Episode 330: The Horse’s Body: Observation vs. Interpretation

Episode 330.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 330.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
When we discussed the horse's body. We do need to recognize that they speak to us through their body language. This means that we are challenged to determine whether the horse seems resistant because they're confused, like the horse who is giving the buck kick, grumble, or whether the horse lacks strength and balance like the one who had the unbalanced trot to canter transition, or whether there really is something physically bothering the horse.

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 talked about the four square model and the importance of correctly diagnosing a problem. This week, we're actually going to look at just one quadrant of the four square model, and that is the horse's body. I'm going to share with you the initial challenge that people face in this quadrant. I'm going to give you something you can actually go out and do during your next session with your horse. And I'm going to share three examples of things that people discovered while doing this assignment. Then at the end of the podcast, I'll tell you what I see as the real challenge of this quadrant. The initial challenge riders face when looking at the horse's body or the horse's behavior, is that we naturally layer stories onto what we see. We automatically want to assign meaning to what we observe. So the challenge becomes. Sometimes people assume resistance is an attitude problem, or assume that discomfort means pain, or assume that the issue is that the horse won't do something rather than they can't do something yet. The brain's desire to create these stories actually belongs in a different quadrant the rider's mind. So in order to keep the stories over in that quadrant, when you are looking at the horse's body through this four square lens, you have to decide to stick with just the facts.

Speaker1:
So let's say that a horse hesitates before moving forward or pins their ears during a transition. Some riders immediately think he doesn't want to do it. Others think he must be hurting. Neither reaction is wrong, but neither one is a fact. The fact is, the horse pinned its ears. The fact is, the horse hesitated. Developing the ability to separate observation from interpretation is a critical skill. Sometimes this means that you need to pretend you're someone else. So sometimes that might mean that you need to pretend that you're watching it like a vet would, or that you're watching like an athletic coach or a fitness instructor would. So again, while we're in this quadrant, the goal is to stick with the facts. But here is why you're going to resist sticking with just the facts. Two reasons. Number one, we're so practiced and natural at assigning meaning that we don't know how to stop. We literally haven't practiced stopping it. Number two, when you do practice removing the meaning, it often feels more cold or impersonal, like how you can view some doctors. And that's not how we want to show up with our horse. So a lot of times we're going to resist stepping back and removing the meaning. But this is work worth doing, and if my life is any roadmap, I know that it doesn't stop.

Speaker1:
Or at least I haven't reached the end of this road yet, because this skill is what actually allows you to be able to consider different viewpoints. So this skill is really important if you feel stuck in a problem. But I think it's also a skill that will help you reach further and further heights when you didn't think they were possible. So if you're a long time listener, you might remember me talking in very subtle ways about my horse, Willow. Now I'm pretty happy with my results with my horses, yet I still encourage myself to question my own assumptions. For example, with Willow when she was four years old, she was very small and I thought her potential was pretty limited. So at that time I focused on just putting a solid foundation on her so she could be a good general riding horse for someone. That viewpoint with her was helpful until it wasn't. And then I questioned it. Had I never questioned that initial assumption, Willow would never have become the horse that carried me to earn my bronze medal in traditional dressage, and won a wall full of trophies in Western dressage. My original observations with Willow were correct at that time. But because I've practiced the skill of separating observation from interpretation, it also gave me the chance to reassess. Think about it. A vet would reassess after a certain amount of time, or a fitness coach would reassess after a certain amount of time.

Speaker1:
Here is how you can apply this during your next session with your horse, and three challenges that were revealed when other people did this work. So the fastest way for you to see where you stand in this area, this ability to separate observation from interpretation, is for you to set up a video camera and record your next session with your horse. And if you don't record the whole session, at least record five minutes of your next session. Groundwork. Riding either one works. I have students in both of my programs do this, and here are three challenges that were revealed. One student who did this said, I didn't really know what to look for when I watched my video. When she recorded, what was revealed was her lack of knowledge. And this is common in the beginning because if you haven't been trained for what to look for or look at when you look at the horse moving on video, then this makes sense. Many riders don't yet have the skills to analyze what's happening. This is actually great news because if you're in this situation, you simply lack information. This rider happened to be inside my Resourceful Rider program, which is where she was able to learn how to fill in these gaps. And she said, now that I've watched you go through a ton of people's videos and my videos, I actually do the same thing now.

