something else going on?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:09:36-00:16:43]
Well, let me preface that with Wild horses, typically, if they've been in a functional herd, and I define what that is, and that was my undergraduate work, looking at identifying the functional social behaviors of wild horses, because they're not all functional. And today's horses are all but disturbed the populations that they are very dysfunctional in some of them. But let's just look at the functional behavior. Functional behavior of any social mammal, it's not limited to the horses themselves, have certain criteria. And because horses are a social species, most of their behavior is learned behavior. So if you have a horse in the wild, it's going to learn what its mother and father, stallions are very important. And you see that in the book, just amazing stallion pictures from Barbara Wheeler showing altruistic behavior of stallions, showing stallions taking foals out on patrol, showing stallions babysitting and looking dumbfounded like, when's she coming back? You know, There's a lot of family interaction, not always, but in some functional groups. It's not always the stallion who's foals either. You get two-year-old stallions that are supposed to now babysit sisters and brothers and siblings. There isn't one rule to horses in nature. That's a lot of what I looked at is the cultural differences based on habitat and behavior. So you can't say that all behaviors are different or the same one or the other. But what I look for was functional behaviors in the wild. And those functional behaviors are the same in domestic horses. And that's what's been fascinating. And I don't understand why more people haven't been able to identify it. Or perhaps they have. They just haven't talked about it as much. But in social greetings is extremely important in horses. And so that's one of the ways we look at mental health. If a horse can't make eye contact with you, they're not interested in greeting you. They don't want a social interaction. There's a problem. Same in the wild. If a horse won't look at another horse and they walk away, oftentimes they get chased because they don't even have social graces. They can't even look. And there's a protocol for social breeding that every horse learns. You look, you keep your space, my space, your space. I mean, it's like the horse golden rules I talk about, that every horse has to learn when it's about 15 minutes old, my space, your space, meaning how big it is, its proprioception, because if they have to take off running, that foal has to be at its mother's side. Otherwise, it's going to get tripped over by another horse. So there's a lot of focus on spatial awareness, and that is actually the easiest language for horses. So in nature, in the wild functional herds, every horse is looking at another horse. They're using eyes. They're using ears. There's a lot of body language. There's a lot of eye glances. that you see particularly among mares and those behaviors went unnoticed so much because in my early research they'd noticed stallion fightings but they didn't notice nurturing behaviors so I observed a lot of nurturing behaviors among both sexes males and females and it wasn't all aggressive it'd be an ear that would go back but it was an acknowledgement of the ear and people think well a horse puts its ears back especially a mare she's bitchy Shut up, bitchy. She could just be acknowledging you walked by. You should say thank you. You acknowledged me. The gelding's sitting there not doing anything because he didn't notice that you walked by because he maybe never learned it or maybe he doesn't care. And so, you know, there's no role for geldings in nature. So they don't really have a job, which makes them ideal to work with humans and to pick up whatever behaviors we teach them because they don't have anybody else to teach them anything. It's not saying they're all like that, but you're more likely to see functional social behavior in mares in domestic life, and they are more likely in domestic worlds to be labeled as marish or bitchy or something when, in fact, they're just trying to communicate normal behaviors. So, you know, head shaking, nose bumping. I can't tell you how many horses I've met, and I'll go to do a nose greeting, and they turn away, and I'm like, what's the matter? And you can just see it in their eyes, like they're going to get hit. And it's because they probably did a nose bump to someone and someone said, don't do that. Don't bite me. And they got hit. And for a horse that wants a social greeting, that's normal. They look at you. They take a step and ask, you know, stick their nose out. Can I smell you? And you can do a gentle hand, just the back of your hand. It's just a gentle greeting. And then the next step is if they like you and you like them, you step into each other's space and you do a good buddy scratch. And that's a horse recruiting. It's one, two, three, eye contact, nose, smell, touch, buddy scratch. Now you have a social dialogue going on. And so we never let our horses in domestic world either A, learn spatial awareness, my space, your space. So horses are running over people, walking in front of them. So there's just some really basic horse stuff. And I spend most of my time actually teaching trainers those basic things because they're so easy and they're so basic, but they fix so many problems automatically. If you are able to just do my space, your space, you stand still or move. That's it. And the horse gets comfortable because it feels safe because it now knows, oh, yeah, somewhere in my brain that says this is right. If I just stand here, I'm safe. And I just look at you and you're going to tell me what to do. And I don't have to run away because I know I'm getting rewarded for paying attention to you. And, you know, I don't think. Trainers like Heike Kemmer would mind, but with Bonaparte, she did a fabulous job of doing everything before he went to the Olympics. We worked with him on smell and play and MySpace, YourSpace, and he was so cute and so funny because Heike and her good nature just turned him loose in the indoor arena. You have to imagine Germany with horses and dressage. And Bonaparte decided he could go do that to his friends now, and so he'd run over to them to try to make them move and or stand still meanwhile the rider is trying to kick you know spurs and whip getting the horse to go forward and that horse's head is up going nope nope bone apart is loose and he told me to stand here so I'm going to stand here because I can't do anything right now so you really could see the dynamics of a horse putting forth what he'd learned and spatial awareness and another horse communicating that If I'm going to listen to somebody, I'm going to listen to the horse that's telling me to stand still because he's loose and he can do more than you can with your spurs or whips. So it's pretty funny. And then when he wanted to, he would go back into this little corral that she made in the indoor arena and stand in his space and then look at her like, see, I know how to get in my space when you want me to. Well, that got him to be a much more confident horse. And that confidence is, I think, and Heike would attest to this, too, along with everything else. She had a fantastic vet, nutrition, and everything else, and training. But her ability to see he was stressed and her ability to listen on how to get him unstressed through play and confidence and safety. So... Those are basic things that then the application is very wide. So in answer to your question, I think it gets down to just basic social greeting and giving many, many horses in captivity just don't know about my space, your space. So they are scared and they walk on people or break loose because they don't know. Yeah. And then the social greeting for reinforcing social bonds. Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:16:45-00:17:45]
I find it so fascinating. I have two horses, a mare and a gelding. And my mare, she always makes a point to come out and greet. If you're going out into their paddock or anywhere, she meets you halfway. She comes and she greets you. My gelding is a little bit more like not standoffish, but he kind of just does his own thing. And, you know, you go up to him and and I always thought it was interesting because if I I always had the habit of just walking up haltering and then I would greet. And he would, I would walk up to him and he would walk away and he would look at me and, and almost kind of like be pivoting. And I was thinking, what, like, what are you, let me just, let me just put this halter on you. And then I realized, I think he wants me to greet him first. And I started, I started doing that. And so now I walk up, we have our greeting, we're all good. And then once we're done, he's like, okay, now you can halter me, but I needed you to greet me first.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:17:46-00:17:49]
Well, there you go. He learned it. That's great. He has social etiquette then.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:17:50-00:17:60]
Yeah, it's really interesting. But I needed him to teach it to me in order for me to recognize it and for it to really sink in. It was really, really cool.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:17:60-00:18:02]
And how good that you picked up on that.

