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HOW A HORSE USES SOUNDS

 

One of the early difficulties we discovered in studying the sounds made by a horse and trying to make sense of them, is that unlike man a horse uses no set sequence of sounds to convey any meaning. In compiling our dictionary we very quickly found that, apart from a few exceptions, it is im­possible to say that a certain sound means a certain thing, but it is possible to say that within certain limits a horse will convey a particular message in one of a number of ways. To try and understand this, we had another look at the human languages, and we realised that to convey a certain meaning the human being might use a thousand different sounds, but you could not be certain that any particular sound used by a human being would mean a definite thing. This may sound complete nonsense at first sight, but if you look at it you will see that it is so. The human species is made up of a myriad different nations, and each nation has its own language and dialects. If you take a common phrase like 'I love you,' each race, each nation and each tribe will have a different set of sounds in common use to convey this one phrase. Even within a single language, such as English, there are different ways of saying 'I love you.'

So in our dictionary of horse phrases, we have set out each message in English, and against it listed every indi­vidual way we know of that a horse uses to convey that message. We have taken for instance the simple phrase 'I love you,' using it as a broad way of denoting all signs of affection, and against that we have listed the various ways in which the horse denotes affection. We start with breath­ing out with two imperatives, breathing in with two im­peratives, the whicker of welcome with three imperatives. These are the vocal ways by which the horse shows affection. Then there are in addition a very large number of signs, and we have found twenty-six variations of these. That is to say that we conclude that most horses will show affection in one of twenty-six various ways. You will of course get an odd individual who will be outside the main­stream and show affection in a very odd way: for example Fearless denoted affection, when I came back from over­seas, by galloping up with her ears flat back, skidding to a halt and licking me all over, then picking me up in her teeth and shaking me. We had another case of a Welsh pony stallion who had been recently castrated and who had been running with cattle, who denoted affection for a mare by smelling her urine as she made water. There are also one or two signs of attraction in sex play, but we do not include those with the phrase 'I love you' as they really mean some­thing completely different. The girlish giggle of the mare when she squeals, and the stallion's whistle, are both sexual in impulse, not affectionate, for it is unusual for anything except sexual attraction to be involved in the mating of horses.

In effect, then, we have compiled an English-Horse dic­tionary. In it we have taken each of forty-seven phrases used by the horse, together with fifty-four sub-messages, and we have noted the various ways in which most horses will convey each meaning. This method is the opposite to that of most other people working in this field, who have tried to allocate a meaning to each sign or sound. This approach seems to us merely to increase the difficulties. But to make a dictionary of the more common phrases and messages used by a horse is a comparatively easy task. First you select a horse that you know well and are handling daily, and use him as the primary object of your study. You list the phrases, that is the signs and sounds, he uses that you understand. Some of these will be conveyed by signs alone, some by sound, but most by a mixture of signs and sounds. You will be surprised to find how many you already understand. This will probably be about half of what he is saying, and then by observation you will try to interpret the other phrases and sentences he uses. Since you will already know about half of what he is saying, these other signs and sounds will be comparatively easy to put a meaning to. After anything from six weeks to a year, you will find that you have got a list of between twenty-five and thirty-five basic messages that your horse frequently uses. Then, when you can understand everything your horse is saying, you can start observing other horses, and against the basic messages that you have listed for your own horse, you can list the ways that other horses have of saying the same thing. You will find that some of the horses will use phrases your own horse, that is your primary subject, used, and some will convey messages that your primary subject did not even attempt, and this will add to your list of common phrases.



In time – anything up to about twenty years! – you will perhaps have all the forty-seven basic messages used by the horse. Some of these, such as the scream of rage or terror, you may never hear, others which are confined to set situ­ations such as lovemaking, or mothering of a foal, you will not often come across unless you keep breeding stock. So your list of basic messages may be less that my total of forty-seven basic messages and fifty-four sub-messages, but you will still have a list of all the messages used by the

horses you come into contact with, and this can be added to from time to time. You will find that with some messages there are very few variations in the number of ways a horse will express himself, but for others you will find up to thirty variations, and the list is never complete. There is always one particular horse who will say something in a way you have not come across before.

As one example of the range of variations, the phrase 'where is my bloody breakfast' can be said by a horse in sound alone, by using the basic phrase 'welcome', and its six imperatives: that is, two degrees of blowing through the nostrils, a low whicker, a high whicker, a low whinney and a high whinney. A horse may also use a snort or even a neigh. Then there are a dozen or so signs or combinations of signs and sounds.