Speaker1:
I put him in slow motion. I paused them. What she's saying is she learned how to break things down, and she learned how to see what was happening with the horse's body and her own body systematically. So she went from this vague ability to say, yeah, that's a horse and a rider going around, but I have no idea what to look at, to being able to clearly analyze and even feel uncomfortable pausing it and putting it in slow motion so she could see even more. Now another rider said, my horse had a long, fast, unbalanced trot before the canter. It was a yucky feeling, both physically and mentally. What was revealed when she recorded was a mix of physical and emotional responses to this behavior. So this transition to the canter felt bad or yucky in her word, so the rider avoided it, assuming that that yucky feeling was a problem instead of a necessary step in building the strength and coordination. Here's how she said it I dreaded asking her to pick up the canter, knowing that all of this would come before she would break into the canter, and as a result, we didn't practice the transition very often, which meant we didn't make progress. And that's where so many riders stop. They assume that if something doesn't feel good, it means something is wrong.

Speaker1:
But this is how this rider handled it. I realized this pattern wasn't helping us move forward. I decided we would push through the uncomfortableness and spend some dedicated time working on this transition. It was like a dance of one step forward and two steps back on repeat. I took some videos, sent it in, got some coaching, went out and implemented the things that Stacy suggested, got some more coaching, more practice, rinse and repeat. And then one day I did a couple of transitions from collected trot to canter, and on the third time, her body felt like a swell in the ocean as it builds up to break into a wave. That feeling of elation that I felt at that moment will stay with me forever. Wow. We did it. You're an amazing, wonderful horse. I love you all. The work is paying off. This exercise again revealed a mix of physical and emotional responses, but the bigger thing that it revealed is that awkward stages are part of the process, not proof of failure. The final example here shows how sometimes more detail is needed. It reveals more information which reveals the full story, which leads to a better solution. This writer said before joining the program, my horse would slow down and push back against my leg, usually after a buck and kick and a bit of a grumble, he would put his head down and go to work.

Speaker1:
I always wondered why we had to have this discussion in the first place. On the surface, this looks like straight up resistance, but listen to what the rider discovered. However, when watching my videos, I realize my leg aids were confusing my horse. Once I started using Stacy's system, I saw a dramatic change in his behavior. Suddenly, I could get him curious and engaged, like I had given him a puzzle to figure out for once instead of the other way around. Understanding the training techniques and tools was important, but changing my mindset around how I use them has been invaluable. Each of these experiences reveals something crucial. Sometimes it's the idea that the first interpretation isn't the right one, and oftentimes it is that the more details you gather, the more clear the real issue becomes, and the starting point is being able to separate observation from interpretation. Now here's what I see as the real challenge of this quadrant. The challenge that's going to stick around even after you've done the work on getting more factual about what's going on. As I'm recording this, I happen to be wearing a sweatshirt that my husband bought me for Christmas last fall. We were attending a horse sale, and as we were waiting for the sale to begin, a woman walked by wearing a sweatshirt like this and I couldn't stop laughing.

Speaker1:
The sweatshirt says wouldn't pass a vet check. When we discussed the horse's body, we do need to recognize that they speak to us through their body language. This means that we are challenged to determine whether the horse seems resistant because they're confused, like the horse who is giving the buck kick grumble, or whether the horse lacks strength and balance like the one who had the unbalanced trot to canter transition, or whether there really is something physically bothering the horse. There are two sides I want to discuss here. Medical answers and behavioral answers. Let's start with the one that gets talked about less the behavioral side. I've coached many people in this situation and here's how it typically shows up. Someone comes to me for help with their horse. They come because the horse seems uncomfortable or resistant, but the vet can't find anything. Oftentimes the vet has looked multiple times and other professionals have also looked to dentist farrier, body worker. While all horses have some degree of maintenance issues, none of these professionals can find anything to explain the behavior. Yet there it is on video. The horse is pinning its ears while being worked. This leads to the question, what's going on here? Here's my question for you. Where does your mind go when I say this? I've observed that people tend to go one of two ways. Number one, they go further down the medical trail looking even harder.

