Listening for Harmony

Listening for a Harmonious Balance Trying to do Better

By Lauren Allen

Itook my stallion for a school at a friend’s farm today. The horse trailer swayed and clanged as the stallion pushed at the breast bar and pounded the floor. He backed off, already tossing his mane and raising his head, neighing loudly. Right away, the choices arose, and the narratives: You should have a chain on him, what if he gets away from you? You should discipline him for neighing. Make him back up. Make him put his head down. Make him move his feet. Make him stand still… I am setting up experiences for us that won’t be too overwhelming and that will let me work with him without worrying too much about what other people think. I guess when we go to a horse show, part of the point is that we are hoping to show off. But like many women, in particular, I have internalized the judgmental outsider and bring that perspective with me everywhere I go. My friend is an excellent horse handler and also a kind, supportive person, so it was a good place to go to try to build skills and maybe even unpack some trauma. The stallion is only 4 years old so he has a lot of hormonal and instinctive programming to process and we both have, unfortunately, accumulated some baggage in our lives. My friend understands that he is a young stallion and assures me that this is all fine, but still my hands shake as I try to get the bridle on the nervous, loud, and volatile animal. I also know what it feels like to feel threatened, and to be saddled with impossible expectations, so I am sensitive to my horse’s plight. In the past, women were often treated rather like horses, raised in service first to their family and then to their husbands. They were unable to own property, make money, or maintain custody of their children. These ideas are almost unfathomable now, but not long ago they were nearly universal. Lately I have been thinking about what would happen if a more modern viewpoint could be applied to horse training. A stallion is perhaps the most extreme example of an animal that is already one of the most loaded symbols in cultural imagination. Muscular and masculine, the mythology of the stallion is inescapable. The fantasy of a partnership that supersedes nature (special thanks to The Black Stallion books and films) runs directly against the harsh dismissal you hear from those horsemen who maintain that there is no place for stallions, especially now that you can get frozen semen shipped for breeding from the best in the world. It has been in working with my stallion that I have started pondering more explicitly the theory and ethic of my horse training. I respect the fact that stallions are constituted to be aggressive in a way that geldings and most mares are not. I agree completely that, even more so than most horses, in the wrong hands and sometimes even when handled well, stallions can be unpredictable and potentially dangerous. I am fascinated with the way a stallion ultimately seems to reflect a wildness at heart that will not be completely subdued. Conversely, they seem to bring out in human handlers a desire to dominate and control that runs counter to the concept of partnership and cooperation. I regret having had my stallion started by someone else. I prepared him at home to a degree, but when the man who was working with him got on, he began pushing my horse to fight or submit. It was a choice being forced that retrospectively may have been more destructive than productive. I offer my horse my trust and ask for his. I recognize now that respect cannot simply be commanded; it must be earned over time with consistency and care. What does it look like for training to take into consideration an animal as an equal partner, to offer respect to the horse? What does it mean for equality to be extended to differing entities? Men and women are different and yet equality could be considered an equal opportunity to fulfill talents and follow the individual path of their hearts. When gender equality is prioritized, rigid gender roles are weakened, for instance men are allowed to be sensitive and women are able to be

meghan benge more active. What would happen with our horses if we encouraged them to be more themselves rather than trying to force compliance and submission, turning them into Stepford Wife versions of some idealized horse? What would we hear if we really listened to them? Horses do not speak our language but they communicate with us through every look, movement, expression, and action. Are we willing to hear our horses if they say they don’t feel safe or ready to do what we want them to do? Perhaps they need more preparation, more time, more training. Maybe the discipline they are being trained in just isn’t their calling. We need to remember that just because we buy them dinner doesn’t mean they owe us anything! Listening doesn’t have to mean agreeing, it may just mean empathizing with the difficulty of animals that have been completely removed from their natural world and now must overcome their instincts to survive. Simply deciding that horses are only truly themselves in the wild is not a viable answer. Horses have evolved with humanity, they are commingled with us by domestication over thousands of years. We are all enmeshed in a system, whether we like it or not, and we all are indoctrinated (trained) to be productive members of our society. Becoming more ethical, seeking harmony and indeed listening to the horse’s feedback doesn’t need to end in certainty. There must be some balance, a weighing of one possibility against another. It is paradoxical to be a stallion and to be compliant. Recognizing that and responding with care is the challenge of training with compassion and sensitivity. Back at my friend’s farm, my stallion was concerned and unfocused at first, but as we worked over poles and small jumps he began to breathe and relax. I don’t want to reduce him to make myself more. I want to encourage him in all his magnificence but also for him to be with me, not against me. As I untacked and prepared to depart, he slid once more into anxiety, calling and prancing. Confidence and cooperation in partnership aren’t established in one session; both are accumulated one small step at a time, just as human relationships don’t emerge from one date but from commitments that are tested and strengthened. My stallion may tell me that it is too stressful to remain a stallion, or he may grow into a stronger man in time. I will try to do my best to take what he says into consideration. Lauren Allen is a hunter/jumper trainer based in Lugoff, South Carolina. Riding honors have ranged from Los Angeles and Pacific Coast Horse Show Association to South Carolina Hunter Jumper Association year-end awards in Pre-Green, Green and Regular Working Hunter divisions. She has also earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of South Carolina. Lauren can be found on Facebook and Instagram at LaurenAllenTraining.