Episode 310: When Your Horse Disagrees: Managing Conflicting Viewpoints
Horse owners often encounter situations where our horses seem to “disagree” with our choices or training methods. This can trigger feelings of conflict and uncertainty within us, leaving us unsure of how to move forward. However, Stacy Westfall suggests that rather than seeing these disagreements as problems, we should view them as opportunities to develop greater empathy and understanding.
Stacy shares her own experiences of receiving “negative feedback” from her horse, Enzo, and how she responds with a sense of amusement and compassion, much like a parent understanding the frustrations of a young child. She encourages listeners to recognize that horses, like young children, are simply trying to communicate their needs and desires, even if they don’t align with our own perspectives.
By embracing these conflicting viewpoints with an open mind and a willingness to see both sides, Stacy believes we can navigate the challenges of horse training with greater success, fostering a collaborative partnership built on mutual respect and understanding.
Episode 310: When Your Horse Disagrees: Managing Conflicting Viewpoints.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
Episode 310: When Your Horse Disagrees: Managing Conflicting Viewpoints.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Speaker1:
When your horse truly gives you negative feedback like Enzo gave me. When your horse is actually saying I think you’re doing it wrong, or I think you should do it this way, how do you receive that feedback?
Speaker2:
Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill. This is the Stacy Westfall podcast. Stacy’s goal is simple to teach you to understand why horses do what they do, as well as the action steps for creating clear, confident communication with your horses.
Speaker1:
Hi, I’m Stacy Westfall and I’m here to help you understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. In last week’s podcast, I made a comment about laughing a lot as I’m interacting with my new horses, in particular Enzo. And whenever I teach on something, it brings that thing even more into my own personal awareness. So for the next few days, as I was working with the new horses, every time I noticed myself laughing, I made a note of what was happening, and the answer turned out to be different than what I had originally imagined. And I think you’ll be intrigued by what I discovered in today’s podcast. I want to share with you how I handle the fact that there are often two conflicting viewpoints. When I’m training a horse, I’m going to share with you how I see those viewpoints, how I handle the conflict, and why I think this causes problems for many horse owners. In an attempt to explain this, I’d like to remind you that any situation can be viewed from multiple angles. Even my own viewpoint can be explored by me from many different angles. So something that happened an hour ago, I can think about and I can explore it from many different angles. But in order to keep this straight, for the sake of this podcast, I’m going to pretend that there were two different viewpoints going on in this scenario mine and the horse. In this case, it’s going to be Enzo. I don’t love this two viewpoint idea because it unintentionally leans towards the idea that one viewpoint is right and one is wrong.
Speaker1:
But for the sake of not getting overly complicated, today, I’m going to just present two different viewpoints. Just keep in mind there can be flexibility on both sides. In order to begin this, I’m going to tell Enzo’s viewpoint first. So here goes. This is my attempt at interpreting Enzo’s viewpoint. He begins. I am filing a complaint. I’m not sure who to report this to, but someone needs to hear me out. The lady at this new place, she just doesn’t get me. The first three days here were pretty good. Great. In fact, I was a little tired from the long drive. But this place serves an all you can eat hay buffet with bonus meals twice a day, which is pretty cool. The first night I arrived, I stayed in a stall and met a new friend, Amber. She’s young and she’s so immature. She still talks like a baby, but it was nice to have a friend. The next day I learned that Amber wasn’t just a neighbor. She was also going to be my roommate. We were moved into a paddock with another all you can eat hay buffet, which is really cool. And there are other neighbors too. On the other side of the fence, Amber is kind of okay, but she’s also annoying. She stopped talking to me like a baby, and she started sticking her tail straight up in the air and putting her butt in my face.
Speaker1:
I kept walking away, but she just keeps following me. So annoying. But that’s not what I’d like to complain about. Things really started to fall apart last night. That lady shows up several times a day, and two of those times, she brings me inside, away from the annoying roommate and gives me dessert. I like dessert. So last night when she brought me in, I assumed that was what was going to happen. I tried to get her to walk faster on the way to the barn, but she totally misread me and kept walking backwards instead. So annoying. I’ll try to think of a different way to convey to her that I want her to go faster, but I’m going to have to think about that. Anyway, it turns out that the slow walk was just the beginning of my trouble. Last night when we got inside, instead of her feeding me, she tied me up. I was so shocked at first that I just stood there and listened. There was a second lady and after a few minutes, both of them left. I know how important it is to be clear about what you want when you first meet someone. So as I stood there, I considered how I could be more clear. Then an idea came to me. It took a while, but I stayed focused and the timing was perfect. Just as the lady returned from wherever she went with the other lady, I finished chewing the rope in half.
