Equuality: Reflections on Life with Horses

Swimming in Circles

About the Book

Habits are at first cobwebs, then cables. -Spanish Proverb

I once read a study in which the researchers divided a fish tank in half with a piece of glass, containing all of the fish in one partition. The fish hit the glass a few times, but learned quickly where the boundary was. Then the divider was removed, reopening access to the entire tank. The fish continued to swim in small circles in one half of the tank; none took advantage of their new freedom. They had become so habituated to the smaller space that that was where they stayed. I saw the moral of the story right away, but didn't feel the impact in my life.

Later I was doing service at a horse rescue. There were many horses that were hard to approach due to fear issues from previous handling or nervousness from lack of socialization with humans. Ollie's story was even sadder. Not only had he been rescued from a bad situation, he had been subjected to abusive methods by a "professional" trainer after arriving at the rescue.

Ollie was very sweet, and you could see from the look in his eye that he wanted to be involved with people. Initially, I believe, he just didn't know how. Of course, this made him apprehensive and hard to catch. The trainer's answer was to chase him around and around in circles in his pasture until he was too tired to resist any more. The trainer caught Ollie very few times, but left a very lasting impression.

When I began working with Ollie I had to reward very slight tries, to the level of retreating when he would turn to look at me from twenty feet away. By allowing him this control of the situation, I soon earned enough trust the he would approach me for a treat. We then repeated this process when I started bringing the halter to the pasture with me.

Then I noticed Ollie exhibiting a really interesting behavior. He would approach and get a treat for sniffing the halter a time or two, then he would feel too much pressure and retreat. That was to be expected. What I didn't expect was to see him trot out, then around in a nearly perfect circle, before coming to face me again from the other side. I waited until he could approach, and again gave him a treat for sniffing the halter. He soon felt over-committed and left, again trotting out on the circle and coming around to face me He seemed very confused that I was still standing there, waiting passively for him to feel ready. It became very apparent to me that the pattern of being chased on the circle was Ollie's version of the divided fish tank. Even when the external pressure to chase him off was removed, he still felt the need to execute the habit he had learned to live by.

Ollie kept up the circling pattern for three hours that day and two hours the next day as we slowly worked through the process of putting his nose in the halter and getting it tied without using any punishment. As the process progressed, his need to leave diminished, as did the size of his circles and the speed with which he left to execute them. By the end he could approach me easily when I moved away from him and would stand quietly, giving his full consent to be haltered.

While it might have been easier to stretch the process out over more than two days, because he needed vet work done, I had to work in that time frame. I was blessed that he still had enough interest in humanity to make it possible. For me, it was an amazing experience to work through with him, seeing the layers peel back as the process stripped away his fear-based habits. Now, when I feel stuck, or feel compelled to respond to my life in a way that that doesn't seem to make sense, I try to remember Ollie and those fish and ask myself what barriers are actually there and which ones are just my unconscious habits making me swim in circles.