RESPECT
“Take it to another level”
“Closure”
“Thinking outside the box”
"You have to be the Alpha mare"
It seems in recent times it seems that we have been overrun by buzz words and catch phrases. Everywhere you look, everywhere you go, buzz words. They practically dominate our lives and conversations.
And in the horse world, we are no different.
One word in particular, has become one of the most over-rated, overused and meaningless buzzwords of our time. It seems that you can’t open an issue of your favorite monthly magazine, log on to your favorite internet message board site or listen to a trainer or clinician on RFD-TV without there being a mention of the word RESPECT. Heck, even in times past I propagated the gospel of respect over and over again.
I now truly believe that the word ‘RESPECT’ is, and has become, completely MEANINGLESS!!!
For example, read through the internet message boards…any one of them….email me and I will send you links to several large message board sites…..and you will find scores of threads dealing with respect in one form or another. It seems that the universal answer for every single horse problem in the world is respect.
QUESTION: “Golly gang, my horse can’t do flying lead changes. Can you give me some training ideas on how to teach flying leads?”
ANSWER: “Your horse won’t do the changes because he doesn’t respect you enough to respond to your cues”
ANSWER 2: “Yeah, I agree with the above poster, your horse isn’t respecting you. I would go back to lunging him for 30 minutes and get his respect back and then begin working from the saddle again.”
ANSWER 3: “If he is not respecting your cues to do a change, then I would use spurs and give him a harder jab to get him to listen. My horse MUST respect my cues when I give them the first time.”
QUESTION: “When I work my horse in the round pen and I ask for a stop, he immediately stops but then turns in to face me. Why does he do that?”
ANSWER: “Complete lack of respect. He is showing you that he doesn’t need to stay out on the fence and by facing you he can do what he wants in order to stop working. He is disrespecting you.”
ANSWER 2: “It’s the truth. I used to have a horse who would not stay facing the direction I pointed him in during lunging. He was very disrespectful and would stop and face me all the time too. I just took the lunge whip and drove him harder around until he learned basic respect. Now he is an angel. You must teach him respect.”
QUESTION: “Every time I feed my horse he kicks his stall wall while he is eating. He just hits it with his front foot. It is so annoying. I yell at him to quit it, but he does it anyway. How can I get him to stop it?”
ANSWER: “He doesn’t quit doing it because he disrespects you. My trainer had a horse like this and when he would kick the stall over and over, my trainer would go in and take the food out of there to teach the horse manners and to show it who was boss. My trainer said he did it out of disrespect and for attention”
ANSWER 2: “My horse kicks his stall when eating to let me know he doesn’t want me near his food. I had to teach him to respect me that I am the leader and I can take his food anytime I want it. To break him of the habit, I would stand a few feet away and every time he kicked the stall I would smack the bars of the stall with a lunge whip. After awhile he stopped kicking.”
On a recent post on respet on another message board I found this answer to the question, "How do you know when a horse respects you?"ANSWER:Respect is doing what I say, when I say, no questions, no refusal.
Respect is moving out of my way, following me with their face when I'm asking them to move away or off or over, showing me they are watching me and ready to respond.
Respect is facing up to me, never away.
Respect is knowing they are bigger but I am boss.How do I know when THEY are showing ME respect?
When they do all this.
They are quiet and willing and watching. That tells me they have respect"
Do you want to know the sad part? All these conversations are actually true questions and answers posted on message boards. And they are only 3 that I could find or remember while I was writing this article. Unbelievable isn’t it?!!!
The word ‘respect’ is being thrown around so freely anymore that when I hear it I go into this autopilot mode and immediately roll my eyes and let out a big sigh. I know, I know, I’m sorry, but in reality it just doesn’t hold any real meaning any longer.
Recently I began to look at the word ‘respect’ and decided that my own views, opinions and philosophy on this subject needed some updating and refining. So you may see some changes in my philosophy from my very early writings compared to today’s writing. But that’s what our horsemanship is about, isn’t it? Growing, evolving, refining, right?
