Sometimes life imitates art, or more accurately, is inspired by it. I recently received some wonderful horse sketches from artist Carolyn Guske (whom many of you know as Remy's owner), and found myself responding to one in particular. I instantly noted its body language, thinking, this horse looks pretty concerned, and is about to move away from something worrisome, maybe I need a sketch of a calmer horse. Then I noticed my own response, and realized this was a pretty fine sketch, that my usual instincts kicked in and I'd seen it like an actual horse. Then it hit me: perhaps I could use such a sketch, as well as photos, to point out what I see when I look at a horse at any given moment.
This is what I teach in my ground work classes and clinics; maybe I could share it here, too! So this is the first in a series called Noticing: Seeing What Your Horse is Saying.
For starts, I will share all that I noticed, looking at this sketch. I won't go into detailed explanations for now, but just demonstrate a way of looking at a horse. In next installments, I'll try to focus on certain expressive details in horse behaviors that we can pick up and respond to productively.
I notice a lot of thing about this horse. Let start with the obvious:
The head - Is significantly higher than withers;
The ears - the left ear is half way back, while the right ear is still a little forward;
The shoulder - is escaping to the right but not enough to set him off balance;
The eye - Is pulled to the back of the eye socket and he appears to be looking downward with concern;
The feet - Are in motion and look to have life in them but don't seem to be going anywhere;
The tail - is up away from the buttocks but falling loosely downward, showing his confident nature.
Now for the not so obvious :
The weight - Although the legs are in motion the body weight seems to be rocked back;
The legs - are engaged yet not committed to a direction yet. He looks like up, backward and to the right are his preference.
Overall, I see that this horse is spooking from something on the left near the ground. He is confident and likely to kick at what is bothering him rather than run from it.
All this from a sketch of a spirited horse! My long years of looking at and responding to horses in a particular way are showing, and I look forward to sharing this perspective as best I can through the Farm newsletter, using more sketches and photos.
Do you have a photo of your horse behaving in a way you'd like to understand better? If you'd be willing for me to share it here, I'd be glad to have a look! Email me at freedomf@olypen.com.
(Originally published February 2014)