Speaker1:
Or number two, they go to a trainer. They come to somebody like me to see if maybe it's behavioral. Now, let me be clear. I believe in looking for medical answers, especially when the vet finds something but can't exactly say what. For example, if they say, well, there's some kind of an issue in the hind end, but they can't quite decide what or why. That's something worth chasing, but the situation I'm talking about is completely different. This is a situation where the vet and other people are saying, I can't find any medical reason when this happens. I'm always impressed when a vet can't find anything because there's typically something you can find. The reason I'm wearing this sweatshirt is because I think I'm generally unsound at this point, but I'm also especially symptomatic when bookwork or taxes need to be done. Nothing brings on a headache or a stomachache faster than approaching tax season. I pin my ears every time it rolls around. So while I am all in on medical assessments, I also think it's worth considering the other possibility that often gets overlooked. Your horse might have thoughts about the work, your horse might have opinions, and your horse might even be experiencing discomfort that isn't limiting because just like people, horses can work around a less than perfect situation. Let me share two quick stories that illustrate why it's so important to consider multiple possibilities when evaluating a horse's behavior.

Speaker1:
Last year, Amber started pinning her ears every time I saddled her. At first it looked like attitude, but it was a behavior change, so I looked closer. After looking very closely, I could just barely detect a little bit of girth fungus. After looking very closely, I could detect just a tiny bit of girth fungus, which is a common issue when horses are first getting started under saddle, especially if it's hot and humid. Some horses don't appear to be very bothered when this happens. Others act like Amber did. If you've ever had athlete's foot, you know it's uncomfortable, but it's probably not enough reason to miss work or school. That's how I looked at Ember's situation. It wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't debilitating either. I had several choices. I could stop saddling her completely and assume that she was in too much discomfort to work. I could continue riding her, deciding that it wasn't too much discomfort to work or some mix of those two. And I actually did a mix. I gave her a few days off while I started the treatment, but once I could rub my hand down over there, once I could rub the medication in without her having any kind of a reaction, I decided that meant she was clear enough to begin being saddled.

Speaker1:
But something interesting happened when I put the saddle on. She still seemed bothered when I tightened up the cinch, so at that point I had to ask, is she still feeling some discomfort even though she doesn't show any when I rub my hand over this area. Or is this a residual habit? Had she learned to associate saddling with discomfort? So now, even though the problem the fungus is gone, she's still anticipating it. I made the choice that even if she had a little bit of discomfort, let's call it a one out of ten. I decided she could handle it, and I was clear about what behavior I would accept, and I kept on going. And now she's totally fine. No ear pinning at all when being saddled. Now, let's contrast that with another case that someone brought to me a horse that was getting worse and worse about being groomed. They said that at first it was just small reactions moving away, shifting slightly, but over time the horse was head swinging and foot stomping. And that's the point when the owner called the vet. And here's what's fascinating. During the vet exam, the horse stood completely still. No fussing, no resistance. That's when she came to me and asked my opinion. I explained that in my opinion, there may have been a legitimate starting point like embers, or it could have been something as simple as swatting at flies, and it could have started from there.

Speaker1:
We may never know why it started, but horses are masters of pattern recognition. They quickly learn, if I do this, then you do that. So I suggested, since she already had the clear vet exam, that she start treating the behavior as if it had been trained rather than assuming the horse was still in pain. And she reported back to me that within just a few days the behavior was gone. These stories illustrate that it's worth considering that the behavior you see can have more than one cause. And even when discomfort is real, like in Ember's case, it doesn't have to become a permanent problem. When you practice looking at your horse's body and behavior as a fact finding mission, it's amazing the breakthroughs that can happen for the rider who struggled with the yucky canter transition. Once she committed to working through that awkward stage and developing the strength and communication, that's when her horse was able to lift into that collected canter for the rider, whose horse pushed back against her leg. When she refined her cues, the behavior disappeared. And for the rider who learned to analyze the video, she went from saying, I don't know what I'm looking at to finding real answers in her own videos she can make at home and watch herself. These shifts only happened because these riders started seeing the facts for what they were, which revealed their next step forward.

Speaker1:
I hope in a way that this approach felt a little bit mechanical. I always find in the beginning, when someone is learning to observe the horse's body without interpretation, it feels a little mechanical. And when I teach it this separate, I think it sounds. And when I teach it this separate, I think it sounds a bit more mechanical. But this neutral viewpoint is so important. Riders naturally focus on the horse's body because it's what we can see. In the next episode. I'll explain the horse's mind and how I view this separately than the issues that show up in this horse's body quadrant. I absolutely love how all four quadrants flow together, but there truly is value in learning to separate it out. I also love doing this podcast, but I do realize that some things benefit from visuals. So if you want a fast, easy way to find your unique starting point, I created a free quiz that you can take over on my website. It will give you a specific result one of these four quadrants. And if you like visuals, then you can download the PDF where you're going to see this in writing, as well as some graphs and charts that I've created. To make it more clear. That's what I have for you this week, 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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