I came up with a scheme that would make me considerably richer. I think I should fine everybody a dollar who is wrong when they tell me their horse is relaxing or submitting to an idea or is processing an idea when they see it licking and chewing. If I did that my retirement plans would be looking a lot rosier.
People tell me about how their horse is changing for the better because it was licking and chewing, while in the meantime it would be ignoring them or snaking its neck with ears back or violently swishing its tail or avoiding being caught or stomping its feet or twitching when touched or have a cold stare or shallow breathing - you get what I am trying to say. They view the licking and chewing as a sure sign of a breakthrough.
I first heard Monty Roberts refer to licking and chewing as a good thing and since then I’ve heard it a lot - too much. The concept has spread like a virus.
I have often said that with horses nothing means nothing. That is, every behaviour means something. So what do licking and chewing mean? What does it tell us? You already know the answer = It depends.
Before I go further I want to acknowledge some studies on licking and chewing being an indicator of a switching trigger from a parasympathetic to sympathetic nervous systems and back. I have read some of those studies and let me say in my view that those I have read are questionable. The science is poor in my opinion and the conclusions are largely conjecture rather than proven. There may be better studies that I have not yet come across, so the door is left open for now. However, either way the mechanism does not change the premise of this essay.
In my experience, licking and chewing can be an indicator of relaxation or letting down or processing an idea. But it can also be a sign of anxiety, stress, shutting down, etc. How do you then know what your horse is telling you when it licks and chews? Simple. Look at what else it is doing.
You show me your and I’ll show you mine
People tend to look at behaviours in isolation and give them meaning. For example, a lowered neck is supposed to mean relaxation or foam around the bit means a relaxed jaw or pinned ears means aggression or turning the hindquarters away from a person is supposed to be a threat or stomping of feet indicates frustration or irritability.
However, I would argue it is impossible to single out one behaviour and give it a definitive meaning. It’s not how the expression of behaviour works. When you are really angry at somebody you can smile at them but your body language or tone in your voice will contradict your smile. A person can come into a room and slam the door behind them, yet if you only hear the door slam you don’t know if they are angry or in a hurry. You can’t tell from just the door slam.
Even in terms of physiological measurement, it is hard to be definitive when examining just one thing. For example, we assume when a horse lowers its heart rate it is relaxing. But studies have shown that in some situation horse’s will lower their heart rate in moments of extreme stress eg, when forcibly laid down or during some transport stress.
For these reasons, we need to develop the skill of seeing the whole horse and the entirety of his behaviour and not just cherry-pick one or two highly visible responses to use as training road maps.
There are two aspects to every behaviour that we need to interpret if we are going to understand what a horse is telling us.
The first is, what else is it doing. When a horse turns its hindquarters towards does it have a tight or relaxed posture? Does it turn fast or quietly? Where are its eyes looking? Has something else caught its attention? Is the tail swishing violently or quietly or is it clamped? Is it avoiding the rain on its face? Are the nostrils pinched, relaxed or flared? Is the breathing fast, shallow, deep, slow? Is it backing towards you for a tail scratch or to line you up for a kneecapping You need to know the answers to all those questions (and more) in under a second before you respond to your horse’s actions. Any mistake in judgment you make can aid or hinder the training and the relationship.
So you need to look at not just one behaviour, but be able to put that behaviour in the context of all the behaviours a horse exhibits in a single moment AND the moment before and after that single moment.
The second aspect is to look at the quality of the behaviour itself. For instance, a horse can trot along and the tail gently and quietly swishes from side to side or it can swing with sharp and violent action. In both cases, the tail is swishing under the control of the horse, but the emotions that drive the behaviour are probably very different. Similarly, a horse can move the mouth around a bit softly and stimulate salivation. But if the horse shows significant levels of foam around the mouth the tongue has to be pretty busy to mix enough air with the saliva to create foam. Such an active tongue is more likely to be caused by anxiety than relaxation. In both instances, the horse is moving the tongue, but the quality is different and triggered by different emotions.
The quality or effort of how a horse exhibits a behaviour is a strong indicator as to the meaning of that behaviour.
The concept of not putting importance on any behaviour in isolation has huge implications for training horses. It becomes vitally important that we listen enough to our horses and are smart enough to interpret every behaviour in the context of every other behaviour.