RDL Equine LLC

“Is that your baby?”
“Somebody rescue that poor baby!”
“He loves his mommy!”

This is something that I’ve found curious for a long time - and let me preface this by saying I am the mother of 2 children, and so I like to believe I understand the maternal drive; but also believe this should be separate from animals. Good husbandry and being a steward of them is not the same as mothering -

A very interesting hole is being filled by our animals. I’m sure we’re all aware they aren’t human babies, they aren’t our boyfriends or surrogate husbands, they are horses.

But if you zone out on the broader, cultural norm of how we treat our pets, at least in the US - this was not the way I saw horses treated abroad as a child at all - we have a very interesting displacement of needs being filled, or attempted to be filled, by our horses.

It comes with a heavy amount of anthropomorphism, a heavy amount of emotional burden placed on the horse to make us happy, entertain us, to fill our emotional needs. A horse is a strong being physically, but this is too large a load for anyone to carry -

So what’s the solution? I’d love to say personal development, and I do believe that to be true -

But I believe people, like animals, are driven by needs and will find unhealthy ways to meet them like anything else. We are social beings - we crave connection.
And so I believe this problem is a symptom of a larger problem -
Societally we are not well. Culturally we can’t get our emotional needs, our need for security in connection with others filled, and so it spills out into unproductive or unhealthy ways with animals - who also are not getting their emotional needs met.

This is the point where, yet again, I can come to no easy solution or point blame at any one thing. We’re driven, just like animals, for security, and yet are not finding it amongst each other.

Photo by Jasmine Cope

“My horse braces against the bit!” “My horse leans aginst my leg!” “My horse ignores my aids!”
The next time you accuse your horse of behaving in these or similar ways, remember that any leaning or bracing behavior takes two participants. For the horse to brace against my hand, my hand has to brace, too. For the horse to brace against my leg, I have to brace with my leg, too. Neither of us can brace if there is noting to brace against.
Bracing is learned behavior. It does not feel that great to the horse, either, but it becomes familiar over time, to the point of seeming normal.
It’s human nature to respond to what we perceive as resistance with more pressure. We’ve all been taught that we need to give when the horse gives to us, which many of us interpret to mean: “I will wait until the horse has given in. Then, I will give.” This is not exactly true. What we need to do is explain to horses who have learned to brace that there is another way, that our aids mean something. To do this, we need to do what goes agains our instinct: to give - not after the horse has given to us, but while the horse is bracing, before the horse has given to us. We need to be the ones to interrupt the cycle. Then, we need to break through the bracing behavior, using leg-yields and lots of transitions, always looking for the moment to give, which is not after the horse has given in, but at the first indication he is thinking it. This is a subtle distinction that makes a huge difference in teachign a horse (and ourselves) to be light and responsive.