Marta Williams and LiamHow to Tell if Your Horse Has Something
to Say –

I hope you have been practicing talking with your horse as I suggested to you in my last column I advised you to talk with your horse out loud just as if you were taking to a person, and then to expect and assume that your horse would understand you. Many people who have tried this experiment have found that their horse behaved in a way that proved the horse heard and understood.

I just had that experience with one of my horses, a paint named Cody. I put my four horses in stalls to feed them their supplements (otherwise they are free to go in the barn or out to the pasture).  Usually I put them in the same stall each time, but this one time I varied who was in which stall. Cody ended up next to my Arab Rio, who tends to boss Cody around. When I feed Cody he usually walks in a big circle, neighing in excitement and anticipation of his food. (For those of you old enough to remember he sounds exactly like the horses on the old TV show, The Ponderosa).  I knew that if he did that Rio would kick at him and possibly get hurt by kicking the side of the stall, so I started talking to Cody, telling him to just stand still. I assured him that I would get his food, but reiterated that he needed to stay over to the far side of the stall, and not move a muscle. While telling him this I also visualized what I wanted him to do.  It worked perfectly. Cody stood stock still until I put his food in his bowl and stayed on the far side of the stall the whole time. 

photo by Marianne NorthamMy favorite story of a horse demonstrating that he has heard and understood what a person said was from a woman who initially scoffed at the idea of animal communication. She was laughing about it with her friends and turned to her horse in his pasture and told him, “Hey, we’d get a lot farther in our dressage work if you practiced on your own out in your pasture.” Then she walked away laughing hysterically. A few minutes later her friends called her over to come look at her horse who was, as ordered, doing his dressage moves all by himself.

I would love to hear about the results from your experiments with talking to your horses. Please feel free to send them along with any questions you might have for me by email.

The process of telling and then showing through visualization, or what I call making mental movies, is the basis for my coach approach technique of intuitive training. By adding intuition to your training and efforts to modify behavior problems, you get quicker and more profound results. If you want to learn how to do this in detail, I describe it in my latest book, Ask Your Animal. You will see a very cute dog on the cover of that book, but rest assured the  book is about horses too! All my books include stories about horses as well as other animals. 

In preparation for teaching you how to hear what you horse is saying to you, it will be important first for you to understand how to tell if you horse is trying to get through to you with some kind of message. That is the subject of this month’s column. 

There are a lot of clues you can look for. For example, have you ever had a funny feeling that your horse wants to tell you something and then turn to find him staring right at you? Well, that’s one way your horse can tell you it’s time to talk. Any feeling or thought about your horse could actually be information being sent to you mentally and emotionally by your horse. Normally, we ignore these intuitive impressions as fanciful, silly, or illogical. A better approach for your horse’s sake would be to pay attention to these vague feelings and hunches; the chances are good that they are correct.

Animals are often stoic and low key about what is going on for them. Develop sensitivity to any nuance change in your horse’s behavior; it usually signals some change that they are trying to communicate. A change in behavior, no matter how subtle, should always be regarded as a potential communication from your animal. A really obvious example would be when a horse who is normally compliant starts bucking. Typically people assume this is bad behavior or being stubborn or acting up. But usually it is really the horse trying to say that the saddle hurts or his foot or back hurts, or that something else is really wrong and not working.

Sensitize yourself to your internal thought stream. How are you feeling and what are you thinking when around your horse? If you sense a change or start thinking something out of the ordinary, like that your horse is upset or sick, pay attention. These could be thoughts and feelings coming to you from your horse. The quicker you can catch these issues or problems at an early stage, the easier they are to resolve.

Once you suspect there is something going on that your horse wants to talk about what do you do? My advice would be to go to your horse and ask him what is wrong. Then sit with your eyes closed and see what comes to you –what thoughts, feelings or other impressions come in. Write them all down. Then start acting on your hits and hunches making changes that won’t hurt might help, or getting any examinations or tests you feel might be needed.

I will cover the basics of receiving intuitive messages in my next column. Until then, happy communicating!

Marta Williams has a Masters degree in biology, and worked for many years as an environmental scientist before becoming an animal communicator. She has written three popular books on animal communication: Ask Your Animal, Beyond Words, and Learning Their Language. Marta travels internationally to teach animal communication and lives in Northern California where she offers private consultations for animals and their people by phone, email, and in person. Marta’s website: www.martawilliams.com and email: marta@martawilliams.com