And I have found that more and more clinicians are starting to view the subject of respect quite differently. More than likely they have always thought differently on the subject of respect but I never realized it until recently.
As usual, throughout this short article, I will try to offer you some quotes on respect. After all, I dont want you to just take MY word for it. Hopefully I can offer you something that will begin to stir changes in your heart in the way of viewing respect between horse and human. Let me begin with words from a well known horsewoman.
Gail Ivey is a great horsewoman. On the front page of Gail’s new website (www.gailivey.com) she wrote these words….
“Stop trying to get your horse to respect you. He already does, as much as he knows how.”
"If he's running over you, knocking you down, biting you, kicking you, bucking you off or refusing to go, it's not respect he lacks, it's understanding and clarity from you.”"It isn't about what you need him to do, it's about what he needs you to do to help him understand. “
"I don't want you to have any contempt for your horse based on a false perception of his lack of respect. I want you to have compassion and clarity. He doesn't need your punishment, he needs your help. If you're stuck on the idea of reinforcing respect, you're going to miss it when he asks you to help him understand.”"The greatest show of respect comes from removing your agenda from the picture and listening to what your horse needs instead. He will do anything you ask him to do, as long as you show him that his comfort and self-preservation are your top priority. “
"You can get a horse to do just about anything if you threaten his sense of self-preservation and comfort, but the best you can hope to achieve that way is a horse that must mentally shut down to survive.”
"I see more of these horses than I do spoiled or abused ones. They are not engaged and willing, they are resigned and obedient. Mostly. Until they're not. Then, because their willingness has not been forged by a bond of compassion and humility, they rebel. Then they are blamed, and accused of being disrespectful. “
"Truthfully, they simply took their shot at retrieving their self-preservation”
(Thank you, Gail, for being bold enough to post those words on your website for everyone to read!!!!)
WOW! Do you see the wisdom in those words? Can you see the pattern, the common denominator? That it isn’t about your horse not respecting you, it is about YOU !!!!
WHAT?!!!!!
That’s right, it isn’t about the horse, it is about YOU. Its about YOU carrying the burden of respect on your own shoulders.
"Disrespect is something people teach horses. It’s hard for people to set their egos aside to see this..."
Martin Black
"Separating Disrespect From Unknowing"
online article
www.martinblack.net
But that’s not what the horse world wants to hear is it? That’s not what we, as humans, like to be told. See, as humans, we are very ego-centric. By golly, the whole world revolves around us. Animal, vegetable, mineral, it must all revolve around the human. And regardless of how soft-hearted we think we are, we still have this innate desire to dominate everything we come in contact with. We sometimes mask that domination by using words like ‘respect’. It isn’t so much the word as the mentality behind it.
In the May 2002 issue of RIDE With Bob Avila, a reader posted this response to a question posed…”A broke horse is one who does what he is asked of him, when he is asked, whether he wants to or not.”
My problem with that statement? Well, there are many, but within the context of the subject this article, it is about respect being shown from the human to the horse. To the reader who responded with that statement, the horse is not an equal partner. It does not share in the equal responsibilities and it is certain that the horse does not have the opportunity to share in the respect…nope…it is most certainly a one-way respect with the horse being demanded of their respect yet the human not reciprocating.
Yes, we do need to earn respect from our equine partners. But more importantly….MOST IMPORTANTLY ….we need to offer that respect to our equine partners FIRST. We need to view respect as an equal share of both giving and receiving and not as a one-sided form of passive domination. Does that make sense?
There is an old Native American proverb from both the Arapaho and Lakota Nations which offers us a great deal of very simple wisdom and reasoning…
“When we show OUR respect for other living things, they will show their respect for us.”
