Emotional Intelligence

Do you watch the soaps? Something like Eastenders, Coronation Street or Emmerdale? The underlying similarities with all of these soaps is the drama. Characters overeact emotionally, shouting at each other, refusing to hear the other persons point of view, failing to consider consequences and often completely misconstruing communication.

What has this got to do with horses?
In my experience, this knowledge goes a long way to understanding why you might be struggling to build a mutually respectful relationship with your horse. Being emotionally intelligent basically means that you have full awareness, and therefore control, of your emotions, and can make rational choices as to how you react.

Our relationship with our horse is not that different to the child/adult interaction. The horse is what he is, with his inherant behaviours and those behaviours creating by human handling and management.

The horse is not self actuallizing, so cannot make a decision that he will stop 'winding you up'. Any changes that happen to him are ubdisputedly created by external stimuli - that's you and your behaviour, and/or the people that handle/ride him.

Example
My friend was telling me a story of a mare at her yard. Apparently when the mare comes into season she winds the whole herd up, charging round the field, bucking kicking and generally making a hooly. Other people were getting upset by this. They couldn't catch their horses or they would be to wound up to ride.

But my 'emotionally intelligent' friend decided that she would not buy into the behaviour of the herd. She walks into the field, calmly and without reaction to whatever happens. She waits for the right moment, and then calmly catches her horse. As she leads him down the field she remains calm as he bounces and huffs beside her. 'I am not buying into your emotion mate', she tells him. And, within a short space of time, he recognises her leadership and focuses on her.

It's not what happens to you that counts - it is how you deal with it

This is exactly what I am talking about. Remaining unaffected by whatever happens is the secret to success with horses. They cannot not respond to this natural leadership - not always immediately, but if you stick with it you will see results.

'You' have to change!
Screaming, shouting, crying, becoming frustrated, intolerant or angry has no place in our relationship with our horses. I have seen for myself - time after time - that when an owner starts to change the horse follows.

The bonus of developing emotional intelligence is that it naturally overlaps into your personal life, where you will find that your human relationships will improve.