The Pygmalion Effect

Faith is a powerful thing. What we believe we can do or not do, and what is believed by those around us can greatly impact what we will ultimately accomplish in our lives. I know this is true for me and since studying Parelli Natural Horsemanship, I have learned it is also true for my horse Sonny. But recently I learned just how powerful it can be when my faith in someone else was combined with my faith in the principles taught by Parelli.
My belief in the power of faith began with a lesson from my parents. Even though I was a girl, growing up at a time when opportunities for girls were limited, my parents raised me to believe that I could do anything I wanted to do. They believed in me and expected that I would be successful. No matter what I told them I wanted to be; a veterinarian, a dolphin biologist, an Olympic swim coach, a geochemist, they told me I would be great at it.
The lesson was reinforced many times during my careers, first as a swim coach and science teacher and then as a manager for the DuPont Company. I never forgot the time a supervisor asked me with all sincerity one morning, “Well, what miracles are you going to perform today?” I would have moved mountains for that man and when I became a manager, I tried to believe in the people who worked for me as much as that man had believed in me. Because I held high expectations of my swimmers, my students and my employees at DuPont, they often performed better for me than they did for other people. I treated them as if they were capable of great things and because of that, often they were.
While I held high expectations for the people in my sphere of influence, before I began to study Parelli Natural Horsemanship, chauvinism keep me from according my horses the same respect. I loved my first horse, Max, but I didn’t think he was very smart. Fortunately for both of us he was very well trained and very athletic. Riding him was like driving a high performance sports car. Sonny came along 23 years later. He was bigger, more stubborn and, I thought at the time, kind of clumsy. If I didn’t walk him straight out of his stall, he would bump into the wall. He wasn’t particularly careful with his feet, stepping on me more times in the first month that I had him than Max did in the previous 23 years. Sonny was rock solid on the trails but riding him was like trying to muscle around a RV. I didn’t know anything about horsenality and didn’t understand his left brain introvert nature so I quickly came to the conclusion he was a nice horse but he wasn’t particularly athletic.
I would like to say that my expectations began to change as soon as I discovered Parelli but it would be almost 2 years I before I realized how much my lack of faith in Sonny was affecting our progress. I was in my first clinic with Carol Coppinger and we were playing with the circling game. Sonny was having trouble maintaining gait through the change of direction and Carol had come over to help us. I was fumbling my way through the exercise and making my usual excuses for Sonny. It was bad on so many levels.
“He has trouble with circles all the time,” I told Carol. “He’s so big and he just isn’t very athletic.”
“Can I try?” she asked, reaching for the lead line.
I handed her the line and retreated to the edge of the arena. Carol walked up to Sonny and stroked his neck. “You are a big fellow,” she said to him. Then she looked over at me. “I bet he’s way more athletic than you are giving him credit for.” With that, she backed him away from her and sent him off in a circle. Before long she had him changing direction at a trot without breaking gait. When she asked him to change at the canter he pivoted alertly and threw in a flying change. Clearly I had been underestimating his potential!
That clinic was a turning point in my relationship with Sonny and it also had impact on the way I approached The SummerWinds Stable horse rescue, where I worked with rescued horses. Where others saw problems, I saw potential. I expected the horses to respond positively to the Parelli method and they did. Working mostly on the ground with new horses coming into the sanctuary, I improved ground manners, solved catching problems and eased horses into a new way to relate to the humans in their lives.
It was an experience with a young girl at the rescue that helped me see the power of combining positive expectations with the Parelli principles. Besides rescuing horses, The SummerWinds runs programs for children and this spring was hosting a home school group for a series of beginner riding lessons. Being the horse specialist at the rescue, I seldom became involved with the children’s programs but that morning I was sitting in the barn while the instructors were having their meeting before the sixth and final week of the program. I overheard them discussing the difficultly they were having with one little girl who was very fearful. It sounded to me like they didn’t think she was capable of overcoming her fear and they didn’t know what else to try with her.
Without thinking, I spoke up. “Do you want me to give it a try?” I asked.
Everyone turned in my direction and I could read the skepticism on their faces. “Sure, if you want to” the head instructor replied. “Have at it.”
There were six little girls in the lesson and each one had her own instructor. My little girl was about 8 years old and I could see right away that she was nervous. Although she was big for her age, she was assigned to ride Holliday, a large red and white paint whose size must have been intimidating for her.
Holliday originally had been purchased by the rescue’s director as a Christmas present for her daughter. When Holliday arrived at the rescue, he didn’t pass his vet check because of a problem with his eyes. Rather than sending him back to his former owner, who hadn’t even recognized the problem with his eyes, the rescue shipped him up to the New Bolton Center for surgery to correct the eye problem. Although the director felt he wasn’t suitable for her daughter to show, she felt he was a nice horse so the rescue kept him as a lesson horse. He was a big boy with a quiet disposition, ideal for someone with confidence problems.
After the horses had been tacked up, I introduced myself to my student for the day, helped her onto Holliday’s back and started to lead her around the arena. Walking beside her, holding Holliday’s lead line, I could see that despite her apprehension, she was embarrassed to be the only student who was not riding independently. My years of experience coaching swimming and teaching told me that this was a child who really needed someone to believe in her.
I led Holliday back to the center of the arena, asked him to stop and then stepping back to his side looked up at the child on his back. “Did you know that there are only four things you need to be able to do to ride a horse by yourself” I asked her.
She looked down at me, eyes wide, face solemn, and shook her head.
“Yep” I said. “All you need to be able to do is to go forward, to stop, to back up and to turn. That doesn’t sound too hard does it?”
