Dominance Revisited

I've been looking back over old posts. Seems I used to fret over the concept and practice of "dominance" a lot. We've all read about herd hierarchy, alpha horses, speaking a language horses can understand, the horse respects the one who can move its feet, and so forth. The technique of "join-up," I believe is predicated on the practice of asserting one's place as a higher-ranking herd member.  On the one hand, Imke Spilker was leading me away from dominance, and on the other hand, received wisdom, and Klaus, were leading me back towards it, or towards a version of it.

There's been a good bit of water under the bridge since I first started blogging, and somehow I don't worry about dominance any more. For one thing, I met someone (now a friend) who actually spent time at Klaus's estate in Denmark, and she assured me that - no - we don't have to be Klaus. Au contraire. We have to be ourselves. For another thing, I've tried at least to take Imke's advice to allow the horse to be my teacher, and the horse doesn't seem to be super-impressed by any displays of dominance I can muster. And I'll admit it does take a bit of mustering on my part. 

I'm not much of a leader, or a boss. But on the other hand I'm definitely not a doormat. And somewhere in learning that about myself, I discovered that the horse doesn't need me to be a Klaus, or a fake horse, or a herd leader, or anything at all except myself.

I believe horses understand very well that human beings are not the same thing as a horse. That we have our own way of doing things. That we cannot be herded and dominated, but at the same time, we can be trusted to suggest things that are worth listening to for their own sake. Not because the safety of the herd is at stake, not because the food supply is being safeguarded, not because the strongest is the best one to breed the mare - we act for our own reasons that have nothing to do with hierarchy. Reasons that the horse is happy to consider. We think the horse is purely pragmatic and that we must talk to it in a mechanistic language of survival, but the horse is idealistic and delights in a world beyond that of daily necessity.

I think of George and Bridget, who jockey for position in their little herd, George always vigilant that Bridget shouldn't topple him from his position as first-in-line-for-good-things. When they were turned loose together the other day in the round pen, the place where non-survival values predominate, they beat their swords into ploughshares and stood together quietly and amicably for the very first time.

Not being dominant doesn't mean being dominated. A lesson that the whole world needs to learn. I think more and more of us are catching on - it's the zeitgeist. There's a good book by Mark Rashid called Horses Never Lie: The Heart of Passive Leadership which talks about the way a non-dominant horse can win the respect and cooperation of a dominant one. And I just finished a book called It's for the Horses by Dutch Henry, a book which made me happy, as it's the first time I've read a book by a man which goes as far as I would hope in its advocacy for non-coercive human/horse relationships.

In the horse world, respect is often thought to be the flip side of dominance - the one dominated respects the one who dominates. Why would horses be so different from us? I certainly don't respect a person who tries to dominate me, but rather the person who is polite, considerate, and respectFUL. Someone like George in fact.

And for this episode's pictographic content, here is Bridget on the trail with me on board, following our little buddy on his trusty steed:

Staying Close

Well, it finally happened - I rode Bridget! Rising seven, and me still on the ground; something had to change. I'd been putting off taking that last step of swinging my leg over her back because of wimpiness really. Unlike a great many horse people, I am risk-averse. My daughters have become too busy and important to help with the task of spotting Mum while she does kooky and age-inappropriate things with horses. However, the opportunity to get something going presented itself along with our recent move to Texas, where the horses are boarding again. The barn manager is a professional trainer and instructor, and I decided to ask her to help me with the transition from on-the-ground to on-board. She and Bridget like each other, so I put aside my misgivings about working with an unspilkered (Communicative Horses) trainer and decided that if I wasn't willing to enlist someone's help to Move On, I would remain forever on the ground.

So I ordered a test ride saddle, stuck in the extra-wide tree, and pretty much up I got. It all went very smoothly. The following week, the test saddle having been returned and the new one not having arrived yet, we did some ground work, involving free lunging and trying different bridles. 

And then this week for the first time in her life, Bridget was not very keen on having her halter put on. She did let me, but walked away twice before doing so. Not a good sign.

