How to land a job with a horse…

I was recently on a Zoom Q&A session with Warwick Schiller, and he likened the relationship dance of horse and human to a job interview: one in which the horse is the interviewer. I love this idea!

So, what job are we interviewing for with our horses? I like to think of it as: trusted partner, friend, and mentor for living in a human world. And this is where Warwick’s focus on attunement, the sense of feeling seen, heard, and understood, comes in quite handy.

I recently started working with a new horse, the first one since I’ve been on this attunement journey for the past six months. I've played with my improved listening and being-present skills with the horses I’ve worked with for several years with serious upgrades in our (already solid) relationships. But coming into a brand new interview process with heightened awareness has been a humbling learning process.

Having been on both sides of the job interview as a job seeker and hiring manger many times, and a few times even in the precarious position of being on the hiring committee for my own supervisor, I get that the stakes for both sides are high, but are higher for the party with less power. The horse, for his own safety, needs to make decisions about how trustworthy the human is based on what he sees and senses right in front of him.

This new horse struck me as very quiet and polite but also quietly worried and a bit shut down. During the first few sessions, I had the opportunity to read insecurity and worry quite a few times and back off and re-approach looking for permission to proceed. On the ground, even though the horse is technically well trained, he would not turn or move out around me without pushing his inside shoulder into me. I addressed this with the “focus and bend” exercise with as little pressure as possible and as much as necessary. He understood quite quickly. The following sessions were similar. My energy naturally tends to be non-dominant, which helps with gaining the trust of sensitive creatures.

A bit further down the road, I felt a different energy from the moment I haltered him. The friendly nicker he greeted me with before sounded more stallion-like (he’s not). I asked him to back up and he pushed his shoulder forward into my space. My brain quickly ran through “what would Warwick do?” options… so I went with the jumping jack, I didn’t want to make him run away but also show him that I’m a girl with boundaries. While I technically succeeded, he triggered something in me that pushed my energy out of the neutral zone. The entire session, the energy between the two of us felt off. The horse that previously was careful not to hit the end of the lunge tried to pull away. The inside shoulder started coming toward me again. I had to do a couple of “nervous system re-sets” on myself, trying to return to neutral, as clearly I had expectations here that weren’t being met. And just like that, I failed that interview question. And then I got a bit mad at myself for that.

But somehow I still got the job. If anything, I’ll attribute it to my, however imperfect, attempts at attunement: to understand him and make him feel seen and heard. The next session with this horse couldn’t have been more “textbook.” Both the underlying nervousness and testy pushiness disappeared. He was light and attentive. We both had a great time.

Ultimately, both human and horse want the same in relationships: trust, good two-way communication, and the sense that the other really gets us. And that requires being present, non-judgmental, and having clarity of mind...

(Horse in photo is a trusted friend)