Those who have read my novel Horse Heaven or my non-fiction book A Year At the Races know that part of our extended family is made up of horses that I bred and have trained or help train since foalhood. Horses, like children, come with all different temperaments, and, like people, if they are not engaged in lifelong learning, then they can devolve and become difficult to handle or to ride. Some are more complicated than others, and those who know my work know that my favorite horse, Jackie, has proved a challenge all along, not least because he is athletic, energetic, bossy, charismatic, and affectionate. He is the squeaky wheel who gets the oil, and the Ferrari who repays the price of repairs with an extra dose of excitement. One of the ongoing themes of our relationship is that at regular intervals I decide that I have him figured out. And now, thanks to the puppy, I have him figured out.
There was not going to be a puppy, but because of the internet, I happened to video chat a friend of mine just when her Labradoodle was giving birth to thirteen puppies, and after watching two births I was scheming to introduce one into our two-dog household. My partner Jack was not in favor, but he is a sucker; one lick on the chin and he was done for. We signed up for puppy class, and there we learned about six million techniques for raising mammals (including children) that we had never realized before, even though we've gone to puppy class before and read lots of child, dog, and horse training guides.
Our puppy trainer, Andy, was a great believer in treats, and she didn't stop at Milkbones. If a Milkbone wasn't enough to distract the puppy from the other dogs in class, well, try freeze-dried liver, or real liver, or beef baby food in a jar. Ugh, we said, but after six weeks of actual desirable and delicious treats, the puppy was practically saluting, and of course sitting, staying, downing, coming, rolling over, and shaking hands. I bought a box of sugar cubes.
Horses are trained fairly traditionally (and by this I don't mean that they are made to buck until they collapse or submit, as in old cowboy movies); even enlightened trainers hardly ever use treats. Rather, the horse performs an exercise until he gets it right and then is rewarded by being relieved of having to do the exercise. This is a training method that works fine for most horses, but did not work for Jackie, because, like all perfectionists, he responds to pressure with more anxiety. But he loves treats.
So I started carrying sugar in my pocket, and when he performed certain tasks, such as standing quietly for mounting, he got a "Good boy!" and a lump of sugar. Pretty soon, every time I mounted, he turned and looked at me—"Where is it?" Then I went on to more dynamic, but still well-defined tasks, such as switching canter leads on command (when a horse canters or gallops, his legs move asymmetrically, and on a turn you want them to "lead" with the foreleg that is closer to the turn). He picked this up in a week, and then I had to teach him, also using treats, not to stop after the lead change, but to keep cantering. Then I tried rewarding him after jumping, another task with a beginning, middle, and end—gallop to it, jump over it, gallop on. Such a genius!
And then something happened. A famous trainer came to town and did a clinic, and it was a traditional clinic where horses and riders were challenged to go beyond their comfort zones and find new capacities. Quite often this works, but it doesn't work for hesitant older women and perfectionist thoroughbred worriers. The week after the clinic, I saw that we were back were we'd started a year ago, full of fear and thinking bad thoughts. Sugar didn't help much, either.
So I did something horse trainers rarely do, I let the horse decide. I set the jumps that he particularly disliked very low—6 inches or 9 inches, and led him over them. I let him look at them and make up his own mind—was he going to stop before he stepped over? Was he going to walk over? Would he follow me over at a trot? When he went over the jump, no matter how—a treat. Then I mounted, went over them all again, and let him decide—stop? Step? Trot? Canter? Gallop? For me, it was hard to get the rhythm, hard to hold on, hardest of all not to interfere. But guess what I learned? Doing it his way built his confidence. Doing it his way allowed his mysterious brain to process the experience better than doing it my way did. As a result, he is more confident, more relaxed, and safer than he used to be.
I can't help wondering, would it work this way with children? Treats? Letting them work it out? As I get older, I consider it more and more of a paradox that just the time in our lives when we are raising our children was the time when we know the least about children. We followed the standard model (whether it was given to us by our parents or by other authorities) and we often got frustrated and wondered why things weren't working. It goes without saying that a child is more complicated than a horse, but as I get to know the horses better, I sometimes wonder, how much more complicated, really?
Be sure to check out Jane Smiley's other stories on FamilyGoesStrong.com: What's for Dinner and Who Would Wear This?