So needs must break it to our trainer that we're going to have to do things differently. Quite right, of course. But I felt I had to try and let someone do things in a more conventional way to see the result. Maybe Bridget would have been fine with it. It was good to find out for sure. My intention was to trust someone who is trustworthy and be willing to relinquish, to some extent, my own control over the situation. But the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding didn't want her halter on. There's no way to let someone into this gently - you have to just say it: the horse gets to say no, and if she really doesn't freely choose to do this, then what's the point?

After I said my crazy things, we spent an hour in the round pen - me, the trainer, a three-year-old boy, and Bridget, who was at liberty. We (mostly me and Bridget) worked on shoulder yielding and backing and turns on the haunches and forehand, and standing by the mounting block, and putting reins over her head. She was free to walk away, but she kept coming back for more. remaining placid and content throughout. Toward the end of the time, she came and stood by the mounting block and kept putting her foot on it. That's Bridget - she wants the human role in the exercise. She would like to be the one climbing on the mounting block - it looks like fun. Anyway, she was keen to be in the centre of things, making suggestions.

Riding is such an intimate activity. Why is it that we start by keeping the horse at a distance? We send them away from us to the rail and don't allow them to come close. We use commands and instructions which operate like a remote control device - how often has one read in horse classifieds the term "push-button"? As we sit on the horse, all the distance of the lunge line is present, holding us apart still, and the remoteness of our control remains even though we're in close contact with their bodies.

Horses love intimacy. Not the sentimental kind involving kisses forced upon them. But an intimacy where you share your thoughts and listen for theirs. Intimacy can remain over a distance or be lost in close proximity.

I've sort of done our trainer out of a job; although her expertise is still very reassuring, it's no longer the principal driving force behind what we're doing. However, I'm still glad to have someone around for moral support (I've been doing this on my own for so long), and it'll make me feel safer when I'm riding. Also Bridget loves the company. Two people to hang out with, and no George to chase her away and take them for himself. 

The saddle will arrive soon. I'll keep you posted.

George's Practice

Our new barn in Texas boasts a 60' Round Pen.

Now, a round pen is a useful accessory, and I'm glad to have it, but not nearly as glad as I once would have been. On account of, thanks to Ms. Spilker, my horses no longer really have to do anything they don't want. So, pretty much, those round-and-round-we-go-this-way-then-that-at-this-speed-then-that-stop-only-when-I-tell-you days are over.

What we do we instead, you might ask?

Well, here's something George has been working on, and the round pen was part of his equipment.

Our formerly aggressive horse, George, hates for you to stand by his shoulder and ask him to move it away from you. At one time, such a heinous suggestion might have elicited the threat of a bite. At the very least eyes would narrow, ears would pin back, head would snake - drama drama drama.

I've backed off more and more to the point where I'd be standing about two or more feet away, gently just point a little finger at his shoulder, and whisper, "Georgie pie, would you like to move over maybe just maybe?" Even this would cause the smoke to start coming out of his ears.

He'll move over if you ask him other ways, but that shoulder spot is super sensitive, and it just irks him no end.

Well, the other day we were in the round pen. Sometimes when we go in there, George'll go, "Oh yeah, I know what we do - I'll trot round this way, and then I'll trot round the other way once or twice, and --- that's enough now! What else shall we do?" And of course I don't make him go around any more.

So we might do a little shifting his quarters over, and maybe backing up a bit (all at liberty). We might visit other ways to ask him to move his shoulder, or we might just stand still together. The nice thing about a round pen is that the horse and human are contained within a limited safe space, both free to come together or separate as each desires.

The other day, in the round pen, after a few preliminaries, George came up on my right side and stopped with me in the BAD SPOT next to his shoulder. (Normally he likes to put me by his waist.) Then he reached around away from me and bit himself. After a moment, one of us moved away. But immediately he returned to the same position and did the same thing - tensed up and reached round to bite himself.