[SPEAKER 2]
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Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, it well, it came down to I needed to get him in. It was a big storm coming and I needed to get them inside. And I was like, I just need you to go in. And he kept saying, well, come greet me. Come like me first. And that was when it really clicked.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:18:19-00:19:07]
People don't realize that horses are kind of like dogs as a social creature in that if they're in a barn aisle and they've got nothing to do all day but stick their heads out, every time you walk by and they bang, they're basically asking for attention. But if they know that, you know, and I've told some of the trainers, just when you walk into the barn, they're not asking for food. Just walk in, do a nose bump, eye glance, a little scratch on the withers, and go to the next horse. It's like, oh, good, because they want to smell. Where have you been? What have you done? They're very curious. And so when a horse leaves and comes back, they go through the whole breeding ceremony again, just like a dog. You know, where have you been? It's been gone 10 minutes. Horses want the same thing for the most part, unless they're not socially interactive, in which case, you know, or they're eating or something. But you see too many horses that ask for it and they finally give up because they never get the attention that they ask for. So good for you for listening to your horse.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:19:08-00:19:36]
Yeah. And just when you were talking about it, I was like, this is so fascinating. And as you're telling this story, there's also another story that you were mentioning before we started recording. And I'd love to go back to it. And it had to do with... the change that you helped make in a trainer's barn. And I'd love to discuss what it is that you did and also how you knew to do those things, the change that it made, all of that.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:19:38-00:26:23]
Okay, so we've had quite a few good case studies this year, you know, living in Wellington, there's a lot. And I'd say in general, most, I mean, at least all the trainers I work with are good people. They care about their horses. So while they may have problem horses, most of them want to solve it. They're not going to get rid of a horse. They're going to try to work with it. So I had a trainer this year that had a couple of horses. One, and they both are fantastic horses, but one was a pony that was a, Everyone had had this pony. Everyone knows this pony. So even as I talk about people will probably know this pony, but she was a fantastic pony, but you couldn't get on her. She was scared. She'd run. And, uh, You couldn't pick up her feet. You couldn't get the bridle on her. She'd pull that. So while they knew she was a lovely pony and she jumped great when you could get all this put together, they couldn't handle her. And they did traditional things. So with the pony trying to get on, they were feeding her carrots and trying to hold her. And what would that happen is it made her more scared. So she started associating treats with something bad's going to happen because nobody had taken the time to get her over her fear. So we started with, first place, she's in the cross ties. Well, a horse has no choice in the cross ties. And I said, let's take her out of the cross ties. She wants to run away. She's a pony. How far can she go, right? So let her. And they're like, well, she can kick. She can do this. I'm like, okay, but I'm going to keep eye contact with her. So she's going to tell me what she's going to do. And this, again, reinforcing eye contact, eye contact. So first thing she said, it bothers my ear to have the bridle put on. Well, they found out she'd had an ear infection at some time. All right, we're not going to stress it because what she remembers was it's an ear problem. Now we set up an argument. So instead, what did we do? We unhooked the bit, put the headstall over the pony's head, and then she takes the bit, opens her mouth. So it never hurts. You're never pushing on anything. Then she had some chiropractic treatment. issues going on quite a twist in her and how did we know that because i try to turn her one way and she'd run forward and she's like i'm not bending that way and i'd ask her tell me where you can bend i'm not going to hurt you and so it's it's the dialogue is an audio dialogue with the horse but physically assessing her and say you tell me where you hurt we'll fix it girl So we worked on that, and then she realized no one's going to touch her where she doesn't feel comfortable. And pretty soon she was letting me touch both sides, which she didn't let people do. And then pretty soon, you know, the trainer was touching, and pretty soon we're touching the back. And we're making fun of it now. We're not being sensitive and scared she's going to kick. We're playing bongo grubs on her and saying, well, doesn't this feel good? So then we went out to, you know, get on her. And again, good intention, just wrong triggers for this horse. Took all the treats away and said, no, she has to have the freedom to learn what's happening. If she's scared, we'll take her fear away. We're not going to cover it up with treats. And we're going to do things to prepare her. So we did things like stretched her legs so there was nothing pinching. We'd walk her around. And if she started to get scared, we'd walk her back. Go back to my space, your space. Stand still or move. She had to learn how to stand still. And it didn't take long. It took a couple of times. But by the time she came up to the mounting block and stood still, and, of course, they're saying, she's going to run you over. And I'm looking her in the eye and saying, Kara, she's not going to run me over, are you? She's like, nope. She was waiting to happen. But every step of the way I was telling her, she's going to get on you. It's not going to hurt. You're going to be fine. And just telling the horse, coaching her that it's not a trauma experience, even though that's what she remembers. The trainer got on. no problem and the horse walked away so that was a case of having to relearn in a different way and of course we did groundwork with her my space your space because she's a bit of a strong temperament pony and she didn't want to be caught so we stopped trying to catch her with grain said fine you don't have to be caught we're leaving but she was socially deprived she wanted social interaction on her terms so as when you walk away she's now following saying well wait come back So we worked in her terms to get her to want to come to the table rather than forcing her to do things. And, you know, she's still a work in progress. I can't say she's 100%, but she's almost there. And she's, you know, happy. And different people can handle her. And the other one that was, again, just one that gets lost in the system was just a beautiful egg horse. But because he spawned and ran off with people and they just thought he was dangerous, you know, these are liabilities for trainers. What we did was I assessed him without people and he was fine. But he was in a little bit of what I would term a special learner because he didn't have any horse friends. He didn't seem that interested. He was new, but I could put things on his back when he learned that it was fun and I was going to be his friend. So he, again, we're working with the social relationship. I got him happy and feeling happy. And I said, I don't know why this horse is spooky. I can put a bucket on his back. Well, different when you put a person we couldn't even get him to turn around with a carrot like you'd bring a carrot around to the side he'd scare himself here's a horse that didn't have any proprioception of his own body and awareness he scared himself probably had a traumatic experience where he went somebody startled him they probably went to tighten a girth or hand up a coat and it scared him and because he's a special learner instead of standing there and internalizing he took off spun and probably lost a person So with him, we had to really coach him very different than the other one. We had to coach him like a little special learner horse and said, you're good. You can do this. Just focus on your rider. Because his trigger wasn't as much understanding, although he's learned things, as having a friend on him. And you'll hear me say this a lot. Horses don't care as much about what's on them as who's on them. They want a friend on them. And so we did a lot of paddock work with him, with the different people that were going to ride him, and then with, you know, JJ and stuff. And he's just one show champion last weekend with a completely different rider. And the best picture in the whole world is seeing this horse riding with a lady with all the ribbons handing the championship ribbon to him and his eyes and ears going, I think I'm just supposed to stand here now. And I'm okay with that because they love me. And you can see him going, I think they like me. So ribbons are good now. Whereas that horse would have spun and taken off with you, you know, a few months ago. So when people have the intention of, to help a horse and they start to understand that this horse is an emotional creature and they're willing to spend the time to work with the horse's emotions they can turn almost any horse into a star and just have to get that knowledge into the right trainers and these trainers were great doing it so First of all, I love both of those case studies.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:26:24-00:26:33]
