Madeleine Balcer wrote:
Thank you Donald and Miriam.
So if I follow your reasoning Miriam, Bravada wanted to be left alone or do her own things. When I walked to get her to come back and grab the cordeo she just told it to me louder.
I know we should not antropomorphized but horses are expressing something to us.
It's annoying to me that I have such trouble expressing myself.
Now I double back on my comment and revisit. Not all things that horses do are different than us humans. He actually have a great deal in common.
Pain, excitation, hunger, fear, joy, etc.
And I so much agree that horses are expressing to us. You and others here embody that spirit of communication with your horses so very well.
I'm often annoyed at myself when I think back over an outing with the horse and realize I missed it when he was communicating to me.
In the area of "thinkin" I've had many debates with people on the subject of children "thinking" this or "thinking" that. And so often we were discussing why the parent abused the child.
I don't know the current thinking on the capacity of the horse to think in comparison with humans, but I note that people who parent well, whether with seeming unconcern, or with worrisome effort, also do well with horses.
They don't expect what the child and the horse can do to be more than they can at any given moment.
I can get the horse more attentive to his kind of thinking, very linear, to the point the onlooker is sure the horse is understanding and acting on the abstract...but he is not. He's just much better than other horses at making the linear connections.
It's both a boon to our communication and at times very frustrating and is the cause, I believe, for terrible breakdowns and savage abuse of horses...the expectation he KNOWS he's doing wrong, or is stubborning and willfully resisting us with conscious intent.
So I'm oversensitive to this issue.
What I like here so much is the far more sophisticated awareness I find on this very issue. The stopping to puzzle out what might be going on for the horse, instead of assuming intentional "misbehavior". The exploration of the horses body and mind for what might be effecting their behavior, and similar exercises in good and humane judgment.
There is a goodly amount of patience, and wait and see as well. Like good and effective parents.
Madeleine Balcer wrote:
Your explanations are quite logical and your reactions to theirs show that you have understood or at least acknowledged their free will.
I will sure put that in practice.
Have a nice weekend!
I bow to the feminine trait of more often awareness of the milieu, the total environment. I've tried to cultivate that, and thank my mother, a tailor, for making me more aware that I needed to be more aware.
Miriam, I think you have certainly nailed a real strong possibility.
I tend sometimes to fail to view a situation and shift my focus back and forth from the specific to the general and look at the whole enough to make better choices about what specific thing might be at issue.
The relationship of more of the elements present. Of course. <smacks forehead>
Thank you.
Donald