It’s called horse whispering by Don Jessop
I’ve been called a horse whisperer before. Many of my colleagues get the same label. It’s an honor really. But over the years I’ve made it clear, I’m not the whisperer. I’m not the one speaking in subtle, inaudible tones. The horse is.
I can hear those whispers. That’s what makes people like me unique. I can feel what a horse is thinking, considering, fearing, wanting. I can see it written in every crease of the skin, tightness of the muscle fibers, shape of the eye, rhythm of the breath, and more. We don’t whisper, people like me, we get pretty good and showing elegant communication and timing, with practice, but it’s the horse that’s whispering to us. He, or she, is telling us everything we need to know, if we know how to hear it.
Have you ever seen a horse spook at something scary coming up from behind you, unexpected? Do you remember the electric feeling. That jolt of energy bursting from the horse. I can feel that before it happens. I can sense and pick up on the same things my horse is sensing and act more preemptively to guide my horse to a calmer state. You can to. It’s not magic what people like me do. Although it often feels magical and amazing. It’s actually science. Acute observations made over and over until the patterns emerge.
One simple pattern you can master today, without diving all the way into our programs, is this…. notice the head, relative to the shoulder. If the head is high set, above the shoulder as you ride along, that means the underside of his neck is filled with tight muscle fibers holding his head up. Those tight muscles require energy to upkeep. The energy required to be tight can distract the horse from things that seen obvious to us but come out of the blue for the horse. This means, he’s more likely to be spooky with a high headset. Simply because they have a poor distribution of physical feedback systems.
In other words… high headed horses tend to be spooked easily. And horse whisperers know that getting the horse to loosen those tight under neck muscles leads to calmer, braver horses. It’s a generalized idea of pattern recognition, but you get the idea.
There are thousands of these details, from breathing patterns, to stool texture, to blood vessels in the eye and wrinkles in the skin. It would be egotistical and unreasonable to suggest I know them all. In fact, I keep learning more. Some whispers aren’t spoken in a moment but spoken over a month. Some whispers are obvious enough for anyone to see, like a limping horse, and some are so subtle I don’t see them until the second or third time they show up. It seems every year I tell my students, “If I only knew then what I know now.”
But the point isn’t perfection. The point is progress. The mission, should you choose to accept it, is to dive deeper into the subtle art of communicating with these beautiful creatures.
The impact it has on the relationships you share is magnificent. Not just horse/human relationships, but all relationships.
My mission has been to share my findings with the world I know. To bring on board colleges who can share the same and even more, and to always provide the best and most relevant horse experiences I can. I want this world to know what I know, and more, sooner. If my students could learn what’s taken me half a lifetime, but learn it in less than a few years, I’d be over the moon. It’s my mission to simplify and lend access to all that the elite horsemen around the world do so naturally.
Join me and dive deeper. Every week I do a private zoom call for my dedicated students sharing more and more of these tools and tips. Here’s your chance to find out what it’s like to experience a club of like minded folks diving in deep into true horsemanship, or in the case of this article… horse whispering.
See you soon.
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