what can't survive transparency

There’s an old saying in the horse world, I believe by Pat Parelli, that goes something like, “When you take off the halter you’ll be left with the truth.”

I think what he was getting at is this concept that a relationship based on force can’t survive transparency.

Although it seems this was a step in the right direction, nowadays, I think many of us realize that even “liberty” can be taught in forceful and sometimes downright violent ways, and just because the horse appears free with no physical attachment does not mean that behavior wasn’t trained through forceful methods, and it doesn’t mean any kind of “choice” is truly present.

Even if liberty is taught, prior to the horse truly consenting to touch, by well intentioned folks in ways that appear perhaps benign to most (depending on the individual and views of R+ vs R-), ways that natural horsemanship schools tend to teach it – creating draw and making the right thing easy the wrong thing hard, etc – if the horse isn’t actually okay with touch, the final picture we get still won’t survive transparency when put to the test.

For example, while working with a mustang recently, a mustang who had been ridden for a few years, but had a bolting problem that wouldn’t go away, I set off to find the root of the problem and see just how far back we needed to go. After some digging, it became apparent she actually wasn’t okay with touch. I say digging because it’s not always so straightforward, especially if they have liberty training! I turned her out in the roundpen and she did as she was taught: to follow me. She stayed super hooked on. But she had learned, through pressure & release, that if she follows me, I go away. But what happens when we offer another option?

I left the roundpen and came back in once she had taken up another interest, nibbling some hay at the other end of it. (In these cases, I might also just set a bit of a boundary and ask the horse to go off and not be right by me, which I probably did with this horse at some point, too). When I proceeded to approach her again, she jerked her head up towards me when I was 30 feet away. Before she could latch onto me again, I released the pressure of my presence, and turned and walked away. I released at the slightest stress signal (lifting the head & looking at me). I repeated this, and got the same result, over and over again.

So, if she kept doing this like clockwork, what does that tell me? It tells me that if the behavior repeated with consistency (her giving two eyes when I approached her), then I was reinforcing that behavior (by turning and walking away, removing the aversive stimulus aka my presence). That’s the basic definition of reinforcement: If the thing you’re doing is reinforcing (aka walking away), you’ll see more of the behavior (aka giving me two eyes).

Two disclaimers before we proceed:

1- If you’re training with almost exclusively R+ to the extent that’s possible, this post isn’t really applicable to you. Consent can look different in some ways in the R+ paradigm and it feels like even more of a direct and ongoing conversation, so I’m not trying to apply this to you if that’s the case. Your horse might “fail” this test because the reinforcer isn’t present and that’s a whole different story.

2- The “test” as I’ve described here is not always this simple. It’s easy to get a false read on horses who have built up a lot of coping mechanisms, horses stuck in functional freeze or horses who tend to be a bit bold and go into a bit of “fight” even through mildly “pushy” behaviors. That’s for another post. These horses may require a more tactful approach to start to get a “true” read.

Okay, let’s get back to it..

This transparency test – approaching and retreating when the horse gives you two eyes – is the first step I do when evaluating a horse to try to get a full picture and read on them to find where our true starting point is, regardless of whether they’ve been ridden for years.

For horses who tend to “fail” this test, ie the horse who isn’t actually okay with being touched… this will typically show up in a variety of ways, depending on the horse.

For the sake of explaining here, I’ll put these horses into two groups based on the ways they present themselves when they are not actually okay with touch, horses who don’t survive this transparency test.

In Group 1, we have horses who range from mild but annoying and ongoing mouthiness and nippiness behavior, to full on dangerous displays of behaviors such as bolting, bucking, etc. Pretty straightforward.

In Group 2, we have horses who may on the surface appear to cope pretty well with it, but what they are usually doing is coping by existing in an ongoing state of functional freeze. These are horses that tend to “fit the program.” Could be a mustang formerly untouched for most of their life, could be a selectively bred foal who's been rubbed all over in the days just after birth with no choice but to accept it… This kind of horse who copes via functional freeze since they aren’t actually okay with being touched won’t typically show outward and overt signs of stress, such as the horses described in Group 1. Instead, you might see them and describe them as “compliant.” But perhaps, a bit of a dull eye… an eye that’s lost its spark… (Side note: I think there's a reason it’s been said that eyes are the window to the soul. In freeze, I see it as a horse’s soul leaves their body and hence the eye appears vacant. Like no one’s really there… and it’s a process to help the horse feel safe enough to invite their soul back into their body.) Of course, if we look closer, we will see the horse doesn’t really blink much. And there's small signs of tension in the horse’s face, but they’re for the most part very good about keeping it inside. They might also be persistently spooky, and just seem unsettled in their own bodies. They might also be “dull” and it seems large amounts of pressure need to be used to motivate them.

These Group 2 horses are interesting. Because, they might appear to be accepting of touch and humans. But, the relationship doesn’t survive transparency. It doesn’t survive the transparency of this test I’ve outlined here.

I’ve started to implement this question in my own life when I come across something that doesn’t quite sit right to me– “Would this survive transparency?”

