Sympathy

To me, the concept of a successful relationship between the horse and rider is one where the rider is perceived as the leader of the partnership; where the horse is content to follow the rider’s direction and focus because he understands what is being asked, and because those requests come with a consistency and a sense of certainty that the horse needs to be able to trust them with his life.

That’s a pretty tough assignment for both sides.

Humans aren’t the most consistent, nor self-assured creatures at the best of times, and when that consistency and assuredness is required in an area that we are neither born, nor bred, nor raised in – in fact in an area that is foreign to us as a species… well, it’s daunting to say the least.

It’s even more daunting for a horse to put his life in the hands of someone who neither understands the rules, nor speaks the language of the horse’s world. In fact, that is totally against his nature – pure and simple. And it speaks volumes of their ability to adapt and not go insane or homicidally violent on regular basis, when we tell them that they should put up with us and do as we say, when what we say makes no sense to them.

But we do have one huge advantage that can help us breach the barrier: due to our evolved cognitive abilities, we are in a better position to learn and understand their point of view than they are to learn ours. We can be sympathetic, whereas they can only learn to adapt to being around humans and to the demands that they don’t understand. And we can freely choose to change our ways in communicating with them, instead of them being unhappily forced to adapt to us.