This continued several more times. I really didn't say anything - I just stood there and let George use me to probe his fears. He kept returning to the dreaded spot, biting himself each time.

Finally, after several tries, when George came up beside me, he sighed, settled, and dropped his head. Here he is. All his own work.

Later that day we were all out in the field together. When I headed back to the gate, the horses all came with me, and George walked beside me, shoulder to shoulder. He's a fast walker, and after a while I couldn't keep up with him and fell behind. I thought he'd keep going, but he stopped and turned back to look at me. When I caught up, he nudged me with his head, and we set off again together.

George's work is a witness to how seriously a horse can approach his life, his relationships, his fears. George seems aware of the conflict that sometimes exists between his own inner demons and an ideal peaceful world. He faces that disconnect and seeks ways of reconciliation.

I've been enjoying the educational author Alfie Kohn, who has written many interesting books, including one called Punished by Rewards. I believe it's obvious that using negative reinforcement to "train" George to give up his hostile ways would pre-empt and stymie his own dedication to self-improvement. But observing George practicing in the round pen really brought home to me (again) that to offer positive reinforcement is not necessarily benign; it can trivialize and distract from a person's accomplishments and efforts. If I were practicing a difficult piano piece and finally mastered it, how inappropriate and beside-the-point it would be for my teacher to say, "Good job! Now you can have a cookie!" Punishments and rewards are for work that others are making you do.

When my friend who gave us George first encountered him, he was an angry young horse called Buddy. I feel that back in his early, early days, before whatever happened that turned him fearful and mad, there must have been something about him which made the person who named him think of him as a "buddy."  I changed his name, because I call every male animal and every little boy "buddy," but I hope he is re-discovering his original self, which does indeed seem to be a true friend.

George and his sweet friend Rose

My Other Job

For the past nine months I've been discovering what it means to respect the "No" of children. It's all Imke Spilker's fault.

An opportunity came up last summer to teach Latin two mornings a week at a tiny "Classical Education" school to kids ages 4 to 14. Thinking it would be fun to keep my Latin up, and not wanting to be a wimp, I rashly stepped forward. I am not a teacher. I home(un)schooled my children for most of their growing years, I've tutored a little, and I taught part-time for a few weeks at another little school before dwindling enrollment forced it to close. None of this remotely qualifies me as a teacher.

It probably seems like a really dumb idea for an advocate of unschooling to get involved in classical education. However, classical education has its merits, and I was quite impressed by some experienced CE teachers who came to our school before the year began to clue us in on how it all works. I won't go it into here, but somehow I developed a nice little fantasy of happy children chanting their chants and learning their lovely learning, eager to grasp whatever knowledge might be put in front of them.

So, here we are, nearing the end of the school year, and what am I doing? I'm unschooling these children. I tried. I had fun ideas, I wrote songs, I played the guitar, I made up chants, I developed hands-on materials. They liked some of this stuff, but as time went by, I realized: this is not what they want.

Just after the school year started, we had a faculty gathering where the principal asked each of us to say something about ourselves which would give an insight into who each person really is. It was a helpful and bonding exercise. Of course I said that the most important, recent thing about me was my discovery of the importance of respecting the horse's "No." Well, I fleshed it out a bit more than that, and I also added some details about a long saga which recently witnessed first-hand, involving some children I know being court-ordered into the custody of an abusive father against their wishes. So, yeah, my thing was... children and horses ought to be given a lot of say in what happens to them.

The school has been very tolerant of me and even asked me to stay on next year. This is likely because, despite my divergent ideas, I managed to get the 7th and 8th graders prepared for the National Latin Exam, and one of them was even awarded a merit certificate (with much less preparation time per week than most schools which take the exam). The other faculty are also just really nice people. However, I'm likely to be moving soon, so I'm opting out of next year. This is just as well, as where I'm headed is probably pretty much over the cliff as far as the school is concerned.

