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Random animal behavior retrospective
Aug. 12th, 2007 04:11 amSome time ago I was having dinner with trainer David Lichman the evening prior to the clinic he was going to be holding. (This was at Sue Whalen's house, Ingrid, as I'm sure you'll remember.) At some point the conversation turned to Arabians, and since I was rather active at the time on the horsemanship mailing list of which we were all a part, David turned to me and asked how I would characterize Arabians.
In my characteristic slug-wittedness when put on the spot like that, I hemmed and hawed a bit while the usual stereotypes flitted through my head--"high-strung," "flighty," "airheads," etc--followed soon after by a mental collage of the Arabians I'd worked with. The grumpy, neglected old lady who just wanted someone around to keep her company, the eagerly willing girl Aunt Nasty was taking care of and who readily accepted her required eye meds without fuss, the goofy gelding who tried his best to convince anyone who entered his pasture he was going to kill them but readily let slip that he was just playing, the pen of mellow, inquisitive studs...and as I mulled over all these different thoughts I realized, too late of course, that my answer was "I wouldn't."
Rather than approach a pen with some set of generalized preconceptions of what the animal is supposed to be based on its physical attributes, I'd rather let it tell me what kind of individual personality it actually has. There may be vague things which can be said of certain classifications (breeds, genders, etc), and those may have their place; but when my intent is to work one-on-one with an animal, stereotypes are of no use to me. I need an unprejudiced mind to assess the individual in front of me.
Naturally this coalesced after the topic had moved on to other matters, so I'm getting it off my chest now, years later, to an audience who likely has no interest in the topic. :)
In my characteristic slug-wittedness when put on the spot like that, I hemmed and hawed a bit while the usual stereotypes flitted through my head--"high-strung," "flighty," "airheads," etc--followed soon after by a mental collage of the Arabians I'd worked with. The grumpy, neglected old lady who just wanted someone around to keep her company, the eagerly willing girl Aunt Nasty was taking care of and who readily accepted her required eye meds without fuss, the goofy gelding who tried his best to convince anyone who entered his pasture he was going to kill them but readily let slip that he was just playing, the pen of mellow, inquisitive studs...and as I mulled over all these different thoughts I realized, too late of course, that my answer was "I wouldn't."
Rather than approach a pen with some set of generalized preconceptions of what the animal is supposed to be based on its physical attributes, I'd rather let it tell me what kind of individual personality it actually has. There may be vague things which can be said of certain classifications (breeds, genders, etc), and those may have their place; but when my intent is to work one-on-one with an animal, stereotypes are of no use to me. I need an unprejudiced mind to assess the individual in front of me.
Naturally this coalesced after the topic had moved on to other matters, so I'm getting it off my chest now, years later, to an audience who likely has no interest in the topic. :)
