Horse-Sense Listening

“I thought my horse had extra sensory perception for a long time!” – Joe Burton

Horse-Sense Listening

Joe, Marilyn and I walked from their yard toward the horse stalls in their farmyard.  At first, I didn’t see any horses.  Then, just past the second stall, two forward-pointing ears floated quickly toward us.

“She’s smiling at us!”  I thought to myself.  And then, it was clear she wasn’t happy to see us.  She was happy to see Joe!

“You can’t have a treat right now.”  Joe said to her.

As if those words mattered to the horse!  She simply stretched her neck a little further so she could be closer to him.

“Alright!”  He said next.  “Maybe I can get you something.”

That was the beginning of how I learned more about listening from a horse and her caring friends, Joe and Marilyn Burton.  There were other horses in the paddock that day as well, but just one of them truly connected with Joe.  I marveled at their relationship.  Luckily, we kept strolling around the farmyard so I could learn more about how to listen with the sense of a horse.

“I thought my horse had extra sensory perception for a long time!”  Joe explained to me while talking about, perhaps his favorite horse ever, Big Red.  “When we were out together she’d seem to know exactly where I wanted to go without me even telling her.”

I was intrigued!  I’d never heard of a horse with ESP before.  And I grew up with Mr. Ed, the talking horse playing on my television.  Yes.  I can tell the difference between fantasy and reality and I trust Joe, so I knew what he was telling me was the truth.  I listened intently.

“The more we were out together, the more I was convinced that this horse was special!”  He continued.  “Perhaps that’s why I began to pay more attention to her, because my relationship with her was important to me.”

Providing focused attention is how a horse demonstrates their affinity for people and other horses.  It’s the first tenet of Horse-Sense Listening.

“Because I was focused on her, I began to notice subtlety.”  Joe explained.  “I discovered that my horse was listening with more than just her ears!  She would seek clues to what I wanted, before I would ever use an overt ask.”

There are non-verbal subtilties to Horse-Sense Listening.  That’s the second tenet Big Red taught Joe about her exceptional listening skills.

“That’s why I began to pay attention to my own actions.”  Joe said with a smile.  “I began to experiment.  I soon noticed that if I wanted to turn to the left, my body was making and almost imperceptible pre-movement in that direction.  That’s how she knew where I wanted her to go.”

“Micro-sensitivity” is the third tenet of Horse-Sense Listening.  It means being so attuned to another, that the listener seemingly knows what another horse or person wants, or intends to do, just before the signaling party even recognizes that they’ve made a conscious choice.

“I love your horse stories!”  I said to Joe toward the end of our time together.

Joe, Marilyn and I then began to walk from their farmyard toward my car in their driveway.  I recognized that progression as Horse-Sense Listening, even though I could no longer see any horses.  It was a sign that Joe and Marilyn were truly important to me and that they, and their horses, had been able to teach me something of great value.  If our ears could have been forward-pointing they would have been.  We had to settle for smiles on our faces instead.

“We’re smiling at each other!”  I thought to myself as I climbed into my car to leave.  And, it was clear that Marilyn, Joe and I had benefited from our shared secrets of Horse-Sense Listening.