Respect, Obedience and Submission

One of the interesting things about language is how imprecise it is.  I expect this is the source of many, if not most, human misunderstandings.  Take the words "respect", "obedience" and "submission".  I rarely if ever use any of those words in my writing, or thoughts, about horses.  I do think those words have a variety of meanings, and are used in different ways by different people.  To me, those words have a strong negative flavor, perhaps because of my background in traditional (very coercive) schools of horse-training - as in "ask him, make him, tell him" training. I've also seen "natural horsemanship" (a pretty useless descriptor in my opinion) methods that are very coercive, at least in my opinion.  I think it's also a question of where you personally want to go with your horse and what sort of relationship you're aiming for.  I think humans by nature tend to be a species that often wants to dominate and control - both others in their own species and animal species - and I think the terminology of "respect", "obedience" and "submission" can sometimes bring out these darker aspects of the human psyche.  I think if these terms are used, or thought, it alters how the human interacts with the horse.

Starting with "respect".  Too often in working with horses, it's a euphemism for dominance, or control, or having a horse that is afraid of what will happen if it doesn't comply, or has been run in a round pen until it will seek relief from the pressure in any way it can.  But the word respect can have a positive meaning - when I use the term I use it in the sense that the horse should look to me as a calm, attentive leader that the horse can trust - I think what I'm really saying is that true respect (as opposed to compliance) is a relationship where the horse can give its trust to a human leader, and respect that leader to the degree that the leader respects the horse and its feelings.  This in my mind has almost nothing to do with being a horse's "alpha" or dominating the horse.

I think what a lot of people mean when they say "my horse doesn't respect me" is that their horse has terrible ground manners and walks all over them (almost always as a result of what the human has, usually inadvertently, taught or failed to teach the horse to do) - why should your horse respect you if you don't pay attention to the horse's asks or provide clear leadership and direction?  They may also mean that my horse doesn't do the action or movement I want the horse to do - which again is often (almost always) due to human failure to be clear, consistent or focussed, or may come from pain, fear or lack of understanding on the part of the horse.  There's nothing sadder than seeing a rider "get after" a horse - read use bit/crop/whip/spurs to punish, or that wonderful euphemism "motivate" - when the horse is confused, worried or in pain.  They may get compliance and think they have their horse's "respect" when what they have is a mechanical horse that complies only due to coercion and fear of pain.  That's not a relationship because the horse's feelings about what is happening are ignored or dismissed.  That's the route people go who don't know or don't care, and who are happy with a horse that's a piece of sports equipment rather than a partner.

A quote from Mark Rashid's Whole Heart, Whole Horse: Building Trust Between Horse and Rider (reviewed in this post):

. . . it is not uncommon at clinics to see horse owners being pushed, pulled, knocked into, dragged around, gnawed on, run past or through, and sometimes even knocked over.  Many folks refer to this type of behavior as the horse being disrespectful or having a total lack of regard for the person handling them.  But before labeling a horse as disrespectful, I believe it is important to understand that the vast majority of behavior domestic horses offer - whether good, bad or indifferent - in relation to humans has been taught to them in some way, shape or form by a human.  For many folks, that idea can be a hard pill to swallow. (p. 33)

The same applies to "obedience" and "submission".  To me these terms also have strong negative connotations of control, dominance and a horse that's not allowed to be the other side of a conversation or have an opinion.  A lot of people talk about "submission to the aids", but that can encompass methods like rollkur in dressage (or its euphemism "low, deep and round").  I don't like that the word can include things like this and I think (and hope) that many of those who use the word really mean something else like "willing compliance", although it isn't necessarily the case that submission to the aids is a good thing - sometimes the horse is just putting up with an aid because it has to even if much less would do.  There's a big difference between compliance and willing compliance - compliance is something you get from the outside of the horse (sports equipment) and willing compliance is something that comes from the relationship between human and horse and which comes from the inside of the horse.  I don't just make these distinctions because I want to be "nice" to my horses - in fact just being "nice" gets a lot of people in trouble since they fail to provide their horse with leadership and direction that lead to a horse that's a pleasure to be around and work with.  I believe that, although it may feel good to have a horse that is compliant, I can go much farther with my horses and our work together by aiming for willing compliance - there's great power in a relationship with a willing horse that allows some pretty wonderful things to be accomplished by the horse and human together.  Here are two quotes from Ross Jacobs's book Old Men and Horses: a Gift of Horsemanship (reviewed in this post) that pretty much sum up what I mean:

I think a large part of [the old men's] secret with horses was that they never saw any horse as other than an equal. Today trainers talk about dominance and submission, alpha horses and herd behaviour. But for the old men, there was never any talk about who was boss and who was in control. To them, working with a horse was a co-operative venture. (p. 63)

The difference between horsemanship and good horsemanship is the difference between having a horse work for you and having a horse work with you. (p. 66)

I recently did this post on the equine virtues, and you'll notice that the words "respect", "obedience" and "submission" nowhere appear.  I've got some terms I use which I prefer, as I think using (and thinking) them puts me into a different frame of mind.  The words I use include attention, forward/impulsion/responsiveness and willingness/softness, but I think those traits have to be developed in the horse by my providing leadership and direction and modeling those virtues, as well as the other virtues, to the horse - it's all one thing together.

Now I do use some pressure/release techniques in working with my horses, and those are to a degree negative stimuli, but I try to end up with cues, and a communication with the horse, that is a soft as possible and I don't punish the horse for trying things and giving me the "wrong" answer.  I almost never carry a crop or whip and never wear spurs (I used to routinely do this in the old days) and don't believe these are needed to communicate with the horse.  I will use a secondary aid if needed - but all this consists of is making a noise with a crop on my own boot or chap to reinforce "now" and this isn't needed once the horse understands what I want.  I will also do anything I have to do, and get as big as I need to, to keep a horse out of my personal space, and I will give an immediate correction (a correction that isn't done almost instantaneously is worthless) to a horse that has attempted to kick or bite me, even if the horse has cause - these are safety issues and the horse has to clearly understand my boundaries.  There's a big spectrum of negative stimuli ranging all the way from very soft cues to outright coercion where the horse is forced into a position or action by pain and/or fear and has no choice at all but to comply.  I think the language of "asking" the horse rather than thinking of cues (I use this term instead of aids) as "tells" or "makes" makes a difference too.  Most horses that are physically able to do so are happy to comply with the requests of a leader who is calm, consistent, clear and fair.

In closing, another quote from Ross Jacobs:

If a person strives to gain the most out of a relationship with a horse, they need to have a fair degree of humility. One needs to accept that the horse has a great deal to teach us and that nobody knows more about the needs of the horse than the horse. From experience, I can tell you that this is incredibly difficult to achieve. Most people have a very strong sense of superiority when it comes to animals. We believe that we are smarter and we know what's best. It's almost impossible to discard this smugness because it is so vigorously fueled by the notion of owning the animal. If I own an animal, I must be the superior. This is how most of us think whether we admit it or not. I believe when we have this attitude toward our horses we inevitably make it the horses' responsibility to obey our wishes. . . .[T]he most important job [people who have horses] have is to make the horse feel good inside himself. [H]aving horses in your life is about accepting a responsibility for their well-being on the inside and on the outside - it isn't about ownership and it isn't about what a horse owes us. (p. 49-51)