And I love hearing, you know, happy endings. And so congratulations on the work that you've been doing to have so many happy endings, both for horses and humans.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:26:33-00:27:50]
And I have to say, it wouldn't get done if the trainer and everybody in it didn't participate. And that's where they have the grooms and the farriers and the trainer and the working students. And so when you have a team of good people, you know, like his working students, who used to do thoroughbreds, took him out, asked what was his name, took him out and rode him on trail next to garbage cans and glittery Christmas trees, and the horse about came out of his skin, and she just stood there and went, yeah, yeah, yeah, big deal. You're not like riding a two-year-old thoroughbred, so deal with it. And the horse just went... OK, I guess that's fine. So, you know, nothing that was done was that exceptional. It was just taking the time and making it part of the program. The program isn't getting teaching the horse how to jump on either one of these horses. They jump beautifully. And the program was getting them confident in being a horse and knowing that they have riders and people around them that they can trust that are going to make them feel safe and comfortable. And that over and over again. It's like if you can, I always say, love's not enough. You have to make the horse feel safe and comfortable. And that's not that hard when you are horse-centric and you ask the right questions. Because not every horse fits every program. Not every horse is comfortable around other horses even. You can't just put them next to each other and think they're going to get along. That could be stressful. So you have to really know how to feel and sense like your horse.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:27:52-00:28:12]
If somebody listening wanted to... Get a little bit more information on on being horse centric and they wanted to incorporate that more into their training and their life. What are some of the subtle signs of stress that they can start to. You know, be a little bit more aware of.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:28:13-00:31:02]
Well, I think that's going to lead us into the personalities. And that was a fun thing because I used to sell sport horses years ago. I mean, nobody really wanted to pay a behaviorist. So, you know, brokering horses and fixing problems was kind of the way to stay in it. But I got a lot of data. And what I noticed is that You know, good horsemen could tell you all about a horse, but not everybody had the time. Horses were coming and going and getting sold, and nobody was really assessing the horse's personality. And so there were internalizers, which wouldn't show you. You might see something subtle like just a soft look in their eye that looked a little worried, and maybe their eyebrows were a little worried, but they did everything they were supposed to do. And trainers would say, oh, he's such a great horse. I don't know why you had a big killer. You know, well, because he's internalizing everything. He's trying to please. And that's a personality type that came out, the I want to please syndrome, which fits most horses that don't want to be leaders or in charge. They just want to fit into a social group. And if the only social group they have is the human, they'll try to fit and do what you want them to do. But that horse could be very stressed. But you wouldn't know it because they're doing everything that you've asked them to do. The other end of the spectrum is the ones that externalizers. And so I've kind of, you know, put them into categories. You can look at it multiple different ways. The externalizers, they get stressed and they're going to bite. They're going to kick. They're going to bang. They're going to try to get your attention. They're going to not want to bend. Because they're saying, no, I have a problem. You need to listen to me. What part of that are you not getting? Now they become behavior problems when, in fact, they're just trying to talk. They're just trying to tell you, I'm stressed. There's something going on. I don't care that your vet didn't pick it up. I have a problem. And a perfect example of that is Another client that we worked with, with the bat, who's a very good bat, but, you know, they did all kinds of things on the horse. It was a dressage horse. And she was just a nervous wreck at the show. She could not handle it. And she was just getting worse and worse even to ride. And they had looked at, you know, dispensaries. They'd looked at hormones. They looked at things. And I kept saying, I think it's hormones. But I don't think regimen, I don't think anything else is working. I think there's something, there's a problem. Because the horse keeps saying there's a problem. You can't make her... do something she can't do. Well, they took her over. but they couldn't see them so the ultrasounds didn't show everything but when they took the ovaries out it's like as the trainer said I have my horse back think of how many horses get sent down the road because they can't fix them or something didn't work and now there's a problem or they breed them and you just breed the problem in so you know every horse is going to express it differently but I think we tend to select horses that are internalizers that are going to do what we ask them to do and those are the horses that you have to really keep an eye out for Are they getting stressed?

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:31:04-00:31:54]
Do you wish you could have a better partnership with your horse but aren't sure where to start? Do you want to advance your riding or horsemanship but don't have access to the ideal resources in your area? Does the idea of learning about horse training whenever and wherever and at a price that won't break your horse bank sound appealing to you? Check out WeHorse.com to access over 175 online courses with top trainers from around the world. We have courses on everything from dressage to groundwork to show jumping to body work. And as a member, you get access to everything in our WeHorse library to watch whenever you want. Oh, and we also have an app, which means you can download a course or video to watch without Wi-Fi, which is perfect for those days of the program when you want a quick dose of training inspiration before your ride.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:31:55-00:31:56]
So what are you waiting for?

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:31:57-00:32:19]
Go to WeHorse.com and check out our free seven-day trial to access our WeHorse library and see if it's a good fit for you. We can't wait to see you in there. And now, back to the episode. The personality assessments that you mentioned, so we have, I'm assuming the two types is like the internalizers and the externalizers. How do you do these assessments?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:32:20-00:40:25]
Okay, so there's a lot of different ways, and I had a lot of fun, and it's a very good time now because lots and lots of people are coming out with emotional evaluations of horses and how to assess personalities and different things. But I will say back in the 80s and the 90s, as I developed these personality assessments, there really weren't many to go on. And so I looked at what are the categories of how we in horses In the in our equestrian world, assess horses versus wild horses and wild horses. You can look at horses. There's not as many internalizers and externalizers as you see horses that want to get along or social facilitators or horses that are a little bit of a troublemaker. So they're they're slightly different. But in domestic life. It tends to be evaluated by how they're going to fit in. So I started categorizing them as as their energetic internalizers, externalizers. But then in looking at horses and how to match up horses with people and horses. I started realizing that certain people just liked the beach bump, you know, like the trainer that bought three horses and everyone is just a sweetie. And some days they're fabulous and other days they don't feel like performing. And so, you know, we kind of categorized, categorized that one as the beach bump mentality. When they're on, they're on. When they're not, they're not, you can't make them. Um, Even using astrology sometimes, you know, the Aries, I can always tell you when there's a problem and it's an Aries because if they use their mouth, it's an Aries. They just, you know, do it. And we didn't include the astrology part in the book because it was so much more to include. And the publisher's like, we really have to cut this down. But I do have that. And that... breakout probably it's been used more by trainers than anything because it's fun to say oh my god i get along great with the scorpios but don't give me another aries or the people that say send me an aries and when i used to broker horses i had trainers that would say if you have a bad behaving aries to send it to me because i know they'll jump because they love to have fun And the personality is very expressive. So you have to understand that they're not biting you. They're talking to you, but they use their mouths a lot. And so, you know, trying to put horses in different categories, you get the ultra sensitive horses, which often are