Tunnel Vision

      There’s an old saying that goes: “When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” This was never more prevalent than in the horse world. For instance, if you were to put a horse trainer, a farrier, a barefoot trim specialist, an equine chiropractor, an acupuncturist, a massage therapist, and a saddle fitter all together in a room and show them a picture of a horse standing in a corral, each one of them is bound to have an opinion about the horse based on their respective profession.

      The trainer might say that because the horse is looking away from the camera that he obviously has a disrespectful attitude and he must be taught some respect through training. The farrier might say that all the horse needs is a good set of shoes, while the barefoot trim specialist might say what he really needs is to go barefoot. The chiropractor might say that because of the way the horse’s hind legs look, it’s clear he needs an adjustment, while the acupuncturist might say that his ting points are deficient. The massage therapist might say that his shoulders and neck are tight and what the horse really needs is a massage, while the saddle fitter might say that it is clear by the way the horse’s topline looks that he needs a properly fitting saddle.

      Of course, the chances of any of these folks actually being accurate in their respective diagnosis just by looking at a photo of a horse standing in a pen are pretty slim. After all, a photo only captures a specific moment in time and seldom offers an overall view of the horse’s history, movement, or demeanor. But the point is, everybody who has spent time, effort, and resources learning how to get good in a certain aspect of equine care or training will more than likely look at every horse and every situation they come across through the filter of what they have been focusing on.

      In and of itself this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless it blinds people to other possible options or causes for what they are seeing in the horse. Limiting our options almost never works out in our horse’s best interest. It has been my experience over the years that when it comes to working with or caring for horses, flexibility of thought and action is almost always the key to success. Time and time again I have run into horse owners who, because of a certain belief about horses or horsemanship, would completely discount trying something that a horse really needed simply because that thing didn’t fit into their belief system. It’s the sort of catch-22 of horsemanship. By eliminating viable options due to the well-meaning but possibly unrealistic ideals that we might have, solutions to chronic problems can, and often do, continue to elude us.

      I think all of us, whether we’re talking about horses or just life in general, have at one time or another, gotten a little stuck. We buy into a certain technique, or system, or idea, or dogma about how things should be done, and then we follow it blindly to the exclusion of everything else. In the meantime, we begin to lose our ability to see the broader picture due to the fact that our thinking process has become more and more inflexible.

      As far as horses go, it is almost always that inflexibility in our thinking process that gets us in trouble. Inflexibility creates tunnel vision, and tunnel vision seldom allows for the expansion of awareness. Yet it is that awareness—that lack of rigidity in our beliefs—that will allow us to try things we haven’t tried before, or will allow us to think outside the box when presented with an unfamiliar or problematic issue. It can also ultimately allow us to answer our own questions and question our own answers.