Temple Grandin

In this Temple Grandin video she talks about how horses experience the world. We have discussed here how horses react, perceive and relate. Her take on horses is they are sensually focused on images, smells sounds and not at all on words as humans are. Most humans think in words. Humans assemble words in a linier function into sentences that have correct grammar and syntax. It's like stringing beads. Without the linier context of word sequencing, horses experience their surroundings in what I would describe as "3D bursts". Sound, imagery, smells, and physical/tactile stimulus seem to come together around some central momentary perception or focus, and all that sensory input in a way surrounds that central experience in the momentary 3D burst, which is followed by another, and then another. These bursts that occur while training need to be punctuated with pauses, so as not to sour the horse. This description is flawed at best, but it is how I can use language to describe what I see and experience when training. Seeing this and experiencing it with a horse is true feel, as far as I can tell. It is what I call horseness.

Our job as trainer is to identify and be in the center of these burst experiences the horse has. We have to set up the process so we determine the center of their sensual experience. This is also why I object to a lot of the natural Horsemanship "games". Many of those games are very linier because they are designed for the human not for the horse. Cook books are linier, assembly directions for an Ikea dresser are linier, almost everything humans do is in the linier format. While horses can accommodate linier, as they tolerate some of these games, but linier is not how they learn best or at all for some. It's better to get on a horse and simply get their feet moving, and see what happens next. As "what happens next" unfolds, if you have sufficient feel of the horse, you can make it so you are in the center of their perceptual experience, and from there teach them. That's as good an explanation as I have. 

Like Temple Grandin, I had a real hard time in school. While my measureable IQ is respectable, it took me five years to graduate from high school. Things like "show your work" in math classes was a big problem for me. More often than not I'd have the correct answers but not the documented linier sequence to demonstrate how I got there. This resulted in the test or homework problem being marked as incorrect, and me labeled as defiant. But when I got on a horse, the world made a lot more sense. It was easier, more predictable and felt safer than school. After many years training and getting on unridden prospects, I began to see the divide between how I experienced the world and how "normal" people did. The normal people would say things like, you are so brave to get on a horse that has never been ridden. All I could think was walking through the classroom door into algebra class was a whole lot more scary than hopping on a new horse, for me.

The current "in" language for people who are not linier language based thinkers is "spectrum" people. The same trendy language for the non-spectrum people is nerotypicals or neuronorms.

What I would say to your boss, after explaining the two types, is a quote from Temple Grandin, She says, "If it weren't for the spectrum people, humans would still be sitting around a fire at the opening of a cave." And then I'd add, "and there wouldn't be any well trained horses either".