Kjrsos Discipline: Essentials of Communication

More than knowledge on how to ride, communication, is the foremost skill that every horseman needs.  It is sad that throughout the world, when a rider comes to an instructor no mention is made about learning to communicate.  Other than perhaps here is how you make him lift his feet so you can clean his feet.  That isn't communication that is you making him do something.  So much of our relationship with horses is about control.  Making them do what we want when we want them to do it.

Communication with our Horses Happens at Different Levels, in different ways.  It is more diverse and more rich than simply looking to see if the horse's ears are forward and back. 

To start with, communication implies there is more than one involved.  The one that is communicating and the one who is being communicated to.

Communication indicates a conversation.  A two-way conversation.  Something happening between the two involved even if we don't always understand that it is happening.

When we begin to look to communicate let alone try to understand what the horse is trying to tell us, we have set ourselves a difficult task. Miscommunication among humans is endemic. Miscommunication between two diverse species is somewhat more problematic.  Magnified by the problem that all of our communication to some extent is based upon assumptions.  We can't understand the communication if we don't understand the horses. If we misconstrue intent, if we misconstrue their perception, we misconstrue the communication.

So the essentials of communication has to balance between just learning about the horse in general so we begin to understand where they are coming from, their intent, how they think, how they react, and the basics of body language.  What our bodies are saying to one another.  If the intent of your communication does not jive with what your body language is saying, the message is garbled and does nothing but confuse the horse.

"While too often animals read our intent which is buried within our body language, position, action and gestures when that is mired or mixed with action that muddies the communication it completely throws out the connection and the communication between us and our dogs or any animal including humans." From Raising an Intelligent Dog

This discipline tries to balance between the effort to begin to understand our horses and basic physical body language of both horse and rider.

Highly Recommended

Supporting Class Living in Time