Equuality: Reflections on Life with Horses

Cultivating Curiosity

About the Book

Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will. -James Stephens

Fear is an extremely valuable emotion, but its usefulness depends on our reaction to it. Fear informs us of threats, tells us how worried to be, and guides us away from things that could hurt us. Where we get intro trouble is when we have learned unhealthy ways to react to and process our fears.

From a young age, I learned that there were two options when dealing with fears: conquer them or ignore them. Conquering is what my culture was telling me to do. I read books and watched movies in which the brave hero knew exactly how bad a situation was and plunged ahead despite, and often times because of, the danger involved. Ignoring and hiding from fears is what most of the people I knew were actually doing. When a scary situation arose, they either acted like nothing was wrong or reacted in an unthinking and often extreme way.

Neither response to fear is a very healthy one. If we charge ahead despite the danger, we will undoubtedly end up trapped in a perilous situation with no way out. If we always shy away or run, our world will grow smaller and smaller until we have nothing left but our hiding place. Instead, we must find a middle ground – a place where we can assess new situations and circumstances and react in a positive way.

19th century Irish poet James Stephens hit upon the means we can use to develop more positive reactions: curiosity. Fear and curiosity can be viewed as equal but opposite reactions to the unknown. To the extent that we are curious about something, we are not frightened of it. The more inquisitive we are, the more positive we can be in our reactions to new or scary situations.

Linda Parelli understands this and has developed a novel way to pass along that knowledge to her human students. When a horse does something unexpected, she tells her students to say "How interesting!" By saying this phrase to themselves, aloud if need be, they short-circuit the reactive parts of their brain that would usually cry "Oh no!" Through repeating this process each time something unexpected or unwanted happens, students retrain their brains to react with curiosity rather than negativity. This change in reaction allows them, even when the horses are scared, to stay engaged and in the moment, developing more effective partnerships.

I often see people in the horse world taking the opposite approach. When their horse becomes afraid, they get scared and react violently. When they are leading their horse and he spooks away from something, they jerk on his rope and tell him he is a bad boy. The problem with this is manifold. Not only does it increase the horse's fear by adding pain to an already scary situation, it gives the horse no idea about what a proper response would be. Sometimes there seems to be a positive result, in that the horse stops shying away from specific things. What has actually happened is a transfer of fear: the horse is more afraid of his handler than his surroundings. He has learned the punishment for showing his emotions is greater than the benefit, so he tries to bottle them up. In such a case, the fear will only increase over time, undermining the relationship and creating larger and larger issues down the road.

Fear was a major issue when I managed a volunteer program at a large horse rescue. Most of our 100+ head were very fearful, especially in any type of situation. Something as seemingly small as entering their pen, haltering them, and taking them out of their paddock, could put them into an extremely fearful and reactive state of mind.

Because I understood that curiosity could supplant fear as a reaction to new circumstances, the first task I had any volunteer do with a horse was to teach them to touch anything and everything with their nose. "Targeting" an object in this way earned them a treat and a rub. The volunteers would spend whole sessions, for days or sometimes weeks at a time, leading their horses all around the ranch, asking them to touch a wide variety of objects and rewarding them for doing so. For some horses this process was more challenging than others, but in all cases the result was the same: they learned to be engaged and become interested rather than frightened and flighty.

When we begin to understand that reactions are simply conditioned responses and not innate characteristics, we have already taken the first step to changing them. Whether we are helping an equine partner or ourselves, the cultivation of curiosity is an extremely powerful tool in dismantling our harmful, fear-based patterns and replacing them with healthy responses.