Friday, June 18, 2010

Speaking the language

How much easier is communication when you speak the language? If you've ever travelled to non-English speaking countries you know how important knowing the local dialect is, if you want to get anywhere or anything. But not just the spoken language, how about body language, gestures eye contact everything can change between cultures.

But what about between species? Everything changes again, but to some extent most of us can kind of understand the very basics. Think of a dog you can tell when hes happy, sad, hungry or aggressive. Dogs though, share a lot of similarities with ourselves. They are hunters, to some extent foragers, they work in packs, and they form very strong emotional bonds to whoever is in their pack (human or dog). Also like us they are usually apex predators at the top of the food chain. But what about horses? They are prey animals. They are in herds, but there is no herd effort to locate food like with dogs hunting. They re evolved to b ready to run from threats always be aware of the slightest change in their environment. If whatever is scary to them is within range they kick bite then get out the area They are not at the top of the food chain. They are so so different from us. Can we as apex predators, at the very top of the food chain ever relate to another species that is prey? How many people who own, love or work with horses even try? How many 'horse people' even understand or try? Yet we want these animal to do our every request, even carry us on their backs and hand their complete control over to us.

As long as your willing to try and learn to communicate in a language they know, horses can be the best pupils. They are easy to train. As long as your aware of what your training them to do. Their are some fabulous horse trainers in this world who can get horses to do amazing things. But both horse and people have to learn to speak the same language first.



So after our little quarrel over who was top horse so to speak, my little bay boy has been an
angel. The very next morning, getting him out of his stable he was nothing but submissive in his body language. Now with that little hurdle out of the way he's progressing in leaps and bounds. This is where it starts to get exciting. Ten days ago he was as wild as they come. Now we are starting to talk the same language. He's not domesticate yet but he's well on the way. You can run your hand all over him. He will move anyway you ask and his eyes never leave you. Were both starting to speak the same language, but neither of ever say a word.

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