Respect

All week I have been mulling over the idea of respect and as usual, it happens that when I am thinking about something, the ‘universe’ decrees that I need to be shown all sides of the story!

This morning while I was typing up my response, I had been working on it off and on for several hours, thinking, typing, walking away, and coming back…you know how you do when something feels important? Then my husband decided to unplug our internet connection without asking if I was online. I lost everything that I had been typing. I guess this is another piece of the respect topic. Unilateral decisions usually are not respectful, nor considerate. A good reminder for myself! Also a reminder to save, save, save!

The first part of the respect equation came on Thursday when I took Lady out of the pasture. Now Lady is not a horse that typically shows a ‘disrespectful’ attitude towards people, but she was in the top ten acres where the grass is over my head. I’m shy of five foot. Horse heaven is what I call the top pasture, the horses get to visit it a few hours a day, they don’t even have to move or bend their heads to fill their tummies with thick, luscious green grass. She was up there when I went out to ride and she was not happy about being asked to leave. I can understand completely, I would be upset if someone took me away from a feast, but Lady got to work on how to act when life throws you a curve ball. And I got to see a big hole in our interactions. She got lots of praise when she fianlly got it right and only then did she get to go back to horse heaven.

Then Friday the stable had a ‘play day’ with pole bending, jumping, barrel racing, relay races, musical stalls, ending the day with a scavenger hunt on all fifty acres. It was a blast and Lady seemed to have as much fun as I did. But there were two women who rode their horses with such a lack of respect and consideration for their horses and the other riders, that it was appalling. The horses were kicked, slapped, and whipped for five hours. Their heads were jerked around so much and with such force that hours of rolkur practice looked kind in comparison. The women also had no concern about slamming their horses into other horse and riders during such games as musical stalls and the relay races. One of the women riding like this was the woman who wanted to ride Lady. After seeing this appalling piece of horsemanship there is no way that I would ever let her near Lady. At the end of the day those two horses were covered in dirty foam and exhausted, then turned out into the pasture without even having the sweat and dirt brushed off of them. One of the horses is shut down, the other one has absolutely no respect towards humans. He will run you over if you are in his way, but the way he was slammed into other horse and riders, I now can understand why. It is not about ‘respect’ but about how he was trained, and is still apparently being trained.

Then yesterday, Saturday, I got to see if Lady ‘Got It’ on Thursday. When I got to the stable, she was up in horse heaven, gorging. But she willingly came to me and lowered her head to be haltered, then calmly and softly walked down to the barn to be saddled. She never even called to her buddies who were still feasting on the tall grass. Wow! Did she ever get lots of praise and carrots and scratches! I rode her past the gate leading to horse heaven where her herd mates were still grazing and the only thing she did was to call to them, but willingly trotted past the gate.

This week I was reminded that respect, be it horse or human, is a two way street. It goes both ways. Respect begets respect. So very true. If you want respect, then you need to give respect. And respect goes hand in hand with consideration. Roget’s thesaurus-Respect: to admire, to appreciate. I don’t think that respect can be taught. Rules can be taught, like, "Thou shall not run over humans." But I think that respect is shown, give and take. If you don’t show any, how can you expect it to be given in return? The horses that I’m around daily, that are treated with respect and consideration, and above all, love, by their owners are polite around humans, but the other horses who aren’t treated with consideration, have human related issues The Golden Rule not only applies to human/human relations, but also to human/horse relations. Give and take, just another piece of this horse journey I’m on.

Anyway, just my take on this little thing called “respect”.

~Kelly King
Written in 2006