The way horses view pressure from other horses is not the same way they view pressure from humans. People are not horses and horses know it.
People often like to quote Ray Hunt’s words, “Horses know when you know and know when you don’t know.” But in my view, I think this is wrong and makes assumptions that can’t be backed up.
First of all, for a horse or anybody to know when you know and when you don’t know, they have to already understand what it is you are trying to do. If somebody sees you pushing buttons on a computer keyboard, they can’t assume you know what you are doing until they know what you are trying to do. Likewise, if the result you are trying to achieve is a mystery to a horse, a horse cannot conclude that a person knows what they are doing or not.
For example, if a rider wants a horse to turn right, but they pull the left rein a horse can’t know the rider doesn’t know what they are doing unless the horse already understood the rider intended the horse to go right. So in fact, a horse doesn’t know when you know and when you don’t know.
Let’s look at another scenario. Say a person asks a horse to trot forward on the lunge, but the horse doesn’t trot because the person inadvertently gets in front of the shoulder and the horse feels blocked from trotting. Even then, a horse can’t possibly know that the trainer doesn’t know what they are doing. We know because we can talk to the person and find out what their intention is. But a horse can’t do that. All the horse knows is that it is confused by what the person at the end of the lunge line is doing. Yet, the horse doesn’t assume that the human is the one getting it wrong. The horse just knows it is confused and stressed by the human’s actions, not that the human doesn’t know.
Remember I just said that another person could know whether or not the trainer knows what they are doing by asking them what their intent is in the exercise, but a horse can’t ask a person’s intent. So, let’s look at what might happen if a horse were lunging another horse and asking for a trot. Chances are there would be no confusion because two horses instantly understand each other’s intent. It’s all in their body language. Horses communicate with their own kind in a language (body) that humans don’t and can’t - just like humans use a language to communicate with each other that no other species shares or understands.
This seems obvious to me, yet people believe that mimicking the way horses interact or use pressure with each other is the best way to communicate their intention to a horse. This has never made sense to me because it presupposes that what we observe and attempt to mimic about horse-to-horse communication is an accurate portrayal of what horses do when they communicate with each other. It’s like assuming that because I know a few words of a foreign language I can then communicate fluently in that other language.
I believe that horse language is extremely complex and sophisticated and humans only understand a few rudimentary, but important, words and phrases. There is so much we don’t understand that I think it is extremely presumptuous for us to assume that we both understand and can speak in their language in a way that they understand.
I think at best even the most skilled horse people speak a distorted version of horse in our crude attempt to use body language to communicate with horses. I use the term “distorted” because to me it best describes a mixture of the most basic forms of body language that horses use and how we interpret it. But I believe we are so poor at using body language that we have to teach horses to understand the human version of their language – in a similar way that the indigenous people of New Guinea use to learn to speak a form of English called pigeon English. It was neither English or native New Guinean. So instead of using a horse’s language, we teach them our version of their language.
When I say, “The way horses view pressure from other horses is not the same way they view pressure from humans”, I am making the point that people are really bad communicators. Even the best of us are extremely poor at communicating in the language of the horse. Many years ago I had a colleague from Glasgow and for a long time, I was only able to understand an occasional word or phrase. I was always misunderstanding him, I imagine it must be like this for horses too when people first enter their lives, which explains why horses always misunderstand us.
If we were good at communicating in the language horses use with each other there would be no training necessary – we would use the language of horses to get our way. But we suck at it, so we have to train horses to understand a different language, using our seat, reins, legs, energy, focus, voice etc.
This is the concept of clarity that forms such a large part of the discussion in my book, “The Essence of Good Horsemanship.” People are extremely poor at using the language that horses use, so we have adopted a system that uses a little of what horses innately understand with a lot of what we innately understand. In the end, we are stuck with a compromise of a communication system that is difficult for us to learn and even harder for horses to learn.
If we were better at communicating in the language that horses understood, life for them and us would be so much easier because horses are inherently very compliant. They want to make the easiest choice possible in every decision. If we could at least make understanding us easier by using language that they are born knowing, we would at least have removed a significant proportion of the trouble in their lives. We could then claim with a degree of certainty that, “Horses know when you know and know when you don’t know.” But until that day, it seems a questionable claim to me.
Maybe some of you heard your Grandparents mention the American TV series, Mr Ed (real name was Bamboo Harvester) that aired in the 1960s. It featured a horse that spoke English to its owner, Wilbur Post.