Again she shook her head and then added in an anxious voice. “You won’t let go of him, will you?”
“Nope, I got him” I said. “Now, let’s work on getting Holliday to go forward. Here’s what I want you to do. First I want you to squeeze him with your legs. Don’t kick him, just squeeze. If he doesn’t move then I want you to cluck to him like a chicken.” When I put my tongue against the top of my mouth and made the clucking sound she gave me a tiny smile. “Can you do that?” I asked.
“I don’t think so” she said.
“How about making a kissing sound?” I asked. “Like this.” When I puckered up my lips in an exaggerated kiss she laughed.
“Like this?” she asked and then she smooched.
“Yep, just like that and if he doesn’t move then, I want you to take the reins and just swing them back and forth on his shoulders until he moves.” I demonstrated with the reins and then let her try it. After a few swings she seemed to have the hang of it. “OK, here we go.”
Holding on to the very end of the lead line, I waited for her to begin. I had never done this with Holliday before but I had confidence it would work and I needed it to work for the sake of this little girl. She sat up straight and pushed her legs into Holliday’s sides, then she smooched to him loudly. Holliday stepped forward. I was careful not to move until Holliday took a step, then I walked along side for a few steps. I looked up at the little girl on his back. There was just the slightest smile on her face. I stopped Holliday and let her try asking him to go several times. Each time Holliday moved forward on her smooch.
“OK” I said to her as we walked along the rail, “now you have to learn how to stop him.” I looked right at her and asked, “Who do you think is stronger, you or Holliday?”
“Holliday is stronger” she answered.
“So, can you stop him by pulling back on both reins if he doesn’t want to stop?” I asked. When she shook her head I said. “So here is what you do when you want him to stop. You just lift up one rein and hold it until he stops.”
“Like this?” she asked, lifting her right hand up and pulling the rein to her chest.
“Keep your arm straight,” I said. Just lift it straight up like this. With that, I used my hand to straighten her elbow and lift her arm straight up in the air. Holliday took two steps and stopped. Silently I thanked this quiet horse for being such a quick study.
We tried starting and stopping until she seemed to have the hang of it and then I taught her to turn by holding her arm straight out to the side using a direct rein. She turned Holliday left and right. Finally I showed her how to back him up. We were 30 minutes into a one hour lesson and she had the basics.
“OK,” I said, “now I am going to unhook the lead line so you can do this by yourself.” A look of panic began to creep into her eyes. Before she could protest, I said. “I’m going to walk here right next to you, just like I was when I was leading. I know you can do this by yourself but I’ll stay right here just in case. So ask Holliday to walk forward.”
I smiled at her and nodded my encouragement. She took a big breath, kissed to him loudly and he stepped forward. I walked right along with her, encouraging all the way. At my direction she had Holliday walk forward, stop and turn. Then she backed him up. I moved a little further away from Holliday’s side and asked her to do it again. Then I asked her to walk Holliday around one of the barrels and over a pole on the ground. Each time she did something new, I moved a little further away from her and the horse. Finally I was standing about 10 feet away.
“Can you take ask Holliday to go down to that barrel,” I said as I pointed at a barrel on the other side of the ring. “Then go around the barrel and bring Holliday back to me?”
She pressed her lips together. “I don’t know,” she answered.
“Well, with as good as you have been doing, I’m sure you can do this” I said. “How about you give it a try?”
“OK,” she said and she smooched to Holliday. He ambled off in the direction of the barrel. When he got there, she pushed him into a big right hand turn with her direct rein and walked him back to me.
“Now can you walk him over there to the fence?” I pointed in the other direction and off she went. By the time we had done this several times, she was clearly riding with more confidence.
“Would you like to try a trot?” I asked.
She looked a little doubtful.
“You’re doing so well, I think you’re ready” I said to her. “You can put one hand down here on the saddle and push. That will help you stay put. I’ll stay right next to you and we will only do a few steps at a time. We’ll count together, one, two, three, four and then stop.”
Planting her hand on the saddle, she nodded her OK. I chirped to Holliday and trotted forward. He jogged next to me and we both counted out loud to four. When Holliday stopped I looked up to see how she was doing. She was smiling.
“How about six steps this time?” I asked. She nodded again. We jogged off a second time and when we stopped she was giggling.
When I glanced at my watch I realized that the hour was up. “So,” I asked, “how was your lesson today?” But I didn’t really need an answer because her smile told me everything I needed to know. As we left the ring, we walked Holliday past the picnic table where the mothers had been sitting to watch the riding lesson. One mother turned to me and silently mouthed ‘thank you’. There were tears in her eyes.
The hour I spent with this young girl was a demonstration both of the power of positive expectations and the power of Parelli. Years of coaching and teaching children had given me the confidence to work positively with this child I had just met, while years of studying Parelli gave me the confident that Holliday would respond positively and without fear to the signals he was being given.
Despite her lack of success in previous lessons, I was able to go into this lesson with the expectation that on this day, with this horse, this child could learn the four simple things she needed to do to independently ride a horse at a walk. My belief in her gave her the confidence she needed to learn how to go forward, to stop, to back up and to turn. Her success at doing this while I was walking beside her gave her the confidence to try it alone. Her confidence grew every time Holliday responded correctly to her signals.
There is nothing more powerful than belief. Pat Parelli tells us to ‘expect a lot, accept a little, and reward often’. Each time we do this with ourselves and our horses, we build a stronger relationship and further our journey toward becoming a true horseman. When we do this with the people around us, we give them the gift of recognizing and realizing their true potential.