dressage horses and sometimes jumpers because we're breeding them to be more sensitive. And now that we have genetics, we've been able to identify horses. The curiosity versus the vigilant gene. So you look and you think the vigilant gene is probably more a wild gene. It's the horse that's highly sensitive, that's always looking. And they're going to internalize a lot because they're stressed. They hear noises. They smell things. They don't know how to process what they're hearing. And the flip side is probably the quarter horse that we've bred to get the curiosity gene where they're not going to be that reactive. They're just curious, like, oh, what's that? Oh, OK. You know, they just kind of go along with the program. So, you know, in our performance horses, we kind of the higher the competition goes, the more sensitive you want them typically. So you end up with higher stress there. And the more pleasure horses tend to be more curious and you don't care if they're not right on if they hit a rail. Oh, well. You know, they're not going to be that concerned about it. So different ways. So I developed what's called the psych evaluation as one way, and that stands for sensitivity, awareness, intelligence, confidence, and cooperation. And oddly enough, it was developed for how horses fit in and how to evaluate the personality. But I've used it a lot in organizational work, too, on teams, on seeing whether someone fits into a team, because it's not a personality assessment that looks at the individual animal completely by itself, because horses are can't be evaluated as an individual. They have to be evaluated as how they interact, how they form relationships. Well, that's the same with humans. If they can't form a functional relationship and work on a team, I don't care how smart they are. I don't care how aware they are. If they're highly sensitive and they lack confidence, they're going to have a problem. And so being able to assess how sensitive are you, a high, low or normal? You want to normal would be nice kind of in the middle. But if you're low sensitivity, that can be an asset because you're not going to get that upset. But, you know, if the barn burns down, they might be the last horse to realize there's smoke coming. And then awareness is different than intelligence. Awareness is awareness. Do you know what time feed comes? Did you notice there's a new horse in the barn? It's like, oh, you know, it's observant. It's not sensitivity. It's observing what's going on around them in their environment. You know, you put a different saddle on, like, what's that? That smells different. They're just observant. Intelligence, and I think we do intelligence tests fairly wrong because we use food a lot as a reward. And honestly, social bonds are a stronger motivation for a horse than food. They know that people shouldn't give them food. They can go feed food wherever they want. But when you give a horse an emotional test of how do you find your friend or how do you make friendships, that's a much better test because Well, I call it intelligent. It's really emotional intelligence. Is that horse a good social facilitator? Does it get along with other horses? Because a horse that's aware that gets along with people and horses is an intelligent creature. And it may not be intelligent by human standards. Like I do the carrot test where I'll put it under a bucket and they look at the carrot and they look at the bucket and then they come right back to the person, even though you put the carrot under the bucket. And people go, oh, it's not very smart. No, it doesn't have logic. It is smart because it says you had the carrot the last time. Therefore, I know you can get more carrots because I'm not going to go to the bucket because bucket didn't make the carrot, even though the carrot is under the bucket. Now, they can learn that and learn to knock over buckets, but that's associative learning. So then, you know, the next is then confidence. And almost every horse needs more confidence because they are always a little insecure where they fit in, especially if they're in domestic world, because they don't have the interaction to give them feedback and proprioception and things. And so I bring a lot of, you know, we've had another horse this season that four years, beautiful training. Everything is great at home. Can't go to the horse show. Just scared. And it took time. most of the season but one step at a time and a good another great trainer that i said one step and until she's calm she doesn't get the next step and walking to the horse show and standing in every horse show warm-up ring until she stopped spooking at everything around her she was the horse then looking at them dropping jump poles and we'd tell them go ahead drop anything do anything make golf carts go by because she had to learn that there's nothing to run from and going faster and being a basket case isn't going to work. And she learned to relax. And so that took a while because she was a mare, but it was just taking it one step at a time because she was highly sensitive. She was smart. And while she tried to be cooperative, she couldn't manage her own sensitivity. So confidence, building confidence and giving them a lot of things to learn on their own. And we did a lot of paddock work where, you know, I'd open an umbrella and she could walk up under it or leave. And pretty soon she was testing her own confidence going, I can walk up under the umbrella. I'm like, right. You think you can? And then she would because she wanted to hang out with us. So you give the horse the freedom to choose. You don't force them. You let them learn. And then, of course, cooperation. And so, you know, a horse that cooperates can overcome a whole lot because they just they do want to please. But you have to watch out where their stress is. So psych evaluation is one that goes into a pattern. But it's you know, it's a scaled assessment. The personalities, another one. Then I did, you know, with the beach boy bum and the sensitive one and the healer. Those are all different personalities that kind of fit into different disciplines. Some of them make great equine assisted therapy animals. Some are good pleasure horses. But that is a series of questions that you answered. It kind of puts you in a category. And while I hate putting anything in a box because there's always a combination. It's been fun to have people look at it and read it and they go, oh, yeah, I've got one of those. Oh, and I've got one of those, too, because they start seeing, yeah, that's exactly how my horse is. So just like with humans, nothing's locked in stone. It's just a fun way to try to assess your horse. Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:40:26-00:40:26]
Is this information in your book?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:40:42-00:43:10]
Oh, yeah. Yeah. All the personality and that stuff is. And then there's a you know, they can always go. I'm redoing the website to get more information if I'm going to try to get the astrology assessment out just because I love that. Oh, my God. I was going to buy the book. It doesn't have it in it. And I said, I know it was like take leave it in or take it out. And because that wasn't as scientific as the other stuff. The publisher felt it was better to take it out. But truly, I have to say it's been more fun because I have trainers calling me and going, OK, OK, I got I have a Scorpio that just came in. Do you think he's a good match for so and so? She's a you know, she's a Libra. Do you think they're going to get along? And I'm like, well, I don't know. What do you think? I mean, I'm not going to make it hard, but then. They notice things like another behavior problem where a horse was running off after the jump and running the trainer into the wall. And yet he's super quiet and he's just like a bull does. And he goes, you know, is he a Taurus because he's acting like a bull? And I said, no. I said, you upset him at one point. You got after him, right? You got mad at him. And he said, yeah, yeah, but that was a long time ago. And I said, well, Scorpios don't remember. I mean, they do remember and they don't forget anything. and he holds a grudge, and I said, you're going to have to apologize to that one, or he's going to keep running you off. He's looking for the opportunity to get you, and he did. He apologized to the horse and said, you know, not going to do that anymore, and he got softer with the horse and started letting the horse make some decisions, and the horse changed his personality, his reaction to it. So, you know, whether you agree with it or not, it's just a fun way to – start assessing things that we typically don't look at, you know, it's like, how do we describe these things? And that's why, you know, in the book, I describe what's intuition, how do we use it? What is proprioception? How do we use it? We don't have language. And across the board agreement, it's not science, it's not intuition, it's somewhere in the middle, but we're all made up of both. And so when you give people tools, and it helps them and it helps the horse, That's that's useful. And that's what I've tried to do is is make it fun for people to assess their horse and find, you know, find which ones work for you. You don't have to use them all. They're all there is just tools to play with and to help people with their horse. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of that in the book. And then. I'll probably put out the astrology one for fun is a little like a little e-book or something that people get the book. We're going to set the website up to do that because, yeah, a lot of people have asked for that one. That was the most fun to write, I have to say.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:43:10-00:43:25]