Speaker1:
I stuck my head over the door with my ears pricked up to show her exactly what I had done. She would certainly understand this message and with my ears pricked up. I know I’m adorable. Many humans have confirmed this and other horses too. I was clear, I was concise, and I was elated. She was laughing as she approached. I thought this is it. She finally gets me and as she turned I knew for sure she was getting me dessert. She opened the door and entered my room and I was so happy. But I was wrong. She brought a different rope and she tied me up again. I was shocked I had been so clear how did she not get this? Out of frustration, I poured and I swung my body around and I know this is unbecoming of someone my age, but seriously, how much more clear could I have been? It took forever to chew the first rope in half, But once I regained my composure, I began the process all over again and I started chewing the rope. This concludes Enzo’s side of the story. Now let’s look at the same story from my human viewpoint. I brought Enzo home, as he noted, and I did put him in a stall overnight next to Ember. He had traveled from Arizona all the way to Ohio, which was two days on a trailer. He did an overnight in between, so he was pretty rested, but I still wanted to make sure that he had enough recovery time.
Speaker1:
Plus, I chose the stall overnight because there’s a huge temperature change coming from Arizona to Ohio this time of year. And so being inside the barn that night was warmer. I chose to put Ember next to Enzo because I was hoping that they would be able to go out in the paddock together, and I wanted to know how they got along in stalls, side by side before I did that. It was really cute because when Ember saw Enzo and his size, he’s pretty good size. He’s almost 16 hands, even though she’s two, almost two and a half years old now. She started doing that baby talk motion with her mouth indicating that she’s not a threat, because that’s how she took him as big and a potential threat. The next day, after Enzo had rested and I had seen how Ember and Enzo were getting along over the stall wall, I decided to go ahead and turn them out together in the paddock with a run in shed. The fall weather here is beautiful now, especially during the day where the sun is really warm and I made a new plan so overnight he could have a blanket so he could stay out overnight also. So those first few days I wanted to make sure that his transition was easy. I wanted to watch how he Recovered.
Speaker1:
How the change in feed might affect him. And so I didn’t work him very much and didn’t expect a lot of him those first few days. So he was basically on vacation for the first few days. During this time, I did a lot of observing him. I watched how he handled Ember, and when I turned them out in the paddock, she was coming into heat. Which was funny because she went from doing the baby talk overnight in the stall to coming into heat and making a lot of advances on him. He did really great. Some geldings get pushy when mares come into heat, but he just held his ground when she got pushy with him or turned and walked away. So these are some of the things that I was noticing about him as an individual. I also noticed that he meets me at the gate every time I go out, and I’ve noticed that he loves his hay almost as much as he does his grain, although he clearly thinks of grain in the same way that I think of chocolate, so it definitely makes him a little more excited. I also have been paying attention to the subtle moves that he makes, like walking faster on the way into the barn in anticipation of getting the grain, which is slightly different than walking other places. And his questions, or the way that I choose to view him, has a very childlike quality to me. And that is where these two stories meet up in my mind.
Speaker1:
I actually do believe that Enzo is really trying to communicate with me and I love it. I also recognize that he disagrees with some of my choices, and I accept that he disagrees with me. Here’s the question for you. When your horse Truly gives you negative feedback like Enzo gave me. When your horse is actually saying, I think you’re doing it wrong, or I think you should do it this way. How do you receive that feedback? I think the reality of this difference of opinions causes many problems for horse owners to feel the conflicting ideas, and after you feel that conflict of ideas, that conflict of viewpoints is something you feel as a disagreement. I think many horse owners unconsciously either want to escape that feeling of conflict, that conflict of ideas, or they move into the conflict because it seems like that’s the only choice. It’s me against you. So what I want to share with you is another viewpoint you could have this week. As I was noticing myself laughing, one of the things that stood out to me is one of the biggest categories that I’m dealing with right now with new horses is the category of horses telling me that I should be doing things differently. If you were listening to the podcast last year when I was talking about Ember and I bought her last fall, and I talked about bringing her home as a yearling and teaching her to accept Standing tide, she disagreed with me.