Again, the current horse world doesn’t want to hear those things, do they? Even within natural horsemanship circles, trainers and clinicians don’t want to hear those things. Why? Because it means having to spend the quality time investing yourself and offering respect to the horse first. It means developing a partnership. Look, everyone knows I don’t care for the “one hour sack, saddle and lope” style of colt starting. And I don’t care for the new colt starting competitions that are so popular the last two years or so. Clinicians are now getting paid to start colts in a 90 minute during a demonstration. And while they might be gentle in their methods and get the job done, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best for the horse. Nor does it mean that the clinician is offering the very best respect to the horse that he is able to give.
Oh, the clinician might talk a good game but it is all talk. Their actions say something completely different. Let me step out on a limb here and quote a young well-known clinician. He has recently won two of these colt starting competitions and seems to be the horse world’s golden boy (for the moment anyway) in his new book he writes….
“Your horse has a responsibility to respect you. He may not always do everything right, but he should try to figure out the answer. A disrespectful horse doesn’t try. He doesn’t care. He is only concerned about what he wants and what you can give him.”
Don’t you see, even though this clinician is well known throughout natural horsemanship circles, this statement from his book still dictates the horse must respect you and do as you say, and if he doesn’t try to find the right answer he must be disrespecting you.HORSE BISCUITS!!!! I DON’T BELIEVE THAT!!!!
AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU !!!!
Once again, let me insert right here the words of Gail Ivey which I posted above….I want you to read them again and see if now, after reading the last quote from the well known clinician, if Gail’s words seem to make a little more sense.
“Stop trying to get your horse to respect you. He already does, as much as he knows how.”
"If he's running over you, knocking you down, biting you, kicking you, bucking you off or refusing to go, it's not respect he lacks, it's understanding and clarity from you.”"It isn't about what you need him to do, it's about what he needs you to do to help him understand. “
"I don't want you to have any contempt for your horse based on a false perception of his lack of respect. I want you to have compassion and clarity. He doesn't need your punishment, he needs your help. If you're stuck on the idea of reinforcing respect, you're going to miss it when he asks you to help him understand.”"The greatest show of respect comes from removing your agenda from the picture and listening to what your horse needs instead. He will do anything you ask him to do, as long as you show him that his comfort and self-preservation are your top priority. “
As I was writing this article, I was doing a little search on the internet just to see how much info I could find on respect. I found it all - good, bad the ugly. More bad and ugly than good. As I was searching I found another message board that had a question posted about respect. I wont reprint the entire thread here, but what I will give you is a quote posted in that thread that someone copied from another well known horseman’s website.
“Before you can teach your horse anything, you must first have his attention, respect and trust.”
“Online Newsletter Vol. 1 #3”
www.equihorse.comHere we go with saying that BEFORE we can teach the horse ANYTHING we must have his respect and trust. Once again, being the rebel that I am, I must strongly disagree. From the moment I step into a pasture, pen, paddock, stall, arena, or round pen, I am teaching the horse something. And the very first thing I am going to try to teach him is that he can trust me. That I am going to be different than other people who have worked with him before. I am going to give the horse all the respect and trust that I am able right from the get-go….I wont demand it of him in the beginning, but I will do my absolute best to EARN it from him right at the on-set of our relationship.
“Forcing them into something seems like the easiest solution on the surface but it is far from the easiest solution in the long run. Forcing them makes them resentful and frustrated and in no way generates respect for the human,”
Cheryl Kimball
“Horse Wise”
page 60
“...Respect without trust tends to be spelled F-E-A-R.”
Kate Gwinn
“Heart, Hand, and Horse”
PNH Magazine
2nd Quarter 1996
Now, let me be the first to admit that it wasn’t always so with me. I, too, used to think that I was supposed to walk into a pen and the first thing I needed to do was to get the horse to respect me and do as I asked so we could get along. Even though I tried my best to be gentle and use natural horsemanship principles, I still had that mentality that I was supposed to obtain Alpha status and once that was attained, that the horse was supposed to do all that I asked. Did it work, well yes. Sure it did. Just the same way that endless, mind-numbing laps in a round pen will achieve a ‘join-up’ and get cooperation from a horse, but as we all know, it isn’t always the best for the horse mentally and emotionally, is it?
