Part two: with footpads

I was keen to return to see how W was doing after our conversation on Saturday. John phoned ahead, and the yard manager warmly welcomed our proposal. It was unusually quiet – staff were away for some training. Some of the horses were taking afternoon naps. Others, including W, were munching their way through their hay. We left him to finish his lunch and went to say hello to a whole row of horses who lived in an alley at the rear of the stables. 

When we returned to W, he immediately came to his door and greeted me. His mouth was not so angular today, but his eyes were 'tented' whenever something caught his attention. The main gate clanged, and a small dog started barking. W turned towards the sound, raising his head, eyes tented, and looked to see what might be approaching. A friendly man walked into the yard in a purposeful way and I smiled at him. Standing next to W so that I could mirror him, I followed his gaze towards this newcomer and pointed, saying out loud "Who's that?" I then made a gesture and a sound as if to say "Pah, nothing to see here!" Then I gave a tail swish: all done. W nudged me and stopped looking in that direction. He turned his head, exposing his shoulder, which I interpreted as "come in." I slid the bolt, picked up a couple of the footpads and knocked three times on the top of the door. He stepped back, giving me room to enter. 

I threw the pads on the floor and stepped on them myself, then stood there while he bent his head low to take a good look at what I was doing with my feet. After about 40 seconds he gave a sharp push to the stable door with his nose which opened it onto the yard. He didn't take a step forward but I looked around for a chain to loop across the doorway just in case he decided to walk out. Instead of a chain, I saw his head-collar and took it off the peg. As I opened it up, he put his nose straight in it, keeping his head low and not moving his feet. I placed a pad in front of each front foot and reached down to invite his front left. He lifted it immediately and let me guide it onto the pad, and as soon as he put his weight on it he let out a soft double snort, in and out, that sounded like relief, and stood still, head low, expression relaxed, floppy ears. He placed his muzzle gently against my knuckle as I stood next to him. After another minute I invited his right foot onto the second pad, but he declined. He dropped his head even lower in a gesture which can be read as "cool it," "keep the pressure off," and slowly brought his muzzle to my feet to gently explore the contours of my boot. He kept his head low and he seemed to be alternating his attention between the yard and something within himself.  He made no attempt to leave the stable but stood peacefully with one foot on the pad. 

I quietened my own activity and stood by his right shoulder, looking out of the door beside him. He moved his left leg forward off the pad, then moved his right foot (next to me) back a little, onto the pad that I had left there. He stood with the heel of his hoof on it for the next five minutes. This encouraged me to stand still next to his shoulder, which seemed to be just what he wanted. 

John made a video of this  encounter and when I watched it later, I could see many small movements in W's face during this quiet five minutes. Small movements in his lips, his nostrils, and his eyes and ears as well as in the height of his head. He was standing still, and didn't move his feet, but something seemed to be going on in his mind. The angle of the video made it difficult to see if there was any movement in the rest of his body. After a while someone else came onto the yard, and now that I am studying the video, I saw that W turned his muzzle to me, then in a movement that seemed to point precisely towards the newcomer he flicked his nose up sharply in a gesture that could easily be read as a question. Was he asking me who's that? In Horse Speak it would be interpreted as a moment for the human to do a protection message, as before.  

Towards the end of the work with the pads he sniffed down my calf and ankle and around my foot, which he had done earlier, too. This opens up the question of whether it is about me or about him. As it happens this ankle that he sniffs (twice) is full of metal following a break in 2021: seven screws and a couple of brackets were inserted to help heal a shattered bone after my bicycle skidded on ice, blah, blah, blah. When I spoke to my Horse Speak tutor about this, she was confident that he had picked up a weakness in my body, and she suggested that I could do the 'protection message' to say 'you don't have to worry about that.' But I did also wonder whether it might be about him, and when I later found out by chance that his own leg is swollen it was difficult to resist adding two and two and coming up with five. The human ego loves to make meaning and form complete pictures at the first opportunity, it also uses the mirror relation to read something in the other that is confused with itself. It's important to hold than in mind. 

So, the footpads came in handy today to get my focus onto the dimension of communication. As with the head collar strapped around his head with its lead rope attached to my hand, so, I thought, the footpads seemed to give a tangible representation, a kind of physical metaphor, of the register of speech and language. In other words, I wondered whether he may have stood on the pads in a gesture that recognised they were important to me. When he stood on the pad, I could believe that some kind of link in a chain had been forged between us. Going down this route, it then becomes a question of working out what can be transmitted between two species. This implies that the horse has agency in the communication, but for the human it is becomes necessary to imagine the world from the point of view of a horse. Horses are not subject to language in anything like the way that humans are and whose reality is very different.

Jacques Lacan, "The Function and Field of Speech and Language [The Rome Report, 1953]," trans. Bruce Fink, Écrits, The First Complete Edition in English, New York/London, 2006.