Speaker1:
She clearly told me she was unhappy with my choices. She was telling me I was doing it wrong. Very similar to the way the Enzo is trying so hard to communicate his desires. To me, there is an actual conflicting viewpoint that’s happening. And for me, that’s not a problem. The fact that we appear to have conflicting viewpoints, we do have two conflicting viewpoints, but that doesn’t mean that we have to have a conflict. A conflict means serious disagreement or argument or being incompatible. Just because our viewpoints seem incompatible right now doesn’t mean that the emotion surrounding it has to be conflicting. You have a choice. So the next time your horse complains or offers a suggestion like let’s walk faster to get in the barn to get the grain. Notice the feeling that comes up for you. For me, the main feelings are empathy and amusement. Those are not anywhere close to conflict. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Amusement is the state of experiencing or finding something funny, or something causing laughter or providing entertainment. And here is why I’m able to choose that viewpoint. I am viewing the horses in these moments as young or immature, and young doesn’t have to be an age. That’s why I put the word immature in there. When I grant them the viewpoint of one who has not yet learned. I am able to approach them with empathy and the image that kept coming into my mind as I prepared for this podcast was my oldest son, Caleb, many years ago when he was young, when he was about a year and a half old.
Speaker1:
I remember one day putting him into his crib for his afternoon nap, and he was not happy about it, but he was young enough to not have all the words that he needed to express himself. So his unhappiness showed in his behavior. And when I put myself into his viewpoint, I imagine the struggle to express himself was probably another additional layer of frustration, much like Enzo or any horse that’s trying to communicate with me. Let’s walk faster to go get the grain. I don’t want to be tied up here. What are we doing? Can you see it? Caleb, at a year and a half thought I didn’t understand that he didn’t want to take a nap. He wasn’t able to understand. I see your resistance, and I’m still choosing this path. Enzo, the horse probably thinks I don’t understand his desire to get to the grain a little faster from his viewpoint, from his immaturity. It makes sense to me that he wouldn’t understand that I understand and I disagree. So even though there’s not a lack of comprehension on my part, it probably feels like a lack of comprehension when viewed from the child like or from the horse’s view. The moment with Caleb in the crib and the nap is really memorable to me, because in his struggle to not have the words to share his frustration, he reached for his most beloved item at the time, which was his blankie.
Speaker1:
And this day he was so frustrated that he stuck his blankie over the side of the crib and threatened me with, I’ll drop my blankie. Which for him was a really big deal. If I were to translate that. Have you ever heard an adult use the expression I’d give my right arm for that. When an adult human says something like that, they are implying a willingness to make a great sacrifice for Caleb to say I’ll drop my blankie would be the equivalent. He was implying that his frustration level was so great he was willing to drop his blankie. From my viewpoint, I’m able to have great empathy in those moments. Empathy, again, is the ability to understand or share the feelings of another. I understand the feeling of not being understood, of feeling like the other person doesn’t get me, or like the other person doesn’t understand what I’m trying to communicate. And that often makes me feel frustrated. So my heart goes out to my year and a half old son who is frustrated with his inability to communicate, or with Enzo. In those moments when I can see he clearly wants to communicate something. But just because I have empathy doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to change my behavior because I have a different viewpoint. I did a free online teaching earlier this year.
Speaker1:
It was actually back in February. That’s eight months ago. Back in that teaching, I shared the many roles that I have with my horse, and here are a few that I listed. Healthcare provider, trainer. Guardian. Guide manager. Fitness coach. Advocate. Dance partner. When I look at these roles. Not all of them are warm and fuzzy in the moment that Caleb was frustrated about his nap. I still loved him dearly, even though I didn’t change his nap time as he desired. As an adult, I had a different viewpoint of what was in his best interest, and it’s the same for me with the horses. I’m able to be with the discomfort of understanding their discomfort, and yet still maintain the ability to make the choices that I believe will benefit them in the long run. As I wrap up this podcast, I would like to invite you to watch yourself this week during your interactions with horses or even other humans. Do you notice yourself practicing the ability to see one situation from multiple viewpoints. And when you do see other angles and they don’t match yours, how do you decide what action to move forward with? Do you have a desire to escape that feeling of conflict? When there are conflicting ideas, or does it trigger you to move into a confrontational state of being, or do you have access to another option? Thanks for listening and I’ll talk to you again in the next episode.
Speaker2:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy’s podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall. Com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.
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