Sticking with the horse world for a moment, if I come across a training method that doesn’t sit right, I can simply ask, would this technique survive transparency? If I ask “why,” does the claim start to get shaky and fall apart? Do I get the answer “That’s just the way it’s always been done” or deflection via a response like “Maam, I’m the expert, I’ve trained hundreds of horses, let me do my job.” Do I get a response that offers an explanation for the why, but I do some research and find it to be false, or find other ways of achieving the same thing without compromising my values? Do I get a response that is emotional with fluffy language but no actual substance?

Now widening our lens, going beyond the horse world and into wider webs of relation… I have a teacher, Leah Manaema Avene, who often says, “Colonialism can’t survive transparency.”

There are so many common narratives, narratives we take for granted, always having taken them for being true since we have been told them since the time we could talk, that cannot actually survive transparency– such as, for example, when we hear history from the perspective of the “conquered” not the “conqueror” (I say this for lack of better words to get my point across, while acknowledging that there are people here among us who are certainly not “conquered” and stand firm in their resistance to this day) or when we hear history from the lens of the global majority.

I thought about that a lot the other day because I came across a video online that spoke about how folks like myself, who are advocating for a Free Palestine and demanding an end to the genocide, are “dangerous terrorists.” Folks in the comments were even advocating for their “deportation.”

Does this claim - albeit emotionally stirring for sure, as it was meant to be - survive transparency? No. If you disagree, are you willing to put your beliefs to the test?

Personally, it feels important for me to put my beliefs to the test. Coming back to the horse world - If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be the horsewoman I am today. I probably would’ve gotten severely injured if not killed, or at least a part of me would’ve had to die - the part of me that longed for a deeper, authentic relationship with horses and the part of me that wanted to dedicate my life's work to helping horses who failed to "fit the program." With so many things I came across, something inside of me wasn’t content with the answers or status quo. I kept asking “why,” kept peeling back the layers, and sought deeper answers. I also needed to be able to articulate what I was doing, especially coming into this industry as a young woman. I couldn’t be standing on shaky ground, I had to be well informed and put my beliefs to the test before others did to question my credibility. Perhaps there’s a lot of different reasons I’ve developed this habit.

I think on some level we know when things won’t survive the test of transparency… but we might avoid putting them to the test because of the truth that would be, then, less able to hide. We would have to come eye to eye with it. We couldn’t keep brushing it under the rug. When we put it to the test, when it becomes glaringly obvious, we’d probably have to do something about it.

There have certainly been times in my life I kept avoiding the truth - which maybe was keeping me alive to an extent - until it wasn't. Until this denial was killing me. Until I was starving for truth.

I think back to a boyfriend I had once, who called me on the phone and said he was at home, when I could clearly hear things on the phone that told me he was in the car. But he told me he was at home, repeatedly. And because I didn’t want to face the fallout, have to come to terms with the pain of the truth right in front of me, I chose to believe him, albeit maybe not consciously. Luckily I eventually did leave that relationship, when the truth became too glaringly obvious, and a friend wouldn’t let me look away any longer. And then I plunged into a long darkness and faced fears I’d been avoiding around being unlovable, etc. But ultimately it freed me to find more authentic relationships, relationships where I was treated with respect. I know other women who haven’t been so lucky. I think of a woman I know who endured years of abuse from her husband and kept the letters of him promising he’d change in a box for 30 years. She is still alive, but there is barely a trace of her left.

I think back to horses and how many of us don’t want transparency, for good reason… What would confronting the truth mean? What would it ask of us? It might mean we can’t keep riding our horse who isn’t okay with touch, and maybe our livelihood depends on riding this horse, or maybe it's the one thing that keeps us sane in this world. It would mean we would have to face the parts of ourselves feeling guilt and shame over riding a horse that was saying no (which, Holly Truhlar, Desiree Adaway, & Rachael Rice have started recognizing as “the sixth gate of grief: the harms we’ve done. The ache of the impacts we’ve had—knowingly or unknowingly—through silence, fragility, overwhelm, supremacy, entitlement, complicity, urgency, and simply being human in times of late capitalism. This grief is sacred,” Holly shares in her recent Substack, Rituals of Repair.) It would mean, in some cases, our whole world view becomes cracked. And this can be absolutely terrifying, when the foundation we’ve thought was sturdy underneath our feet begins to crack. What ground would we have left to stand on? Sometimes it feels like we will just be swallowed up in an abyss of pain. Sometimes that is what happens. And not all of us can afford to be swallowed up, especially in this culture, without the proper support systems in place, when others’ livelihoods as well as our own depend on us showing up each day no matter what.

So I’m not telling others what to do. It’s not always so simple. Not everyone has the luxury of falling apart like I did. This is just my story, and I realize it is not, nor should be, everyone’s story necessarily.

But if I’m telling my story, here’s what I’ll leave you with. I remember when I woke up to reclaim my own life, when I finally saw with transparency. I wrote:

“what you thought was safe was traumatizing
what you thought was love was control
what you thought was weak was strong
what you thought was free was caged
what you thought was you was him

and in that moment, she began walking her path to freedom.”

I'm still walking. But I've gotten past the fence, at least. And on the other side of the pain, I found truth dripping down my chin. Authentic and fulfilling relationships. Unbridled joy. I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s actually, really really f*king hard. There were times I didn’t think I’d make it out alive – I wasn’t sure if it would kill me. But I knew staying in the same place I was most certainly would.