Yeah, I bet that seems like it'd be the most fun. I'd love to talk about your book. You know, we've been referencing a little bit. So the book is called A Horse by Nature. Can you tell us what it's about and what readers can expect from it?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:43:26-00:51:46]
I'd love to. Okay. It started out as a little tip book because I went to the industry that I work in, which is dressage and hunter jumper mostly and some of my sources. And I said, you know, I found myself repeating myself so much with clients, and I wanted to put something out that would explain and be simple. And everybody said they wanted a tip book. They said they're not going to read a lot of data, but if you make a tip, we'll read it. Okay, so Trafalgar came, and we decided to do a tip book. And I don't know. I thought it was going to be 150 pages, simple little tips. Well, I don't know what happened. It just got bigger and bigger, and it is just an introduction. It's not even complete. It's just like touching in three sections. And I set it up. The first section is horses without humans, what horses do without humans and how do they function so that you really understand the horses and species. It's like the National Geographic version of the horse. And I had Dr. Dan Rubenstein from Princeton who I'd worked with for many years. He heads up the evolutionary biology department, but he's also been very active in liquid conservation internationally. And through the years, we've compared horses. zebra behavior and Pazowski behaviors. We've gone back and forth in wild horse behaviors for years. He has found pretty much the same thing. While the genetics are pretty much the same, functional behavior is functional behavior. The mares are the social facilitators, as we call them. Stallions are more worried about where their mares are than anything else. You have some groups with strong family units and some with very loose. He wrote the intro to that section. The next section is on horses with humans. And Dr. Dorothy Meyer, who is my vet friend from Germany and who I worked with with Kika Kemmer, and she, while she's a nutritionist as well, she's very interested in behavior. And so she wrote that introduction. of how we interact and can use what we learn about wild horses in our interactions with humans. So that goes through from breeder until showing and selling every aspect of stress. How do we manage stress? And my first two books actually were translated into German. I can't say them because I don't speak German, but it was basically what your horse really wants. And then the other one was, um, uh, managing stress and behavior, uh, of the performance horse and something feared behavior. And, um, But Cosmos published them. But Dr. Meyer was instrumental in that. So that really gives people the tools, tools to assess. It looks at what a horse needs to learn. How can you teach that horse what it needs to learn? Because most of the problems and behavior problems I see in the show world isn't that the horse doesn't have talent or it can't do the job. It's not a training issue. It's a it doesn't mean it's a horse issue. And, you know, one of the little horses we got that used to buck everybody off, he'd had every trainer try him. They all knew he could jump and he jumped fantastically. The problem was he'd buck you off in between. And so, you know, we got him and he had He looked very sad. He looked like a leftover BLM Mustang. Actually, he was very tiny, a little flex star. And he was the most talented horse and still is. He's doing the high amateurs with an amateur. But he didn't know who he was or what he was supposed to do. And so he had to learn things like what a leaderboard was and what flashing lights are. And his way of handling his stress was jumping and acting out. So if he got worried, he'd just jump out of the ring, like truly keep jumping and or go jump without you. It was his therapy was jumping, but not always with the rider. And so he had to learn how to do it, and he did. And so after a couple of years, we had to look for a very special person for him because there had to be someone that would love him and coach him. And he has the ideal person who moved him to Kentucky just to keep him happy and out in the pasture so he's happy and he's jumping. Oh, nice. So, you know, that's where the book gives tools on how to handle those special horses along with, you know, helping you identify what problems are. And then the last section, section three is on ethics, economics, and welfare, what we do with horses and where are we going forward in the future with horses. And that's a big topic right now because of social licensing and what the public thinks. And, you know, the reality is, is that the public thinks, isn't that off sometimes of what they think. Our horse industry thinks we know it all, but when a public can see a sad horse getting scared, that's not okay. And they're probably right. And the idea that, well, that's how we ride is going to have to change. And even some of the other athletes are saying that, that any creature that you have to use spurs and whips on to get to compete with you, is that really an Olympic sport? So we're really under the guns. And the fact that all our horse industry is not at all coordinated enough Western horses, you know, reigning horses, endurance horses, dressage horses. It's just a horse. They don't really care what their discipline is. And so the public doesn't care what the discipline is either. They care about the welfare of the horse. Show me a happy horse. And so that's where I did a video for Instagram on walking into a barn and saying, you know, how do you know if a horse is happy? You know, how do horses talk? And it was just a little one-minute video. I just happened to walk into the barn, and it was a great barn that had happy horses, and they were all talking. And that silly video has had, like, you know, a million and a half views, and it's had, like, I don't know, you know, hundreds – thousands of likes and shares, 171,000 likes and 9,000 shares or something in three weeks. Wow. And a lot of the people who have done it have asked questions and made comments. There are like four or 500 comments on there and people are dialoguing back and forth. So they're engaged. But a lot of those comments are from the public, not horse people. And some are horse people trying to explain, you have no idea what horses go through. These are happy horses. And other people are saying, well, they're still in jail. How come they don't get to go out? And the other person is going, because it's Florida, dummy. You know, there's flies and it's hot and they want to come in and get cool and eat. And so it's interesting to hear the industry dialoguing about this. But this is where we're going to be held, you know, to the ground on how do we create, if we're going to have horse sports, how do we create it? So I didn't answer it, all the answers, but I gave a lot of suggestions and the suggestions were made. from surveying the industry, from vets and trainers and farriers and everybody that said, please don't put my name. I don't want to be blackballed because all of these good people say, if I don't do this, they may never have me again. And that's just a shameful sport that says, if I don't send the vet records with this horse, knowing that it has a problem, that owner could sue me because I've released the records well we don't have any requirements that you have to have that records go we don't have that integrity I mean the good people do it and they give you a manual with the horse and call me if you have a problem but we still have a lot of people and the more the money is pushing the more the people that aren't the good people are going to cut corners to try to have some welfare issues so anyway the point being the book is set up to help People, whether you're in the industry or you're just an interested person on horses, because if you don't know anything about horses, you're going to learn a lot because it's written in a way that it has red tips, blue tips and green tips. So the red tips are you must know. Blue tips are good to know. And the green is nice to know. And that way you just can read the tips and you'll know everything in the book. Or you could just look at the pictures because the pictures are fantastic. Barbara Wheeler, a wildlife photographer, did all the wild horse photography for the most part, and they are just phenomenal. And then it's very picture heavy. So you could just read the picture captions like how to look at horses' eyes, what are they saying, how to look at stress, what's happening in different horses because every horse can look a little different. And so you never have to read anything other than the pictures or you could read the stories because I try to bring field notes in and give a story of a horse or give a well, you know, out in the field what I noticed so that you read the stories and you're like, wow, that makes sense. And if you want the science, I put in, you know, the publisher put in QR codes throughout there so you can go to the research and find out more. And I'm building out the website. So it's going to have a lot of references on it as we get a database set up.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:51:47-00:51:56]
