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Key points
- The average horse weighs 1200 pounds, but the average handler weighs 150 pounds.
- It's not possible to manage a horse with human strength. More cooperative traits are required.
- In return for cooperation, horses demand kindness, understanding, calm behavior, and emotional intelligence.
- Many therapy clients don't know how much they rely on physical power until a horse shows them it won't work.
Having trouble? Horses can help.
Equine-assisted therapy is an effective treatment for many disorders and difficulties. It helps people manage physical ailments, developmental disabilities, business dilemmas, and psychological disorders including generalized anxiety, phobias, depression, and schizophrenia. Equine-assisted therapy for PTSD has proven so effective that the U.S. Veteran’s Administration pays full price for military combat veterans to receive it.
Most people imagine that the horses who assist in therapy are highly trained or at least bred for the job. But they’re not. In fact, most of what horses provide in a therapeutic setting is simply a function of their horseness. This is just one reason why horses are so good at therapy; it’s the easiest, most obvious reason of all, but if you’re not around horses frequently, you might not think of it. Size.
The average horse weighs 1200 pounds. That’s the weight of two male grizzly bears or two BMW motorcycles, take your pick. He stands about five feet high at the top of the shoulder, but his neck arches upward from there. Standing calmly, the average horse's ears are about six feet off the ground. And a horse is made to move at high speed with great agility. Even while tied, he can flip upside down or whirl around 360 degrees in less time than it takes to blink your eye. The average man or woman weighs 150 pounds, about 13 percent of what the typical horse weighs. The first thing most wide-eyed neophytes say when faced with a horse: “He’s so big!”
What does this enormous size differential mean in horse-and-human relationships? It means that no human being, no matter how strong, can push a horse around. Strength is useless, a fact that some people find very frustrating—especially those who are accustomed to controlling others with physical power. Barring abusive equipment, no human can force a horse to do anything she doesn’t want to do. Getting huffy and puffy with a horse is a surefire way to get humbled because the horse can out-pull, out-push, outrun, and outwit a pushy human in an instant.
How do we get horses to do what we want? With understanding, calmness, highly practiced skill, emotional self-control, and knowledge. These are the traits that encourage the equine mind to pay attention and learn, to become motivated to perform according to a human’s external whims. That's one reason why equine-assisted therapy is so effective. You have no choice but to work with a horse to get her to do what you want. Without that, she’ll simply leave you in the dust.
When physical power is taken out of the equation, dysfunctional people often fall flat. They don’t have the knowledge, skill, or emotional intelligence to approach another being in a non-violent way. Usually, they don’t realize that, though. The horse helps them learn that their ways are ineffective. Other, kinder techniques are required. Just by his size, the horse demands emotional intelligence.
This simple fact—the inability to power a horse around—is an extremely valuable lesson in human psychology. Instead of controlling others by force or demand, we have to manage our own behavior to encourage cooperation with kindness. People respond well to this sort of encouragement, much better than they do when faced with a show of muscle or a slew of scary words.
I don’t want to over-simplify what horses do in equine-assisted therapy. Much of it is complex, emotional, and neurological—but size is a simple place to start. And ever so effective.
