How Horses Make Me Believe in Telepathy
And, in turn, make me a better human
We’ve got this horse, Penny, who comes into the riding ring every day and forgets that she can walk over a pole. And, like Groundhog Day, we spend some time coaxing, coercing, and coddling her until she crosses the low pole on the ground with a tentative step. The same thing will happen tomorrow.
As a horse trainer, I am conditioned to conditioning. Horses (and humans) learn by pattern recognition. Penny has a glitch in her patterns. We had her eyes checked out. We noted the light conditions on any given day and if there was a shadow across the pole. Nothing helped.
Then one day, in a fit of exasperation, I just asked, with words, for what I wanted. “Penny, would you mind stepping over the pole, please?”
The grey horse followed me over the pole with ease.
I stood there with my mouth gaping — did you see that? The other humans in the riding ring just shook their heads. The other horses didn’t think it was a big deal.
“I politely asked for what I wanted.”
I know that Penny’s grasp of language is complicated but limited. She knows the word for peppermint because it’s preceded by the sound of a crinkling, plastic wrapper. She knows the French word for “kiss” because of a patient devotee who…
