I had a rather interesting learning experience the other day when Chase's farrier/chiropractor came out after my hysterically distressed calls over his back being sore. As you can see from previous posts on saddle fit, while there were some saddle fit issues, turns out the saddle wasn't really the problem.
So my wonderful farrier/equine chiropractor begins her work. She first takes a look at his feet and trims them, being mindful of any possible soreness as she stretches them out and carefully yet skillfully balances and trims them to perfection. She then proceeds to take out her huge mat cubes to begin Chase's adjustment while I anxiously look on, awaiting the 'oh it is THIS and I can fix it now, this way' phrase. Especially the 'now' part as I was in a horse mommery-panic whenever he flinched from me touching his back. The past couple of days I had fretted and fretted, ceased working Chase all together, and even had tried buying him a heating pad to help his 'sore' muscles.
Chase and I have been together for almost seven years now. I'm for the most part convinced I know exactly how to tell when he's honestly hurting, and of course, as a horse person, have the ever present 'I know exactly what I know' tone underlying everything I do or think about horses.
So when my beloved equine professional turns to me and tells me it's mostly all in my head, it's understandably a hard pill to swallow. Or rock. Or boulder-a small boulder, to be precise.
Let me explain. Chase and I have been together so long, and I've proven myself to be enough of a leader than he looks to me as to how to respond to stimulus. Which is what you want, and what tends to happen anyways between horse and rider-unless your horse completely doesn't believe in your leadership. So what that means-as explained by my lovely equine chiro/farrier-is that while yes, he was due for an adjustment and a little sore, the fact that I responded even a little bit in panic when I first noticed him flinching made the situation worse.
A good parallel example would be when a child falls on the floor and for a moment looks to the parent wondering if it was okay. If the parent nods their head and tells them to just get up, they do just that. If the parent runs over to the child in panic and fusses over them, the child will immediately begin crying.
So while he was a little sore, he hadn't been so sore that it adhered the reaction he gave me physically. And he gave the physical reaction because I made a big deal out of his soreness. Since I had decided his back was really sore, Chase had also decided his back was far more sore than it actually was. This morning, I went to go groom him after his adjustment, as I had been avoiding because of my perception of his soreness. He flinched a little, I continued brushing as though nothing was wrong-and viola. Only temporarily slightly flinchy horse, rather than one who moved away from being brushed and dipped his back as though I had poked a hot iron at it. As an owner, I'm caught between laughing at myself and the situation, and being thankful that he looks to me that much. Bottom line is, we can influence our horse's response to almost any stimuli in any situation. Just because we aren't in the saddle or aren't playing on the ground doesn't mean we don't affect their perspective of the world.
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