Your body language is advertising. " I’m coming to get you and we have "work" to do! We humans have jobs, and we work at our jobs. Work is serious business in our world. Horses don’t have work in their language. They live in the herd. They socialize. They eat. They play. No where in their life is anything equivalent to work mentioned. That’s why your "let’s do some serious work" body language is the signal for them to play the great run-away game.

"All righty, it’s time to work the horse." Here you are in the round pen facing the horse, concentrating on working the horse. Now it’s time to ask horse trainer Mark Rashid’s favorite question...What About The Horse? What do you look like to the horse when you are on the ground? What are your non-verbal messages to your horse? Go look in the mirror and pretend that you are facing your horse getting ready to have him longe or circle. Not a pretty picture are you? Look at those thin tight lips. Look at the big frown lines digging into your forehead . Look at your eyes, they are glaring! This is what your horse sees when you are working! The horse sees something that looks like it’s going to bite him; kick him; eat him. You are frightening!

I’ll tell you a story. I was in a 5 day horse training course last summer. One day, we students left our horses in their pens, and we played horse and human. Two people became the horse...the front end and the back end. One person got to be the human. We went to a very small "round pen". The human’s job was to tell the horse to go out and circle (longe) at liberty. The "horse’s" job was to be a horse. At the end of this horrifying experience, we all had the same emotional outburst.

The "horse" got to see what the human’s face looked like when being told to go circle. This was not a pleasant experience. I, (as a human), rarely have other people glare murderously at me like the human did when he made me, "the horse", go circle. Everyone of us "horses" were scared to death by our human ‘s face :( We humans rarely turn that kind of a look towards each other...maybe in marital spats! We humans keep a noncommittal face or a pleasant face when dealing with each other. We save our work-concentrated face for times when we are dealing with tasks.

Back to the summer game: When I got to be the human, I told my horse to go out on the circle...but I glared directly into the "horse’s" eyes. My "horse" didn’t like that one little bit, they told me later. Staring at the horse is considered challenging in horse language. I was asking him to move with my arms and keeping him nailed to the ground with my eyes saying "STAY THERE"! My horse would have appreciated me looking toward the direction I wanted the him to along with my arm motions with the lead rope. I had already heard someone talk about the glaring scary face, so I was smiling at my horse when I did the longe exercise. So why did my two human horse tell me to stop glaring?! I smiled without opening my lips. After the exercise, my "horse" told me that they couldn’t tell what my face was doing. : X It looked like a grimace to the horse, not a smile. I found out that I have to open my mouth to smile. My face looks the same whether it’s a grimace or a closed mouth smile. My facial body language is confusing.. I have been practicing smiling when working with my horses. I can smile and not mean it. Who is going to tell the difference? Well, the horse, of course. It’s his/her job to read body language of the whole body. My horse can probably tell the difference between my smile and grimace, but I find when I concentrate on smiling and "meaning it", my body softens and I do open my mouth in a smile.

To recap: A horse’s job is to read body language. A human’s body language in a "working" mode is negative. Get your body in the "playing" mode and have fun and relax with your horse. You will smile like you really mean it! Pat Parelli says, "A horse doesn’t care how much you know until he knows how much you care".

I look at my horse’s and imagine a big Smiley between her eyes. I smile. When I want my horse to come to me, I smile. I open my mouth and smile. I relax and smile with my body. (My horse knows the difference!) We have progressed since I changed my body language. (Years of grimacing at the horse doesn’t change immediately into smiles.) Keep thinking :) SMILE! Show your horse when he does something right. Smile while you’re rubbing (not pounding) the horse when he does something right. The horse can tell when you’re smiling while you’re riding too. How is that? Smiling is loose muscles...relaxed muscles. Smile and rub your horse while you are mounted when the horse is doing something right. Play with your horse, work on yourself!