The fact that the phrase 'welcome' can also be used to mean 'where is my bloody breakfast' highlights the difficulty in getting any sense out of any set sequence of notes. The whicker of welcome which is used by a horse when he is greeting another, can become at feeding time 'where is my bloody breakfast.' Equally the mare can use the same set of notes to call her foal to her, or a stallion and mare can use it as a prelude to love play. The same sound can mean a number of things, depending on the circum­stances in which it is used.

Old Cork Beg, for instance, uses the same call to say 'hello' to my wife or another horse, to say 'good, here is breakfast,' to me, or 'come here darling' to his current girlfriend. But this call can change to the imperative. If I am slow feeding him, or I feed another horse first, the notes he uses in his whicker of welcome quickly rise and the message becomes 'where is my bloody breakfast'. If his current girlfriend does not come when he calls her first, the note will rise and change from 'come here darling' to get over here you lazy little bitch'. The degree of imperative used depends in part on the personalities of the two horses concerned. Just as when my wife is handling the horses and says 'stop it,'it is a far stronger threat than if I say 'if you do that I'll have your guts for garters,' and the horses know it, so one horse might quite naturally use a much higher note of imperative to convey the same meaning than another. The increase or decrease in the imperative will be shown by raising or lowering the voice, as in human beings, as well as by adding to the original phrase or sentence. A man for example may increase the imperative by raising his voice in using the words 'come here', or he may change the phrase from 'come here' to 'come here immediately.' The horse may increase the imperative by using a sign as well as increasing the volume of sound.

This approach to equine communication – instead of putting our emphasis on the sound a horse makes, such as most researchers have done, we have put the emphasis on the meaning conveyed by sounds and sighs as a whole – has been our major breakthrough and is I think our major contribution to the understanding of animal communication.

The volume and pitch of the voice is also determined by how far the horse is from the horse he is speaking to. For example when I am four or six hundred yards from home on one of my horses, he will shout at the top of his voice 'hello is anyone at home,' to which one of the horses in the stable will answer 'I am here.' The closer he gets to home, the lower he will have to pitch his voice to make himself heard, and the two horses will drop their voices the nearer they get to each other. When I get to the stable door they will still be saying the same tiling, but instead of shouting at the top of their voices, they will just be blowing through their nostrils to each other. My horse will go on saying his welcome until he gets within sniffing distance of the other horse, and then he will stop saying welcome and use one of his calls to show affection. Now to anybody listening there is absolutely no difference in tone between the first call and the second call after he has been answered by another horse. A human parallel, perhaps, is in the words 'hello there'. If you go into the house of a friend, you might shout 'hello there,' to find out if there is anybody at home; he may answer you from upstairs, 'hello there,' and then when he comes downstairs you will greet each other quietly with the same word, 'hello'.

All these welcome calls could perhaps be translated by the word 'hello'. But we have not done so mainly because this would obscure the great variation in actual meaning. A mare welcoming her foal is conveying a very different message from the stallion trumpeting a challenge. The in­itial call of the stallion – 'is there anybody about' – will change very little in sound when it is answered, but the meaning of his call will change to 'come and fight,' if answered by another stallion, and will then go on to in­creasing provocation until they meet. But if he is answered by a mare he will go on calling the same call, but in this case 'is there anybody about' changes to 'come and make love,' and he will go on using this until he gets closer to her, when the imperative will drop to welcome, and she will either snap and kick at him, telling him to find another fancy piece, or she will give a girlish giggle and they will start their love play. And if a gelding answers, the stallion will tell him to bugger off in no uncertain terms. In every case the stallion's call will sound much the same, but the message will be completely different. The voice of the horse is only a guide to the meaning of the message, it does not convey the message itself, as the speech of a human being does.

It is of course also possible for a human being to make himself understood by someone who speaks a different language, simply by the use of signs and the tone of his voice. If you do not believe this you only have to observe any sailor landing in a foreign port. In a very short time he will have made his needs known and had his requirements fulfilled – usually booze, women and entertainment in that order – and he will not need a word of the language to make himself understood.

With horses, the context of the call gives you the mean­ing. This is why the work done on tape-recordings of horse calls has been so difficult to understand – no tape-record­ing can give you the context of the signal. Of course it is possible to misinterpret calls – I have seen a horse mis­interpret the call of another horse. My wife's Welsh Cob Rostellan once answered the call of a stallion I had recently purchased and had castrated. When he was turned out for the first time, the stallion trotted into the field and called 'is there anybody about?' and Rostellan answered. They pro­ceeded to call to each other until they were within sight of each other, then Rostellan trotted over to the stallion thinking he was saying 'welcome,' and got kicked in the ribs for his pains.

