Finding the Missed Path. Mark Rashid
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surprise, approached too quickly, at the wrong angle, or maybe he just didn’t want to be caught. That part doesn’t really matter. What matters is things escalated, people became frustrated, and even if and when this guy did offer to stop moving, which I am fairly certain he did, the owners didn’t recognize it so they kept pushing.”
The gelding hesitated for a second as a UPS truck bounced down the gravel road in front of the house before he went right back to pacing.
I went on to explain that the more sensitive the horse is, the more aware we must be of when he is trying to do what we are asking. If we miss the sensitive horse’s offer, and we keep asking, or in this horse’s case, pushing, he becomes confused, which very quickly turns into worry and then turns to fear.
“It’s like having a pot of water on the stove,” I said. “If there’s no heat under the pot, you can confidently put your hand in the water and know you won’t get burned. But the more heat you put under the pot, the hotter and less inviting the water gets. Once the water starts to boil, there’s no way you’d be able to get your hand in the pot.”
Laddy stopped briefly once again, this time looking in our direction, but then went right back to pacing.
“This horse’s fear is like the water in that pot,” I continued, “because inadvertently he has had constant and continual heat kept on him, the water keeps boiling, and because of that, we can’t get our hand in the pot.”
“So we need to turn the heat down?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It’s important to note here that all prey animals and even predators for that matter possess what is commonly referred to as a “flight zone.” A flight zone (humans might call it a comfort zone) is a boundary around the body inside of which an animal is able to remain emotionally comfortable. As long as perceived danger is outside of the boundary, an animal generally won’t feel the need to move. However, once the boundary has been breached, he may indeed feel the need to move or flee.
All things being equal, and assuming there are no physical threats present, most humans’ comfort or flight zone is roughly an arm’s length away from the body. Most domestic horses—that is, horses that are comfortable around people and handled on a regular basis—may have a flight zone of anywhere from a few inches from their body to a few feet.
This particular gelding, in comparison, had developed a flight zone that was at least 150 feet in diameter in all directions. The fact that Marie and I were standing outside his pen in no way helped him feel any better about our presence. We were inside his flight zone by a considerable measure, which, as far as he was concerned, allowed him absolutely no relief.
“Would it be okay with you if we turned him into the big arena, there?” I asked.
“I’m pretty sure you’re not going to get him caught if we put him out there,” she replied with a hint of caution in her voice.
“I’m not really all that concerned about catching him right now,” I shrugged.
Marie was hesitant, but agreed. She opened the gates to the alley that bridged the gap from the round pen to the arena. No sooner had the gates been open and she stepped away when the gelding shot through the alley and into the arena. I closed the gate behind him as he took off for the south end of the arena. He made a large arcing turn and then ran as hard as he could for the north end where he made another arcing turn and headed back full speed to the south end.
He ran the entire length of the arena three more times before finally slowing to a worried stop over near the southeast corner. After he had settled a bit, I made my way to the middle of the arena. Just that one simple act on my part caused the gelding to start walking and then trotting a small circle, but not really moving away from that corner. Once I was able to get to the middle of the arena and stand quietly for a few minutes, he went back to his original spot in the corner, stopped, looked at me head high and ears erect, and then blew a loud warning snort through his nose.
When I moved a little to my left (east), he would immediately trot over to the opposite corner. When I moved a little to my right (west), he would trot back to the original corner. When I backed up, he would stay in the original corner, and when I came forward to my original spot in the middle of the pen, he would also stay where he was but would trot a circle. When I moved ahead a little more, maybe just a step or two past my original spot, he would bolt for the opposite (north) end of the arena. Once there, he wouldn’t stop, but would make another large arcing turn and race back to the south end, always stopping or slowing in the same spot near the southeast corner of the arena (providing that I was in my original position in the center and not moving).
I repeated my movements several times while positioned in the middle of the arena. Each time Laddy offered up pretty much the exact same behaviors, and he always ended up right back in that spot in the southeast corner, head high, ears erect, and looking right at me.
I’m sure from the outside looking in, it may have seemed as though all I was doing was moving the horse around the pen, and I suppose in a way that is what I was doing. But, more importantly, what I was really doing was looking for certain patterns in his behavior. Specifically, I wanted to see if he made a point to go back to the same spot in the arena once he felt he needed to move out of it. And he did. For whatever reason, our gelding felt some comfort in that particular spot in the southwest corner of the pen so he chose it as the place to stop or rest.
The other thing he continually did once in that corner was stop and look in my direction. This was an important piece of the puzzle. By stopping and looking, he was showing that even though he may have been frightened or confused, he was still curious enough to want to engage. This was completely different than what we had seen when he was in the round pen.
In the round pen, he stayed as far away from us as he could and kept his head over the fence, only looking at us once in a while for very brief periods, but never really settling in one place. He was almost always in perpetual motion in the smaller pen, which told me his fear, driven by our proximity to him, was overriding his curiosity. But in the bigger pen, where he could establish a distance and place in which he felt relatively comfortable, he could let down a bit, which allowed his curiosity to kick in. The reason this is important is because it tells us a lot about where he was emotionally. In short, he was most certainly troubled, but not so troubled that he didn’t want to find a way to work out of it.
Here’s what I mean by that: When a horse, or really most any animal for that matter, is worried about something, he will almost immediately start looking for a way to feel better about it so he can get rid of the worry. For him it’s pretty simple. If he doesn’t feel good about something, he wants to feel better. That’s it.
For humans, the simplicity of that concept can be difficult to understand. This is mostly because when humans don’t feel good about something we often have to go through a number of intellectual gymnastics before we can find a way to feel better. We must first know why we don’t feel good about this thing that is bothering us. Then we have to agonize over it for a while. Then, maybe, we’ll have to look it up on the Internet, perhaps talk with our friends, the clergy, our mother, or the guy down the street who once was troubled about the same thing.
But not horses. When a horse doesn’t feel good about something, he just wants to feel better. And if we can be the one to help him feel better, then he’ll probably feel better about us as well. The question then is: How do we help him feel better? Well, first things first and in this horse’s case, it was finding a starting point. That starting point was getting the fear he was feeling turned into curiosity, and in order to do that, we had to allow him the opportunity to get comfortable enough with his situation so he could become curious.
The next thing that had to happen, and before we could actually start helping him overcome that fear, was we needed a way to introduce ourselves to him. Now I know that may sound funny, or maybe even a bit “new age.” But it’s not, really. When I say we need to find a way to introduce ourselves, I am talking about one of the most basic forms of introduction between horse and human: Allowing the horse to smell us.
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