Wow. Wow. That sounds like it is packed full of information for all types of learning styles for the humans as well.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:51:57-00:59:58]
What inspired you to write it? Oh, gosh, necessity, I guess. Trafalgar and I had been talking for a long time because I had written the books in German and they had suggested translating them to English. But I said, oh, that's so outdated. That was done back in, I don't know, 2006 or something. I said, we have a different audience over here. It's different time. And people don't want that. They want a tip book. And so I thought, I'll just sit down. And then my husband, too, he's always instrumental. He's like, what happens if you die? Where's all this knowledge coming from? And so he's like, you need to get this all down in a book. So it just happened that the book contract came through in 2019. And then we had COVID hit in 2020. So it's like, well, what else am I going to do? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then it took them 18 months. to even get to it because they got so behind and which turned out to be a good thing because during that long process, the whole Olympics happened and social licensing changed happened. So while we were talking about it back in 2019, 2018, even, um, We didn't have the evolution of the equitation science to the degree we have now. Everybody's adopting the five domains as sort of a mental health check. Well, we didn't even talk about mental health. And the whole book is on emotional and mental health in horses. Every vet will tell you, and I have some quotes in there from them, that healthy horses usually are mentally healthy, and the ones that get injured usually are mentally stressed first. There's exceptions, but the mentally stressed horses, everything gets collapsed. Their immune system, they get weakened. They just aren't happy. And horses, you know, that's what I think has amazed me is that in the wild, oh, my God, I have seen horses get like wounds completely kicked open in their chest or, you know, a piece of meat taken out of their gluteal muscles from a mountain lion and thinking that horse won't make it. And they heal up. I've seen a mare with a broken leg have a foal at her side and just drags and limps and gimps off of her broken leg. So horses are amazing healers. And yet we can't keep them sound. And it's like in the wild, every horse that gets covered has a baby. And we have, what, 40 percent fecundity at the breeding farms, 40, 50 percent, maybe not very good. But we're doing it all wrong. So the book talks about you want to get your mirror in full. Let her smell the importance of smell. Smell is one of the largest sensory organs for the horse for recognition and social recognition. Why do we block it? Why do we tie their noses close? Why do we prevent them from using an organ that isn't designed to do anything to the body? Smell does nothing to the body, okay? And yet we focus on the nose and the tongue with bits and nosebands. Not to say that some horses don't like it and love the contact, but you have to think what you're doing. You're interacting with a proprioceptive relationship of 1 to 20 nerves in the nose when you're trying to make something in the back end that's 1 to 20,000 proprioceptive neurons do something. Not the fastest way, I might say. The brainstem is going to be a lot faster, which is why you see all the people now riding with a rope around the neck because that's a lot faster way to make the body do something. You know, if you can get the attention of a horse through the mouth, but you're not going to always get them to do something with the back end. Horses learn any language we teach them. They try. But we're not teaching them the easiest language for them to learn all the time. And that's where our whole equitation science and equestrian industry has to be looked at to say, if we're about the horse and if we keep saying it's about horse welfare, What are we doing to get the knowledge into the industry? Are we teaching everybody about the horse as a species and horse psychology and how they see? Most of the trainers I work with, when I say, do you know how a horse sees? They can't see for 15 or 20 minutes going from light to dark. No wonder the horse stopped at the dark. They can't see the jump. We have nerve synapses. They have chemical synapses. So it's different. Walk a horse out of a trailer and they trip. Well, they can't see where they're going. So If we just understand even how the horse senses and how they communicate, it improves our training so much better. And most of the horses that we've rehabbed, and I've worked with several of the trainers here in Wellington, You take off the tight noseband, you take off the gags, you take everything off their faces and put them in a soft bed or just a hackamore, and suddenly they stop running. And everybody's like, oh, my God, how did you do that? Well, because you don't know that when you're in pain, you run. That's what horses do. When they're in pain and their heads hurt and their face hurts, what do they do? They run faster. You're not going to stop them. You have to take the thing off that's causing the pain that's making them run. And then they stop running. And now you have to kick them to go. So those kind of things, which you see at the top still, just baffle me. Like, why are we not getting basic neurophysiology and psychology into every horseman before they can even compete? And, you know, the public is going to probably start demanding that. Like when you see one trainer who says, I know this stuff and why am I successful? I mean, it's people that you're seeing at the top that are having happy horses, you know, like Jesse and Dallara. Dallara is obviously a very happy horse. And, you know, we can use these signs when we look at horses in dressage, for instance. I took pictures in the last Olympics of the halt. As I talk about how do you tell mental health in a horse? Well, do they want to socially engage with what's around them? Are they aware? You know, we look at the psych evaluation for that. And a horse wants to be curious and they want to know what's going on. That's a horse that's socially engaged. So when they come to the halt in dressage, and their head comes up when you drop the rein and they look around and they're proud of themselves, that's a happy horse. When you drop the rein and they go to their chest like they have to hyperflex again and they don't want to look where they're going and they don't want to see what's happening, that is not a happy horse. You know, in my opinion, they should get marked down 10 points right there because you are an unhappy horse that just demonstrated bad training. I agree. But instead... They still give them points because they had a phenomenal. They also should look at the horse's biomechanics. And I'm not alone on this. It's funny. But when you have a horse that's throwing its shoulders out and it's moving like a pony behind, that is not how you move. That is not how a horse naturally moves. Oh, and by the way, not every horse can wear a bit. So why are we forcing horses to wear bits and then marking them down for sticking their tongues out when it's pinching everything in their palate? Yeah. Okay. So as the public learns all of this, they're going to ask the same questions. And so part of that is in the book because it asks the questions. I'm saying I just think that we as horsemen need to self-regulate and make the changes. And so I'm all about the education and social change. And adapting models, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. That's the thing is that we can borrow from other sciences. Psychology and the psychology of even assessing trauma in children fits more of the horses than what we've done in a lot of the equation science and equine science. They're not livestock. And that's a part of the problem we address in the book is how do you view the horse? If it's a commodity and it's an investment, it's livestock, that's different than if it's your best friend and it's a conscious sentient being. Yeah. So we have a lot we have a lot on the plate this year to do it. So that's why I feel education and getting that knowledge out to everybody. And there's plenty of it out there. So I'm hoping to get people inspired to, you know, books, a starting point. It's certainly not the end. And I purposely don't have any followings or anything because it's not a system. It's tools to apply with your own relationship with your horse. And I always tell my clinics, you know, if nothing that I say feels right, don't use it. Don't become something. Don't change your relationship with your horse because you take a clinic. If your horse is doing what you want it to do and you're happy, leave it alone. Everybody has that special relationship. And I think that's, you know, that's the dangers of our training is everything's different and you, we don't get taught the relationship science. You get taught how to ride, but not how to communicate.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:59:59-01:00:28]
Yeah. So that actually leads me to, first of all, I love everything that you're saying. I'm sitting here and getting whiplash from nodding so hard. It leads me to one of your offerings, which is equine sports coaching. which to my understanding is that you coach coaches. Can you tell us a bit about that and why it's so important for everything that you just said and also the future of the sport?