Since as well as understanding what your horse is saying, you want him to understand what you are saying, it is vital that you use your voice correctly in speaking to him. Unless you are an animal imitator by profession, it is of no use whatever to try to use the notes and tones that he uses, other than those in the lower ranges – that is, breathing in softly and breathing out softly. You can also get a very low whicker from your own vocal range. But further than this, it is pointless to try to imitate another horse, and in any case the horse will soon be able to interpret your own normal tones. Most of the rider's verbal control of his horse depends on simple commands in English, such as 'whoa', 'walk on', 'trot on', and the horse will learn to respond to these extremely quickly provided you use a correct method of training. When the horse responds to the word of com­mand, he should be praised and caressed. He should be taught by encouragement, not punishment. For if you say 'whoa' and he moves on and you catch him a clout, he will very quickly associate 'whoa' with being hit and will never learn the word of command. Certain commands will in any case get an automatic response from a very high percentage of the horses you handle, and 'whoa' is one of them. About seventy per cent of horses who have never been handled, will respond naturally to the word 'whoa'. Similarly, if you click your tongue the horse will go forward and become excited. If you say 'stand up', the horse will draw himself together naturally. These sounds seem to produce an auto­matic response in the horse, and should not be confused with commands that have to be taught him.

Of course when you are commanding your horse, the tone of the voice is extremely important. I have already referred to the Irishman, Dan Sullivan, who was known as the Whisperer. If you whisper to your horse very softly, he will find that the tone caresses him and it has almost exactly the same effect as caressing him with your hand. If you talk to him in a singsong gentle voice (I usually recite a little verse, 'there's a clever boy, there's a clever boy, there's a clever little fellow'), you will find it automatically steadies the horse and settles him if he is excited. If you speak to him in a sharp voice he will -draw himself together and become alert. If you shout at him he knows you are angry. All these tones of the voice and those in between will draw an automatic response.

But you have to be extremely careful how you use them. Four or five years ago I had a very brilliant sheepdog who had the makings of a champion, but she was so keen and so enthusiastic that she was not very obedient to command. After some three months of training, unless I shouted at her and said 'Damn you Fan' before I gave the command, she would go on with what she was doing. And this was simply because when she was extremely disobedient, I used to curse her by saying 'Damn you Fan', and throwing a pebble in her direction so that she would know that she had to do what I told her to. So after this all my commands had to be prefaced with 'Damn you Fan'.

The horse is of course extremely responsive to the voice. On one occasion I was hauling cowdung with Fearless and a young cart colt which we were breaking, up into a very steep field. The cart colt was in the shafts and Fearless was in the trace harness. To get up into the field you used to have to take it as fast as you could, which meant the horses were cantering and you were runningbeside the horse in the shafts, and on this particular occasion, just as we got into the gateway, I slipped and my leg went under the cart and the colt's hind legs. I shouted 'Whoa Fearless' in a desper­ate voice, and Fearless stopped immediately and kicked the cart, colt in the face, so that he stopped and threw himself back into the breeching. The \vheel had stopped just on my leg,.you could see the mark of die wheel on my thigh, but if it had gone over me, with ten or fifteen hundredweight of dung in the cart, I would never have walked again. This is a perfect example of the way a horse will respond to die tone of your voice. If I had said 'Whoa Fearless' in a normal tone, it would have been an even chance that she would have taken no notice of me whatever, but on this occasion she stopped instantly and stopped the colt as well. That was one of the reasons I had a very great affection for the old cow.

My father had a theory that when you were breaking a young horse it was very important to throw him on to the ground and teach him to lie down when you told him to. He used to throw the horse, and once it was down, sit on top of it and smoke his pipe or a burma cheroot, which he was very partial to, and recite marathon verses: usually "The Man from the Snowy River' or 'Kissing Cups Race'. By the time he had recited those two, he used to swear that any horse would be quiet, and usually it was. This was in fact an extreme test of obedience, because anything that could stay within half a mile of the boss when he was smoking one of his burma cheroots at full steam must have been under remarkable control. But die principle of reciting verses is an extremely sound one, for we have found repeatedly with the untouched horses that we get here that reciting or sing­ing to them anything that is soothing and rather monot­onous, will settle and relax them, and, which is probably just as important, make you relaxed. For if you are close to the horse your emotions and feelings will be reflected by him; if you are nervous, he will be nervous, and if you are relaxed and speaking in a relaxed way, he will be relaxed as well.

 

 

CHAPTER FIVE


Date: 2015-04-20; view: 716


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