I should stress again that the other faculty are really good people. The kids are happy, and there's a positive atmosphere at the school.  The parents, the board, and the administration have the right to have the kind of school they want - it's not up to me to try to make the place over in my image. However, I can't be with the kids in any way other than that which seems right to me, and if I can't fit in, it's probably best that I leave. Also, given that the other classes are more conventional, this one class that they attend twice a week can't bear the weight of giving them everything they need in the way of self-determination while at the same time satisfying the school's desire to provide Latin instruction.

There are many twists and turns in the story of this past year. But one way into the heart of what has been going on involves the "problem" children. Now, this is a little school where all the children come from functional, devoted families; there are NO real problem children. There are, however, those who make it hard for one's nice little fantasy of education to play out. For example, an extremely bright, precocious boy, easily bored, can't sit still. Or a boy who struggles with reading, easily bored, tunes out what you say, thinks he's "stupid." Such kids can single-handedly undermine any plan you might have for the class. I don't know what the other teachers do with them - I guess they impose "consequences." Or maybe they just know what they're doing. I gave up using consequences and have zero classroom experience, so I'm powerless.

Or at least I was, until... until... I gave up. I'm not sure how it started. Possibly with allowing the 1st/2nd grade class to make paper airplanes. I realized that the old saw, "Give them an inch and they'll take a mile" was false. The truth is more like, "Give them a mile, and they'll only take a couple of yards." I realized that you can relinquish tight control without losing appropriate control. They all listened to me if I only asked reasonable things, e.g. time to tidy up, stop climbing on the furniture. Kind of like kids in real life, as opposed to in school, where normality does not apply.

Precocious Boy and Nonreader Boy are now cooperatively engaged in building a highly elaborate Clash of Clans village. We name items in Latin for the sake of appearances. They are focussed, calm, cheerful, and polite. But before this happened, and after I stopped trying to obtain compliance, we had to go through a period when Precocious Boy spent the class napping in the cupboard under the sink (he's very small) and when Nonreader Boy wandered aimlessly around the room, not quite sure what to do next. The Kindergartners are on a mission to be left alone to decide what they want to do. The preschoolers love anything you give them to make/do, as long as you let them do it their way. I do have some kids doing Latin projects - two girls translating Frozen into Latin (with a lot of help from Magistra), three boys making a board game with Latin prompts. A 7th Grader with an IEP who actually asks to translate Latin! (And does a good job.) For the rest, we throw in Latin wherever it'll fit. I teach the little ones to say, "Viridum cupio, amabo te" when they want the green marker.

The kids have settled into a routine whereby they come into my classroom, help themselves to what they want to work with (duct tape, cardboard, scissors, glue, computer, plastic lids, paper), and get busy. If they become noisy, I can make an appeal involving the plea that I find it personally disturbing, and they quiet down. It is not all sunshine and roses - sometimes they mix glue with sand in huge quantities. Had to put a stop to that. We often take votes on things: should we stop throwing paper planes as this is the second time one has hit someone in the head? (The answer was yes.)

I've discovered Alfie Kohn and his book Punished by Rewards, which details research showing that awards, grades, praise, gold stars, etc. all undermine students' commitment to and interest in the very behavior which the rewards seek to promote. Extrinsic motivation doesn't work. This is a well-researched concept which you can discuss with educators without sounding crazy and which ultimately may lead to serious education reform. Here's hoping. In the meantime, I told the kids that we were doing away with extrinsic motivation. They were confused for a minute until I compared it to your father giving your mother a token every time she gave you a hug. "Good job hugging your son! I like to see that! When you have enough tokens, I'll take you out to dinner!" They thought that would be really weird. And I said well that's how weird it is to bribe you to do Latin.

Several educators I admire have remarked on the same phenomenon which I observed - you can come up with the cutest, funnest, most innovative, creative, scintillating lesson plan in the word, but if the kids have no choice in whether or not to participate, ultimately it's just drudgery. At Summerhill, the lessons are informal, but pretty conventional. Because the kids are free to attend or not, the lessons do not have to be, in the words of the principal, "served up with jam." The kids who choose to attend are happy to become involved in the lesson which is offered.