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:00:29-01:05:13]
Yeah, it's kind of funny because my goal isn't, like I said, to have a program or do anything. At this point, I thought I'd kind of semi-retired, but it is as an educator. And so the best way is to get the trainers, the vets educated in the same knowledge. And so, you know, some of the vets that I work with, we're looking at how to do very quick mental health assessments on horses, because I do feel vets should be doing that as part of a pre-purchase exam. Okay. Yeah. But they have to learn it. And while I lectured many years ago at UC Davis and Washington State, it's not a requirement. It's not really common knowledge. And so vets are often afraid to make statements in something they don't know. But it's very simple. And so we're testing it among different vets and clinicians. You know what I call the two minute social engagement model, which works well with children and other animals. Do they make eye contact? Do they walk away? And so, you know, teaching a trainer that when you go to evaluate a horse, what's the horse do? I mean, I walk into a bar and the horse walks away when they walk on the altar and I say, why? And I get told, well, you know, we gave him magnesium paste. He doesn't like it. And I'm like, why are you giving it to him? You know, I don't say don't. I say, why are you doing that? And then they explain to me and I'll say, are you interested in learning a different way? Well, yeah. And then I show them and then they don't do it anymore. And then the horse comes to the stall door. So, you know, that kind of training is I guess you could call it sports coaching, but it's basic. But getting to the next level, it's like some of the – I work with the good trainers because I pretty much work with referrals, but on kind of a retainer basis with the bars, with the trainers. And that way, no matter what horse they get in, we can go through and assess, and I can tell them what they need to do rather than me just doing it. I mean, I've done horses for these people, but if they're getting stuck on a training problem where the horse is wanting to rear up at the end gate and it's an upper-level dressage horse, we might discuss, Well, he's going through his adolescence because he never got that in Holland. So now we've got to give him an appropriate way to play. So let's take him out to the paddock and put some pressure on him to play and respect space. Then when he comes in, put him in long lines, you know, so we might look at the psychology of what's going to help that horse. But it's not me doing it as much as giving them the tools to do it and understanding their own horses. So the equine sports coaching, what has happened is we have coached in equestrian, you know, what I developed in graduate school, a whole curriculum on equestrian psychology, but I don't think anybody took it. Like it's not been a hot topic. And I thought everybody that loved horses that was interested in psychology would want a graduate degree in equestrian psychology, but obviously not. So I've tried to package it in ways that are more industry friendly. And that's the equine sports coaching, because what that does is it allows people The trainer to have the psychology skills to assess the client and the person, but also the psychology skills to assess the horse. And, you know, you can get a horse that has a competitive nature and you can get a person with competitive nature and you can get a horse that has talent but no confidence. And so that sports coaching, you know, we have made the mistake in the past in a lot of coaching that it's just coaching how to train the horse to do or not to do something without even assessing the horse. And so equine sports coaching really works with the trainers that want to learn equine psychology and behavior and cognition and how to apply it. And it can be simple things like a trainer that I worked with, again, had a lot of horses and they had a horse that they couldn't even lead to the paddock. And he bit her husband's finger off, you know, was biting and just really upset. But he was very social. And so equine She's a good trainer. And she's like, I don't have time for this one. You know, what can I do? Well, once we got him to the paddock and we taught him MySpace, YourSpace, he picked up very quickly. We worked on just the barn. How do you keep your athletes happy? If this were a football team, what would you do? Would you lock them all up and never say anything? No. These are your athlete partners. You walk into the barn, they want to know who are you, where you've been. So now she walks in. And the cross ties, they're not tied up. She tells him to stay and he can turn around and look at stuff and investigate. And so we're giving them, while it's not the quote five freedoms that we talk about or the five domains, we're giving them the important things to a horse. Freedom, some freedom to make decisions and choices, which they need to stay cognitively aware. You need their brain sharp. They're they're reinforcing social bonds with their horses, even if it's just walking in and giving them a buddy scratch instead of a carrot. They get a scratch and a nose bump. So that's social recognition. And so that is all part of keeping these athletes happy. And that's where, you know, the trainers I work with are willing to. They're all busy and they're all super busy with horses, but they care about their horses. And so they're able to integrate a little bit different program into their horses training.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:05:16-01:05:54]
I feel like this is so important for the future of our horses and also for the future of our horse people, whether they are young riders or whether they are older riders and they're relearning how to be with horses. I just I feel like this work works. It's so important for everybody. And one of the things I want to come back to, you had said at the very beginning, you said the cognitive skills of a good horse person. And so right now we're talking about horse people. And I'd love to know what are those cognitive skills that, you know, if you have it, you have it. And also second question of that sort of overload is, can you learn it?

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:05:57-01:10:37]
Okay, I'll answer the second question first. Yes, you can learn it. And there will be people that argue that, you know, you'll hear people say the person's a technical rider or they ride by feel. And can you teach feel? Well, I think you can, but you have to have someone open-minded to learn feel over technical. And so I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what are ways to get people to learn that feel, to pick up that intuition of their horses. And so, you know, years and years ago, I did a meditation tape called Enchanted Kinship with Horses because when I would do a clinic, people would come back and go, I can't do it with my horse without the music. So I had to go get the music license to do the meditations to prepare them. And then they would listen to it when they'd ride because it relaxed them. And I always use music in my clinics. And so the horses get really used to it, too. That's a whole other subject of music and horses, riding rhythms. So what I have found is I did a lot of observation to people that are just the intuitive, good horsemen. And they don't like to talk about it for the most part because they just do what they do. But they're present. They're not on their cell phones. They're not thinking about what they're going to do tomorrow. They're just thinking about that horse. They're really present in the moment. And I have to bring a quick story in that elicits that in terms of horsemen. When I first went to Wyoming, I the one of the guys on the rodeo team where I kept my horse was going to take me out to count dry cows and so I was really excited because I had a jumper right and so we were going to count cows on the range and he shows up in his pickup truck in a stock rack and I asked him where his horse trailer was and he looked at me rather ridiculously and said I thought you had a jumping horse and This guy didn't say a lot. And I'm like, okay, no, he doesn't jump into the back end of pickup trucks. And the guy kind of went on like, oh, well. He whistled and his horse comes in out of the pasture. It was just dirt and his dog. And the horse had like sweat marks on him and dirty. I'm from California in a jumper barn. We wash our horses, you know, afterwards. And so I said to him, how come you don't even wash your horse off or hose him? And he looks at me again. He's just puzzled as I am. And he says, would you want to get hosed off after you just got rode hard for 14 hours? You want to go roll in the dirt and eat with your friends? Good point number two. And then he whistled and his dog jumped in and sat and he did brush his horse off, I think, to just make me feel good. And his horse jumped in the back end of the pickup truck. And so now I'm pretty amazed. You know, I'm like 19 years old in Wyoming just going, OK, there's a lot. This guy's got it. I've got to find out what he's got because he can feel it, but he doesn't know what he has. And so his horse jumped in. I said, how did you teach your horse to do that? And he looked at me and he goes, I didn't. He just wants to go to work with me. So I spent a lot of time studying that connection between horses and riders and what they had. And that's how I came up with originally. And it's in the book to the offer techniques, being open, friendly, focused, respectful and empathetic. And that's a good way to look at being offering to be in connection with the horse. So while the book goes into a lot of things of what makes a good horse person, you know, it's like