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Animal Communication - Hocus Pocus or something much more? |
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Feature by Dawn Williams Published October 2007 in the Western Morning News (Devon & Cornwall) |
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I have to say that I've got a lot of time for animal communication and if I was a better communicator myself, I could have avoided a frantic ten minutes a few weeks ago. Ready to depart for a show, I returned to the house to lock up and put the dogs in. One dog failed to materialise and after searching inside and out, there was still no sign. As I started to worry, there was a faint yelp from the sitting room but, on further investigation, no appearance of the dog. 'Robbie?!" I bellowed. "Where are you?" (Or words to that effect.) Nothing, then a small squeak which caused me to stare at the TV, wondering if he'd been pulled inside like that girl from Poltergeist. My gaze finally moved to the ancient reclining armchair and a slow, horrified realisation washed over me. That morning, it had been in a sort of semi-reclined position and now it was upright. Carefully reclining it, the Westie shot out like a bullet, with a lot to say for himself and clearly rueing the fact I was so telepathically-stunted. Recently, I heard of a lady being thrown out of her livery yard with 24 hours notice. What did she do? After attending some successful dressage training sessions to improve partnership with her horse, she was apparently told that 'all that Hocus Pocus breathing had turned him vicious'. It seemed that experiencing a more gentle and enlightened communication with�owner�and�trainer had caused the horse to subsequently take a chunk out of the�livery owner - whose reaction was to throw them out with immediate effect. So do horses have conscious thought? Of course they do. Recently, I took three young horses for their second ever jumping lesson. Being quick learners, they were soon enjoying themselves and really 'got it'. I didn't give it any more thought until, looking out of the kitchen window and admiring the horses in the home paddock yesterday, I realised they shouldn't have been in the home paddock, which is trying desperately to recover from the monsoon season before winter arrives. Was it just coincidence that the three horses who'd arrived over the post and rail into the home paddock�happened to be�the three that had been jumping - and used their newly-acquired skills to find fresher grass? I suspect the young Exmoor stallion must have been using his brain too today, when I put his first rider on board and led him up the forest track. He responded to leg, seat and rein�aids to walk, steer and stop and allowed me, as ground person, to walk alongside with a loose�rope and shift control to the rider. Given that this pony originally came from the moor, and was unsocialised to human contact - to me, this smacks of courage, intelligence and common sense and if only we could learn as quickly as horses sometimes. When you’re socialising, taming and backing horses, or developing a young horse to learn new skills, most decent horsemen won’t sniff at the idea that there seems to be a kind of elastic, telepathic connection and communication with the horse or pony. Some describe it as being ‘plugged in’. In my yard, I’m fortunate to be around open-minded people who are willing to explore and consider all the ‘hocus pocus’ and it's taken on board - or disregarded - depending on the individual horse or task in hand. It must be tough to be in a yard where you’re discouraged and even bullied if you take one step out of line to ponder an approach that is not within the, perhaps limited, perspective of the majority. What might be one person’s ‘hocus pocus’ may be someone else’s long-awaited solution that unlocks the potential of a horse and rider partnership. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what we’re all after?
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