I've discovered that there are a growing number of "democratic" or "free" schools around the world, many in the United States, modeled after A.S. Neill's above-mentioned Summerhill School in England, which was founded almost 90 years ago and is still going strong. I told one of my classes that it's fine for them to want to play paper airplane wars all day and that some schools would happily allow them to spend their days thus engaged. And that kids from those schools still end up becoming doctors and engineers and teachers and so on. They didn't believe me at first, but I assured them I Knew All About It. I wanted them to know that even if we sometimes ask them to follow our agenda rather than theirs, it's not because our agenda is the only one which leads to success in life.  I could probably find one of these democratic schools and teach there. But I'm not a teacher. I like these kids. If I wasn't moving, I'd want to stay with them.

Intrinsic motivation - how do you find it? I think the hard-to-swallow truth is that if you really commit to intrinsic motivation, you have to commit to a willingness to allow the child to refuse to participate. I think as teachers we can turn ourselves inside out, trying to develop wonderful lesson plans which will fit all sizes and lure each child into interest. Or else we blame the child, or the child's "problem," or ourselves, for their failure to get with the program. It says on the Summerhill website: "As a teacher you are there to do your best and create an attractive atmosphere but definitely not there to 'lure children' into your classroom." It all comes back to Imke Spilker, who says you go out to the pasture, you put a halter on your horse and invite him to come with you. If he doesn't want to, you take the halter off, give him a treat and go find something else to do, like play with your dog. Summerhill gives similar advice: "Since students do not have to attend lessons it follows that they sometimes won't. You should not take this personally....If you find yourself alone then do some creative work, some admin work, pursue a personal interest, or take a break and have a cup of tea or coffee!"

This has been a strange and challenging and humbling year for me. I don't know if teaching will cross my path again in the future, but I'm grateful for this year's experience.

For Teacher Appreciation Week, someone at school arranged for the kids to make bouquets of paper flowers, colored in crayon, and arranged in a paper vase for each teacher. On one of my tulips, one anonymous kid had written, "Thank you for the freedom." I hope Chloe would approve.


P.S. Here's a photo of George looking rather happy to have my daughter spend some time with him.

Joining the Club and Dropping Out

My big brother, who is clever like that and knows all sorts of queer stuff, taught me a new word: egregore.

This is not a word found in the dictionary, although I gather it has a history of use in the esoteric arts, dating back to the French occultist Eliphas Levi (about whom, as it happens, my brother has written a book).

Now, I'm not one for the esoteric arts, but the concept of the egregore seems to be a very useful one, applicable to all sorts of circumstances, including the equestrian world. An entry on Wikipedia gives a definition of egregore as "an autonomous psychic entity made up of, and influencing, the thoughts of a group of people."

An egregore has its own tropes, customs, accessories, language, costume, expectations, values, slogans, and so on. An egregore with which we are all familiar is the zeitgeist  or spirit of the times, which gives each era its distinctive flavor and colouring - the Gay 90's, the Roaring 20's, the Sixties. Egregores should not be exactly equated with institutions or even traditions, although there are certainly overlaps. Institutions are more deliberately formed, and traditions are often passed from generation to generation with some thoughtfulness and care. Both can be modified by their adherents in response to changing circumstances or to better fulfill certain goals. The egregore, on the other hand, is characterized by the unconscious hold it exerts over its votaries and seems to possess a life of its own, growing and morphing according to some law of nature.

An individual taps into the egregore by adopting one of more of its characteristic traits; it is thought that by thus connecting to the egregore, a person will be swept up into and become part of the entity, even without their explicit intention or consent. You don a prison guard uniform and become tyrannical; you put on an apron and feel like you're in Ozzie and Harriet. Similarly one may begin to opt out of the egregore by rejecting even one of its attributes. It is  hard to imagine a Nazi who refuses to use the "Heil Hitler" salute, or a hippy choosing to wear a twinset and pearls.

