The Gift of Curiosity

The Gift of Curiosity
Horses come to our rescue from all kinds of situations and even when we have a reasonably complete history of a new horse, we seldom know exactly what to expect. While many horses arrive malnourished or with injuries that require veterinary care, it is often the horses with emotional issues that are the most difficult to diagnose and rehabilitate. This was the case with Elvis.
Before Elvis came to our rescue, he was being used for pony rides and according to the information our director had been given, he had never been mistreated or neglected. He was a good looking black pony with four while stockings, a large white blaze and two blue eyes and other than a slight lameness due to poor foot care, he seemed to be in good physical condition when he arrived at Greener Pastures. .
The first time I saw Elvis, he was standing inside the corral that encircles our round pen. New horses at the rescue are always segregated when they arrive and this corral is a convenient holding spot. Standing at the fence, I watched the pony for several minutes before entering the enclosure and noticed that unlike most new horses, he wasn’t showing much interest in anything around him, including the horses in the adjoining pasture. I thought this behavior was odd.
When I opened the gate to the corral, the pony immediately began walking away from me. Since our round pen sits like a donut hole in the center of this particular corral, the catching game can turn into an exercise of endless circles. Rather than precipitating a situation where the pony felt pursued, I went to corner of the corral with the best grass and sat down on the fence. The pony stopped walking as soon as I sat down but he didn’t seem very interested in coming over to me and when he did look at me, his ears were folded back against his head. The ears didn’t appear to be pinned in anger and the pony didn’t look aggressive. As I watched him, it struck me that his expression was apprehensive, like he wasn’t exactly sure what I was up to but I wasn’t to be trusted. I gave the pony plenty of space and eventually grazed his way over to lush grass where I was sitting. He wouldn’t approach any closer when I offered my hand but he didn’t move away. Eventually I was able to move to his side and stroke his neck but the pony certainly didn’t seem to be enjoying the contact.
If eyes are the window to the soul, this pony’s eyes were telling a sad story. When I tried to play with him on line, his expression was worried and his behavior depressed. He had a hard time looking in my direction and when he did look at me; his ears were rotated back and pressed against his head. I had the impression that he was trying really hard to be compliant but there was no interest or enthusiasm. I brought obstacles into the round pen; a ball, cones, a tarp. Most horses would have had some reaction to the introduction of these objects even if it was only to snort and retreat to the opposite side of the pen but Elvis had no reaction. He stood stoically, head down, ears folded back, breathing fast.
When the rescue’s director, Elena DiSilvestro, asked me later what I thought of the new pony, I wasn’t exactly sure what to tell her. “I don’t know what people were doing with him before he got here,” I said, “but somewhere, somehow, this little fellow has really had the curiosity knocked out of him.”
At that point, I set a simple goal for my work with Elvis. All I wanted to do was to get him curious enough about something that he would put his ear forward toward it. Rather than playing with him in the round pen and running him through the 7 games, I started to take him for long walks around the property, driving him from zone 3 and playing the ‘touch it’ game. At first he was reluctant to step out in front of me. I smooched to him, then tapped him gently and rhythmically on his back with the carrot stick. I tried to release instantly even if he just rocked forward. Before long he would step forward at my smooch. I walked Elvis down to the river so he could put his front feet in the water. I walked him past tractors, horse trailers and lawn mowers. I asked him to touch large black pipes and overturned kayaks but I never forced the issue. I sat on the retaining wall to the healing garden and let him graze. I carried horse cookies in my pockets and gave him one any time he checked in with me.
Whenever a volunteer wanted to play with the pony, I suggested they take Elvis for a walk. He was such a good looking pony that he got a lot of attention. He was groomed so often that he coat took on a special shine. One day Elena came to me and said she was going to change the pony’s name. “He’s such a nice looking pony” She said. “He needs a classier name than Elvis. I think I’m going to call him Black Tye Affair.”
It took several weeks, but finally the pony had become more confident. He was swiveling his ears forward whenever he saw me. His expression had softened and he looked less worried. He no longer flinched when someone touched him unexpectedly and he had become much easier to catch. But best of all, his curiosity had returned. When he approached something new, he investigated with his nose and sometimes his feet. He pushed the blue exercise ball around the round pen and I even saw him pick up a cone in his mouth one afternoon. When I started to play the 7 games with Tye, he progress quickly. He was finally able to look at me and soon he began asking questions.
Tye became a favorite of some of the younger volunteers. When his lameness resolved, some of the smaller volunteers began riding him. Eventually he found a family that wanted to take him home. We were all sad to see him leave but we knew that this more confident and engaging pony had a much brighter future than the timid little Elvis who had stepped off the trailer in Greener Pastures several months before.
I once heard Pat Parelli tell a story about how one of his mentors told him to never knock the curiosity out of a colt. That made a lot of sense to me at the time but I hadn’t given much thought to what I would do if I ever met a horse that already had the curiosity knocked out of him. Then I met Elvis. Curiosity is a gift. It keeps our minds active rather than passive. It opens us and our horses to the possibility of learning something new and it can bring excitement and adventure into our lives. I’d like to think that because I needed to help Elvis rediscover his curiosity, I also had to sharpen my own. Rather than follow my usual plan with a new horse, I had to open myself to other possibilities to investigate the power of patterns in order to find a way to build confidence and develop curiosity. It is interesting that not long after I began taking Elvis for walks and using the ‘touch it’ pattern to help encourage his curiosity, I received the Savvy Club DVD featuring that pattern. How reinforcing was that?