How To Become a Horse Whisperer

In fifth grade, they pulled us out of class for hearing tests. They clamped skinny black headphones on us and told us to raise our hands when we heard sounds. Then I sat there waiting to hear for a long time. Long enough that I knew I wasn’t hearing. And I wasn’t the kid who failed tests, so I was miserable. They informed my parents that one of my ears wasn’t doing its job. I had two ear surgeries before I graduated from high school. It was probably more than my parents could afford, but there was no improvement, so we gave up.

Let the games begin. Could I not hear, or did I just not want to listen? My hearing loss was like a get-out-of-jail-free card. I could innocently lie, “Oh, no. I didn’t hear,” when the truth was I didn’t listen to things I didn’t want to hear. My loss was in the lower range, so it was men I didn’t listen to. Anecdotal evidence supports this. Other times, I would be so mad that I had to repeat “what” every other minute that I could spit. Could that person not remember? Was making me repeat myself a game? I decided if they wanted me to hear them, it was their problem. I had nagged enough.

But having a bad ear had its good points. It was easy to escape into my imagination with less distraction. If I put my good ear on the pillow, I could sleep through a plane crashing into my bedroom. And I developed an adorable tilt to my head, trying to put my good ear forward, and looked a bit like the RCA Victor dog.

Best of all, having a hearing loss trained me to listen more creatively. Soon, I could listen with my eyes. It was a serious skill since most of my friends had four legs.

Definitions: Hearing is a passive act of noticing sound. Think background chatter, wind, or traffic. Listening is an active process of paying attention to sound, intending to understand. Hearing is something we can do while asleep, but listening requires conscious effort and focus.

I aged, had decades of ear infections, and got more cantankerous. I was sixty when a physician’s assistant asked me if I’d ever considered hearing aids. A few seconds passed. I did the RCA Victor dog thing. It’s amazing what you can get used to compensating for. Besides, it was just the one ear. Long story short: Now they use a soundproof booth with hand buzzers like Jeopardy. Afterward, we had this awkward Who’s-on-First rigmarole as I disagreed with the audiologist about which was my bad ear -until I finally listened.

So, I ended up with hearing aids in both bad ears and now I belong to the Society of Horsewomen with Ear Trumpets (SHET is the acronym). Did you think I’d ever get to the part about horses?

I was talking to a friend, another SHET member, who said her hearing loss was an asset with horses. She said it aloud. I agreed, but I didn’t think to mention it at clinics. But it’s our superpower. Because we couldn’t hear, we had to learn to listen. I think it’s the thing I do that people mistake for horse whispering.

My friend is wonderful with horses, and working with her is particularly enjoyable because her focus on a horse is laser sharp. Now that I thought about it, we had some similar fundamentals. To begin, we are quiet in our bodies. Energetic, but peacefully so. We naturally settle when trying to listen. Horses like that.

Partly it was easier to focus on the horse because we were less distracted by background noise. Our habit of filtering out random clatter while listening for what we wanted to hear almost put us and our horses in a soundproof booth. Easier to pay attention to nuance and stay in the conversation. We got good at making perceptive choices, which is the same thing as focus.

Listening is an art form. A skill we used for school and all parts of life. It was just more interesting with horses.

Of course, there is a downside. It’s dangerous to be around horses when you have a hearing loss. We never had the luxury of complacency. So, we learned to compensate. Our eyes got sharper, we recognized smaller movement, and learned to have quicker reflexes. Reading their movements meant understanding calming signals. Our communication became gentle shorthand compared to humans waving sticks and flags as if they were landing airplanes. Horses especially liked that. And more we had to focus, the better our focus became. Yes, a hearing loss around horses is a definite advantage.

Statistics tell us that long-term horse owners are more prone to injury than newcomers. They say it’s because we become complacent. But it’s not just the risk of injury. It’s that the quality of our communication with our horses becomes dumbed down and mundane. We get bored and become lazy. Horses get bored and bad things happen.

Everyone wants to listen to horses better. We just aren’t sure how to do it. This is the missing link. When our senses aren’t keeping time, we get distracted, startled, emotional. We lose track of the conversation and blame the horse for not paying attention. But horses have nothing to distract them from their senses. Using every sense is survival for them. It was us that lost our place. And using a stronger bit or spurs isn’t the solution.

So yes, I’m gonna suggest that you get yourself a set of noise cancelling ear plugs and pretend. You’ll have to use common sense and stay aware, but that’s a good thing. And when you’ve done that for a while, find a safe place and close your eyes, too. Walk at your horse’s shoulder and sense what’s around you. Or use peripheral vision as if it’s your primary method. Close your eyes and feel your balance in the saddle as your horse does. Take nothing for granted, not for a second. Become alive in all your senses. Be more like a horse.

Horses give us at least a dozen calming signals before doing something guaranteed to get our attention. The point of listening better early, when their anxiety is small, is so we can ease it away before it grows to a point of exploding. But it isn’t fair. In a way, humans all have a hearing problem. We have limited senses in comparison, so we must learn to make better use of the ones we have. We need to get out of our heads and into our bodies. To think less and sense more. Or as Ram Dass would say- Be. Here. Now.

We are both sentient species experiencing the same environment using our senses. But humans over-talk our hands and legs, when our senses are the true conduit for communication and partnership with horses. That’s it. And now you can become a horse whisperer, too.

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