She's a horse

Buck Brannaman said it best and plainly in the documentary Buck about his time working with horses. His horse was used as a stand-in during the movie The Horse Whisperer. Others on set reminded him that his horse was not an actor like the other horses. He said something along the lines of, “Yes, I know. He’s a horse.”

When I was in the doctoral program, this was my main focus. I was curious about how our own symbolism, beliefs, and understanding of horses influenced what/if/how we did with them. I ended up leaving the doctoral program before completing as I didn’t feel like I belonged in academia. I also struggled with delineating what I am now going to attempt to explain below. Let’s see how it goes 10 years later.

Subjectivity is an interesting thing. And this is where it gets sticky for a person like myself, a research librarian at heart, where upon starting to write about animals and subjectivity I found myself lost again in all of the academic articles I embraced, attempted to understand, could never quite get right to my peers. Grief can be a surprise.

Anyway, subjectivity is, to overly simplify, recognizing that others (humans, animals) can have an “I.” They can have their own relationships, wishes, motivations, thoughts, language. The horse has an experience of what is happening that is their own.

Returning to this material after spending almost a decade as a private practice therapist, I find it almost morbid how fitting this is with adult children of dysfunctional families. I see social media posts daily from other therapists noting (and probably over simplifying for quick reads and reels) that what these estranged adult children want the most, what would repair these estrangements, is for their parents to ask them about their experiences, their wishes, their selves.

Parents often tell me what their intent was, the reasons their adult child’s interpretation is wrong, how frustrated they are that their adult child is so angry when they tried their best. The difference is that the parent speaks about what they intended. The adult child is talking about what they experienced. Because intent is about the self. It tells us something about the person who acted. It doesn’t necessarily tell us about the experience of the subject on the other end of that action. This also does not mean that we accept that any and all behaviors are reasonable.

A well-respected and often-quoted horseperson, Tom Dorrance, once said:

First you go with the horse

Then the horse goes with you

Then you go together.

This is an example of attunement, of mutuality, with any species. We attempt to understand the perspective and motivations of the individual we want to connect with before we can hope that they go with us. And I think this is where parents and horse people struggle, often for similar reasons. Sometimes seeing the horse or the child as having their own perspective feels like a loss of control. Or agreement. Or even abandonment of our own position.

Accepting another’s subjectivity doesn’t require agreement. I can understand that the horse is anxious without agreeing that the horse should never be asked to do something difficult. I can understand that my child experienced something as hurtful without agreeing that their interpretation of every event is correct.

I can maintain my own experience and still allow someone else to have theirs.

If we see accepting another’s subjectivity as a loss of our own position, there is less room for a relationship that is based on mutuality. Even if the intent is not there, feeling that there must be power over by insisting the child or the horse do as the parent/owner/trainer says will only increase the divide.

Dorrance never promised the horse would go with you. Just that it might, eventually, once you’d gone with them first. Perhaps that’s the whole thing: not fixing the estrangement, not producing the right response, but being willing to let the other one stay who they actually are, even when it isn’t useful to you. Buck’s horse didn’t perform anything for that film crew. He just stayed a horse.