Calming Signals: What Normal Looks Like

Do you ever think about what horses give up in living with us? Humans have a way of always seeing ourselves as the solution, resting confidently in the knowledge that we are their saviors. We have a bank account to prove it. We talk about what they do for us, but rarely consider the cost to them. The courage needed for them to live in our world.

This photo is the big herd at Duchess Sanctuary. I had the extreme privilege of visiting them earlier this year in Oregon. The mares are all originally from the PMU industry in Canada where the pregnant mares stood in stalls with a contraption strapped between their hind legs to collect their urine for the drug Premarin. The industry is closed because the drug ruled unsafe, and these mares and thousands of others bred for this industry were out of work.

Does it sound barbaric? It’s no different than those horses who waited in fire stations for the emergency gallop to fires, those who moved logs to sawmills to build our cities, or those “pleasure horses” who stand in stalls today, spending their lives being our hobby. Relationships are always an exchange of goods and services. That’s what a friend of mine who is a pastor says. I used to fight the notion when I was a young romantic. I see the sense in that now.

Horses and humans have always had a complicated relationship. We love them, we use them. They hurt us physically, and we damage them with poor training and handling. They are a constant reminder of beauty and freedom, of sensitivity and intelligence that is elusive to us; they draw us to them in awe and wonder. And then we make them over to our specifications, controlling their environment, social interactions, and even their eating schedules. We anthropomorphize them into whatever story we want to tell, often ignoring their emotions while dumbing them down to something we understand. We are their guardians. We are their predators.

For their part, horses do volunteer. They are curious about us; they allow themselves to be trained. They have an involuntary instinct to survive; they care about safety. They fear our erratic habits but need the food we provide. We bend close to kiss them and in the next moment, flap arms to get them out of “our” space. We give conflicting signals. Want another example? Horses feel safety in a herd but we ask them to leave and then see their separation anxiety is a training issue. Or when horses stand with their eyes closed and we are certain they are at peace with us, but aren’t closed or partly closed eyes are a calming signal that the horse is pulling inside, evading us by withdrawing?

Our lives with horses can never be unscrambled. Scrolling through the Facebook feed, it’s all right there. Mustangs run over land the cattlemen want for grazing cows. Beloved horses being ridden well. Ranch horses abandoned to starvation and abuse. Humans threatening horses, humans encouraging them. Horses teased for a funny picture.

Back to the Duchess Sanctuary, an upside-down world where horses live the most natural life possible with no work or love required, and free of fussy humans with savior complexes. In sanctuary, horses owe us nothing, not even companionship.

Jennifer and I entered the upper pasture, a vast meadow with groups of mares standing in the shade of trees. Over a hundred and fifty of them scattered, their massive bodies at rest, their tails shooing flies off each other. One mare was apart from the group and down, and as we drew closer, she stayed down. Not normal. The other mares were watching us now, not frightened but also not pandering to us. Their autonomy was regal and glorious. Jen walked an arc one direction, as I stepped the other way for a better angle, knowing better than to think both of us walking quickly up would be helpful.

Just then, a black mare left the shade and walked directly to the prone mare and then turned to face me. I halted. She walked ten yards toward me but instead of sniffing me, she positioned her belly against mine, her body obliterating my view of the ailing mare and Jennifer. Silently, two other mares joined the black mare, stepping up behind me to form a triangle around me, bending their ribcages close enough that I could almost feel each of them with my body. No greeting, they weren’t curious about me. Not friendly and not emotional. They were massive and immobile, and I was contained. My breath stayed intentionally slow and deep as I kept my hands by my side. I did not take a selfie.

A moment later, the mares dissolved back into the herd. I joined Jennifer with their permission. It looked like colic so after a slow polite haltering process, the mare very reluctantly allowed us to lead her to the gate where a sanctuary assistant had pulled a trailer to carry the sick mare to the barn for treatment. There were moments when I wondered if the herd would let her go with us. It ended up being a mild colic, resolved in a few hours, and soon the big girl was returned, healthy and whole, to her herd. She didn’t say thank you and we didn’t expect it.

Horses need us to survive in our world and how arrogant we are to think the life we give horses is necessarily an improvement. We offer horses love, as we claim theirs, but the more I watch and learn, the more I think horses have something better. After all, we fail each other as often as we fail horses. Our culture is nothing to brag about, but remembering those mares, I wonder if horses have had it right all along. It was never about domination, but rather a cooperation.

There is a word in the Maori language that I think might define what horses experience in herds. It isn’t as selfish as individual love but rather lifts the ideal of community welfare:

whanaungatanga – Māori Dictionary (fa-nan-ga-tunga) 1. (noun) relationship, kinship, sense of family connection – a relationship through shared experiences and working together which provides people with a sense of belonging. It develops as a result of kinship rights and obligations, which also serve to strengthen each member of the kin group.

When working with your horse, listening to them in this unnatural world we share, the most important calming signal to learn is their baseline, their resting face. This is it, a herd grazing, breathing together, looking out for each other. This is their normal, beyond the screaming hustling inpatient world with humans. This is their understated natural home, even if they live in cities. If we want to connect with a horse in their language and on their terms, we have to be willing to let go of the things that create noise in our world and in our hearts. It’s an idea as revolutionary as a sanctuary.

We have to let normal be enough.

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Anna Blake, Relaxed & Forward, now scheduling 2022 clinics and barn visits. Information here.

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