being present in the moment, listening and being able to communicate clearly, being consistent with your horse. Know yourself and your horse because horses don't all. care about people sometimes they like the crazy people because the horse is unpredictable too so you know you don't have to be a perfect person but you do need to know yourself and know your horse and that takes time and then you know above everything you want to create safety and comfort for your horse and when you feel safe to that horse They don't care what's going on around them. I used to train police horses in Oakland and San Francisco, and we couldn't sell them as a hunter or a jumper or a dressage horse. If they had the right measurements, they had to get trained to be basically for police horses. It's amazing how you can turn a negative association like a firecracker into a positive association and have a horse go to sleep. And had lots of stories on that. And even to using the awareness where a horse can see movement in the distance and alert the officer that he saw an unusual movement. They're very astute. And the smell is so good. So we're underutilizing horse skills, truly, and their own proprioception. So, you know, it's basically going through and and knowing yourself and having that empathetic connection. And I can't reinforce enough that over all the training in the world and disciplines, it's really the relationship. What kind of relationship do you want with your horse? And if you want that really deep relationship where a horse would rather come to you than go off with its horse friends, then you have to give it a reason to like you. And it's not food. It's safety.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:10:39-01:10:54]
That is such a powerful way for us to wrap this up. I want to be mindful of the time. And I also just want us to sit with that for a second as well, is the idea of being a sense of safety and having a connection with your horse.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:10:55-01:11:20]
And making them have a good buddy scratch doesn't hurt either. Yes. When they're getting a buddy scratch, they can't eat at the same time. I've done this on so many horses where you start scratching and they're like, oh, oh, that feels good. And now they start making the buddy scratching response because it's going through the brainstem that they feel good and they're kind of programmed. They turn around and want to scratch you. They can't really enjoy the pleasure of a scratch and eat at the same time. Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:11:21-01:11:28]
I'll go out in the paddock, and I'll start scratching one of my horses, and you'll see the neck extend and the lip kind of go in.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:11:28-01:11:31]
And then the other horse will be like, well, hey, you too.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:11:31-01:11:38]
And so it comes over as well, and they start scratching each other. And it's so funny. It's like this trickle effect of how it works.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:11:39-01:11:44]
Oh, that's great. Yeah, too bad we can't set up a line of massage scratching with horses. Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:11:45-01:11:46]
Exactly.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:11:47-01:11:51]
Marianne, we have four rapid fire questions that we ask every podcast guest.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:11:51-01:11:57]
It's the first thing that comes to mind. The first one is, do you have a motto or a favorite saying?

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:11:58-01:12:06]
Oh, gosh, a couple. Well, the one that comes to mind I say a lot is a horse doesn't care as much about what they're wearing as who's on them.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:12:09-01:12:10]
Absolutely.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:12:11-01:12:12]
The second one.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:12:12-01:12:13]
Oh, sorry, go ahead.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:12:13-01:12:25]
I was going to say the other one is I always say love is not enough. They need safety and comfort. You can say you care about a horse, but you've got to show it. Horses don't go in for the language. They want to feel it.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:12:25-01:12:33]
Yeah, yeah. The second, who has been the most influential person in your equestrian journey?

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:12:35-01:13:13]
Well, equestrian and horse journey, that's a tough one. I'd say, you know, I started when I was really young, reading every horse book I could. But I'd have to say the two that impacted me the most was Martha Kylie Worthington, who wrote a book on horse behavior when I was very young. I read it. And then Henry Blake did Horse Wisdom. And he did a lot of studies in the UK on how emotionally connected horses are. And those really, I really appreciated because I shared that philosophy. Yeah. And of course, there's this wonderful, you know, when you look at people who have demonstrated that connection with horses in the sports world, there's some wonderful people out there as well. Classical.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:13:15-01:13:18]
If you could give equestrians one piece of advice, what would it be?

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:13:22-01:13:31]
One piece of advice. Be strong enough to listen to your horse. Open your heart and get as knowledgeable about your horse as you can. And then be your horse's voice.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:13:34-01:13:35]
That's fantastic advice.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:13:36-01:13:38]
And the final one, please complete this sentence.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:13:39-01:13:40]
For me, horses are...

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:13:42-01:13:57]
Gosh, essential part of life. I don't think I could live without them. And I'm lucky I married someone who... When I met him 51 years ago, I said, if you marry me, you marry me and my horses and don't ever make me choose. And he went, don't worry, I won't.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:13:58-01:13:59]
Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:13:59-01:14:01]
So it's essential.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:14:01-01:14:46]
And I think every person who has some affinity for horses, whether it's just as a spectator and watching them, or as a horseman can can feel that connection to horses you don't have to own a horse to be horse centric and i do put more responsibility on our industry and the trainers and professionals in it because we've made the commitment to say we want to be involved with horses professionally but why because we care about horses and that has to always be at the core of what we do yeah We're going to put the links to your book, your website and your Instagram in our show notes. But is there anywhere else that people can find you and connect with you?

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:14:47-01:16:13]
Yeah, we have a Facebook group called A Horse by Nature, and it's for people interested because I'm trying to get discussions and put tips up every week and have some conversation about them. I really felt like when I put the book together, well, a lot of it is a synthesis of people that I have talked to, and they're just some wonderful people. Like all the photographs that were not mine were all donated because all my proceeds from the book go to horse charities and education. And and so this was truly an act of love with a lot of people contributing, saying yes. And I just find that phenomenal that, you know, people that I've known my whole life, I might have sold a horse for them 40 years ago and their photographer. And I'm like. You happen to have a picture, and they're like, oh, yeah, take them all. You know, it's been great. And that is the resiliency that I think there's way more people that love horses, and I hope that this book will give the people that love horses the scientific credibility to stand up for horses and make changes in our industry, right down to what kind of tack. If we have to have toy manufacturers get things certified for safety, why are we not having to have tack manufacturers certify abusive equipment that could be misused? You know, there's just a lot of parts of our industry that could use help. And I think everybody thinks someone else is going to do it and there's no oversight. So let's just all do it ourselves. Let's just be good horsemen and women.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:16:13-01:16:32]
I love it. It has been such a pleasure speaking with you. I'm taking so much away from this, this interview personally. And And I'm very certain that our readers will as well. So thank you so much. I can't wait to read the book and I can't wait for our audience to be reading the book as well.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:16:33-01:16:34]
Thank you, Danielle. It's been fun.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:16:37-01:17:10]
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Equestrian Connection podcast by WeHorse. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a rating and review as well as share us on social media. You can find us on Instagram at WeHorse underscore USA and check out our free seven day trial on WeHorse.com where you can access over 175 courses with top trainers from around the world in a variety of topics and disciplines. Until next time, be kind to yourself, your horses and others.

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