Clearly there are beneficial, and neutral egregores as well as malevolent ones; the myth of Santa Claus is a pleasant egregore. However, casting around for examples reveals that most instances of egregores are negative. I'm reminded of what Tolstoy said about families: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (Anna Karenina, Chapter 1) In other words, the confining and defining limitations of the egregore are fundamentally anti-human. It is perhaps counter-intuitive that those who adopt complex and distinctive mores are less happy and free than those who are more "alike." However, elaborate costumes conceal; nakedness reveals. 

One of the elements of the horse world egregore is the tack shop - the tantalizing pages of the Dover catalog, the racks of beautiful smelling leather bridles, the brightly coloured brushes. All these things used to attract me like a jackdaw to a shiny coin. But I notice, with something like regret, that the tack shop's luster has dimmed. I still need to buy brushes and buckets and all that stuff. I still need to buy a saddle. But pondering which saddle I plan to acquire is no longer the ooh-ah experience it once would have been. It's a pragmatic thing now - choosing which saddle will fit the best and optimize horse and rider's comfort. I used to use tack as a way to pigeonhole myself and my horses - to deck us out in the trappings of the egregore. But the horses don't care about looking the part, nor do they desire shiny new things - except to chew on - and I find I've lost my own interest too.

I was lead to reflect further on all this by today's entry over at The Journal of Ravenseyrie, where Lynne Gerard has posted an interesting and valuable response from Kris McCormack and Imke Spilker to some questions raised about their approach to horses, questions asking for more detail and how-to advice.

Both Kris and Imke are emphatic that they cannot and will not provide any kind of formula for others to reproduce their approach. The only way along the path, they insist, is to follow the horse's lead and reject all preconceived rules, techniques, and instructions. Here is Kris clearly articulating an anti-egregore sentiment:

By studying the human experts, learning their formulas and methods, diligently imitating them -- we make ourselves blind and deaf in our interactions with horses. We forsake the reality of here and now and cling to the abstract -- someone else's words and gestures.

The traditional horse world comes complete with sub-egregores - the English world, the Dressage World, the Western World, the Natural Horsemanship World, and so on. The world described by Kris, Imke, Lynne - a world which others of us aspire to inhabit also - is not so easily described. It's a challenge to tell people what we're up to - at least not without having a long conversation. We have to exchange real thoughts about real things in order to describe our activity - there is no shorthand: "Oh, I do Hunter Jumpers." The conversation we are forced to have requires us to refer to ourselves as individuals, with our own feet on our own spot of ground, searching for real answers - not just to "training" questions - but to questions concerning ultimate reality.

Imke Spilker's book, Empowered Horses, does contains one important piece of concrete advice, which was the only thing I had to hold on to as I tried to follow in her footsteps. She said that when you go to fetch your horse out of the pasture, you should put the halter on, with no leadrope, and invite the horse to follow you. If the horse declines, you find something else to do.

Nowadays that doesn't always work for me, as the mares are often intimidated by George if they're not attached to me by an umbilical leadrope; they're not actually free to follow along wearing only a halter. However, Imke's advice was very important because it was a first step in escaping the egregore, an all-important tenet of which is: You Don't Let Your Horse Go On Strike! Sure enough, "disobedience" in one strand of the egregore gradually leads to an unraveling of the whole thing.

A recent entry on this blog was inspired by Ephesians 5:13. Once again St. Paul comes to our aid in Ephesians 6:12, where he talks about what I believe to be egregores:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. (New KJV)

Horses are immune from egregores. The only "autonomous psychic entity" which they are plugged into is the mind of the Creator. We are certainly able to enslave them to the same powers and principalities which hold sway over us, by subjecting them to our behaviour under the influence of these rulers, but in themselves they are incapable of being subsumed into such alien collective thought-forms. Like members of a happy family, they are not so different one from another, every horse grounded in the one truth, each unique, but all connected. When we meet with our horses, we should come alone and unarmed - the posse and paraphernalia of the egregore should be left behind.