“When a horse and rider understand each other, they develop a strong bond of mutual trust and respect. This level of communication comes by working together.”
Heather Smith Thomas
“Storey’s Guide To Training Horses”
page 48
Now before you run off thinking I am a bleeding heart animal rights liberal (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing anyway) I do expect respect from my horse. We cannot have a working relationship or a partnership without it. Period. But the burden of responsibility lies upon MY own shoulders to create and develop a way to instill trust in my horse so that he will respect me.
“Horses are so trusting, if you don’t break that trust, they will give you their heart and soul.”
Clea Newman (wife of actor Paul Newman)
“People We Know, Horses They Love”
page 160Now the one thing I am not going to do, or can’t do, is tell you how to get respect from your horse in terms of techniques or methods. I will never tell anyone that they have to run their horse in the round pen or over-drill groundwork to get respect from a horse. Everyone already knows how to do those things anyway….and I have made new resolutions to avoid teaching “techniques” without first teaching the proper principles, concepts and the FEEL behind them.
“Respect, and how to get that applied in all that you do with your horse, is the most important thing to start learning about - and that takes quite a lot when you speak about that word “all”. When they are this way (respectful), they’re also learning to feel of you at the same time. When there isn’t respect, you haven’t got much to go on, so you’d need to start getting with the feel of that horse - in most cases that’s the way you’d go about it, I’ll put it that way. Most horses will learn to respect you, given the opportunity…”
Bill Dorrance (with Leslie Desmond)
“True Horsemanship Through Feel”
page 349
"Dominance, force, punishment, and 'Alpha' status are all popular themes in horsemanship. Yet profound results are acheived when the humans stops perceiving himself as superior to the horse, and explores partnership instead of dominance, willing cooperation instead of force, guidance instead of punishment, and mutual respect instead of 'Alpha' status."
Sylvana Smith
"Conversations With A Critic"
Eclectic Horseman Magazine
Nov/Dec 2003
In fact, in the newest issue of 'Natural Horse Magazine', Frank Levinson has a great article entitled, "Attitude Is Everything With Horses and Humans". IN that article Frank writes says this,
"For a horse, there is only fear or trust. It either trusts it is safe or it is fearful that it is not. Once this is understood about horses, it becomes obvious that if a human can help a horse feel safe and trust that it is safe, then the horse will accept the human as its herd leader just as it does the herd leader in the wild. I have become successful communicator with horses because I have as my attitude that I want to become a peace bringer to the horse first and foremost. I have come to understand that if I can promote feelings of peace and safety within a horse, I become like a magnet for them, attracting them to me. Once they experience feelings of peace and safety (trust), they just want to stay around where these feelings originate (with me). This is the key to all bonding, connection and successful communication with horses and humans as well. Peace, trust and safety do not exist in the outside, physical world. They are internal feelings we all can have. We either feel them or we don’t. It is the same for the horse. It feels safe and trusts that it will be safe or it does not. Resistance from a horse is always brought on by fearful feelings. Every time you hear someone say a horse is stubborn, willful, bad, mean, vicious, or any other negative thing, it is improper projection of the human's attitude onto the horse and an inaccurate interpretation of the horse's actions. For the horse's behavior is only a symptom of fear. ...we frequently make horses bad and wrong so we have an excuse to punish and dominate another being. How sad a commentary it is on the human condition. "
So what place does trust and respect have in your relationship and partnership with your horse? Is it only a one-sided demand that you make from your horse, or is it truly an equal sharing partnership with the burden of the responsibility lying upon your shoulders to carry the weight of respect?
How far will you go to offer your horse respect?
Remember, we brought the horse into our world and expect him to live by our rules….so the burden must lie within each of us - the human.
Respectfully Yours,
Michael