"Heels down, toes forward, not out. Grip with your entire legs, not your knees. And sit on your butt, not your thighs. You want the back pockets of your jeans between you and the saddle!"
I spoke these words to my horseback riding students, ages five to eighteen, for seven years. But I've been married to the horse as a species for nearly twenty-one. The seven years I spent taking care of a barn full of equines, in particular the domesticated subspecies equus ferus caballus, delved me into their nature more than any series of riding lessons ever could.
Horses have been evolving on our planet for over 50 million years. They began as eohippus, a four-toed dog-sized creature that roamed several continents, including Europe and North America, during the Tertiary Period and Eocene Epoch. They began to be domesticated for use by humans between 4000 and 3000 B.C. Horses helped further human development through their use in agriculture, warfare, and transportation, among other endeavors. It is only relatively recently in their history that horses have been seen as companions, athletes, and recreation.
I often wonder what initially drew me to the equestrian lifestyle, because I don't remember. Was it the language of their bodies? I did not know when I was five that a horse gives away what it's looking at through the direction of its ears. I didn't know that, unlike a dog, a horse is annoyed when it swishes its tail. How could I have realized in my childhood that a colicky horse drops its head to the ground, paws the dirt, nips at its belly, circles tightly and falls to the ground, where it attempts to roll the pain away? One thing I quickly learned is that ears flat against the skull, whites of rolled-back eyes, and lowering of the head meant agression, or, in my 5-year-old mind-- "Watch out!"
I became obsessed with one specific breed of horse above all others. Sure, Miniatures and Shetland ponies are adorable. Quarter horses and Clydesdales are strong and sturdy. But it was the elegance and flightiness of the Arabian that I fell for. The way their tails are naturally held higher than those of other horses because they have one less vertebrae in their spines. The way their faces dish in like the swoop of a girl's nose, the extra arch in their necks to match. The curve of their ears, tips that point towards each other, and the flare of their large nostrils, big enough to accept the oxygen necessary to support their actions. These short horses, many considered ponies because they are less than 14.2 hands high, were bred by humans for their endurance through the stifling deserts of the in long-distance races. Thoroughbreds just can't keep up for that long. Not everyone knows, either, that most Thoroughbreds can trace their ancestry back to three separate Arabian stallions, the most well-known called the Godolphin Arabian. The lineage of the Arabian breed is one of the oldest and most important in today's equestrian culture. Maybe it's the history, the ancient blood of the species, a connection to some pre-modern culture, that draws me.
But I think I had it right when I posited that the language of the horse drew me in. After all, I'm almost one myself. If you give me a horse and a roundpen, I can show you how to "join up," or assert yourself as the alpha of the herd then form a bond of trust with the horse on which you are working. This method is especially useful for wilder, less trusting horses. It's a matter of speaking to a horse as a horse, using your body to push the horse out from you, turn it around to go the other direction, slow it down or speed it up, and ask it to come to you, follow you, all from the ground, all without physical contact.
And so it is that I am a horse in my other life. My social skills, my ability to communicate with a herd of humans, detect body language and infer psychology, my fight-or-flight instinct, my sixth sense of predatorial people, my attempt to master my life, comes from my native language, that of the horse.
