06/09/2026
The Things We Learn to Noticeš³
Not long ago I had a fascinating conversation with a participant at one of my clinics, and it was so thought-provoking that it deserves to be shared.
She noted that many highly skilled horsemen and horsewomen seem to have experienced hardship, trauma, instability, or significant adversity. She pointed to Buck Brannaman as an example and the childhood he described in his book *The Faraway Horses*.
She then explained that her own childhood had been very different.
Growing up in a stable and predictable environment, she realised that she had learned to rely heavily on words to understand how people were feeling and what they might be thinking. Words mattered. Meaning was conveyed through language. Nuance existed in tone, timing, and expression, but language was still the primary vehicle.
This is quite different from the experience of someone growing up in a difficult environment, where words are not always the most reliable source of information.
"I'm fine" might mean the exact opposite.
A slammed cupboard door, a change in breathing, the speed of footsteps down a hallway, a particular look on someone's face, or a subtle shift in posture may become more important than what is actually being said.
People who grow up in these environments often become highly attuned to behaviour. This is because paying attention to behaviour helps them make sense of the world and, in some cases, helps them survive it.
What struck me was how this was a great example of how our experiences teach us what information matters.
The horse, of course, operates almost entirely in that behavioural world.
A horse doesn't tell you he's worried.
He shows you.
A horse doesn't explain that he's uncomfortable.
He shows you.
A horse doesn't announce that he's becoming overwhelmed.
He shows you.
The language is movement, posture, tension, rhythm, breathing, attention, orientation, arousal, and behaviour.
So it makes sense that people who spent years learning to read humans through behaviour rather than words might arrive in the horse world with a skill set that transfers surprisingly well.
But what fascinated me most was her reflection on the opposite experience.
She realised that when she first entered the horse world, she was almost blind to that language.
Not because she lacked intelligence or empathy.
But because her life had taught her to look somewhere else for information.
Her framework was simple:
*"If I want to know what someone thinks or feels, I listen to what they say."*
That was perfectly adaptive for the world in which she grew up.
Then she met horses.
And suddenly words were no longer enough.
She was required to construct an entirely new way of seeing.
She had to learn to pay attention to tension, posture, breathing, attention, movement, and arousal. She had to learn to gather information from what the horse was doing rather than what the horse was saying.
And that, to me, is what makes horsemanship so fascinating.
People often think they are learning about horses.
In many ways, they are discovering how they themselves perceive reality.
Two people can look at the same horse and see completely different things. Not because the horse changed, but because their experiences have taught them to attend to different information.
One person notices the ears.
Another notices the feet.
Another notices the facial expression.
Another notices the breathing.
Another notices none of those things and instead focuses on the story they are constructing about what the horse might be feeling.š¬
The horse becomes a mirror reflecting not just our skills, but our assumptions.
Observation is never purely observation.
We like to imagine we are objectively "seeing" the horse. In reality, we are filtering the horse through years of experiences, beliefs, values, habits, and expectations.
The horse is standing there doing horse things.
Our brain is busy constructing meaning.
Sometimes accurately.
Sometimes not.
What I loved most about this participant's reflection was that she wasn't using it as an excuse.
She wasn't saying, "I can't read horses because of my upbringing."
She was saying, "I now understand why this was harder for me, what I needed to learn, and what a difference that learning has made to my life with horses."
That's a very different conversation.
And perhaps a much more useful one than the romantic notion that great horse people are somehow forged only through suffering.
Maybe hardship can create certain observational skills.
But so can deliberate practice, curiosity, and reflection.
So can the willingness to realise that the way you've always made sense of the world might not be the only way.
In fact, that might be one of the most important lessons horses teach us.
Not how to understand horses.
But how to notice the invisible assumptions through which we understand everything else.
Collectable Advice 228/365. Please SHARE or SAVE. No copy and pasting.ā¤
Idea Credit to: Fiona for the fabulation reflection, I hope I have done it justice ā¤
š”If you find this topic super interesting you may really enjoy my Human Side of Horsemanship. See comments
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