Scratching an Itch

This blog entry is a collaborative effort. Lynne Gerard and Eva Knodt very kindly permitted me to use their photos here (see captions for photographer). Alene Sibley generously allowed me to publish the story identified in the text. Heartfelt thanks Lynne, Eva, and Alene!

Mutual grooming. Photo by Eva Knodt

Please take a few moments to imagine yourself in a horse’s body. You are suddenly without arms, without hands, without fingers.... without fingernails. Imagine all the places you can reach on yourself with your teeth, or perhaps with a gentle rub of your hoof. Now imagine all the places you cannot reach -- your ears, the top of your head, your withers, the mane line, the insides of your hind thighs, the dock of your tail, the midline of your belly..... The list of places you cannot reach is long and all those places are particularly susceptible to being itchy. What’s a horse to do?

You can perhaps find a tree or a rock to rub up against. Or, you might call on a friend to help you out. Another horse will know right where you need scratching, and with how much pressure, and for how long. A human friend has those wonderful appendages with fingernails, and can get to places with them that another horse cannot -- the insides of ears, under the jaw, in the center of the udder, .... But, most human beings -- even the best intentioned ones -- don't have a horse's innate sense of what another horse needs. So, a horse has to make an extra effort to let his human friend know that he needs to be scratched, and show him where.

One friend helping out another. Photo by Eva Knodt

Some of you are probably rolling your eyes right now as you see the length of this post and are wondering what on earth I can find to say about something as everyday, as ordinary, as scratching an itch. Everyone knows that horses do this for each other, and sometimes a human will scratch an itch for the horses in his life. What’s the big deal?

Part of the answer is that this ordinary little act, the scratching of an itch, is actually extraordinarily powerful. It can be a wonderful gift to a horse. It’s a way of putting our love for horses, or for one particular horse, into action. In other words, scratching an itch is an act of love.

Here is a story that illustrates this. The author is Alene Sibley, a friend to horses and other animals as well as a friend to me. We met at NHE (Nevzorov Haute Ecole - Alexander and Lydia Nevzorov’s forum and online school). Alene kindly gave me permission to share this excerpt from her NHE diary entry of October, 2007.

“I was away this past weekend in New York City for a wedding. The weather was astounding--summertime all over again. Before we left on Monday morning we went for a walk in Central Park. Central Park is one of the most wonderful places I've visited EXCEPT: surrounding the park, walking through the park, waiting at all entrances, are the carriage horses. So many of them, and it makes for a crushing and helpless feeling. I imagined that there must have been people walking by human slaves over a century ago with feelings like I was having.

I was walking along a sidewalk as we were leaving, and there was a lovely black Percheron standing idly as his driver waited for the next fare. A boy with some friends walked up to the horse and was sort of laughing, teasing the horse not to scare him, and the horse turned his head to look at the boy who then screamed and dashed away (what must that be like to have people popping up to you from outside of your blinders, shrieking at you?). I walked up to the horse and stood at his face, then reached out and asked if I might touch his nose. I chose to not shroud him in sorrow and sympathy, but rather to tell him the news that there are a lot of people working very hard on behalf of horses, and that change was in the air, and that I was sorry it had to be this way now. He looked at me so deeply, wise and kind, and not totally lost as some horses can be. After some mutual tiny nuzzling, he turned his head and threw it back toward his girth in a clear message that there was an itch back there which, due to all of his equipment, was unreachable to him. Somehow he understood this to be the one thing which I have mastered! I started searching, found the spot and OH, he was so pleased for the help. So pleased. Too soon it was time to leave, but I resumed scratching twice when he asked me to, although I had to turn my back on him finally. And he returned to standing there with all the grace in the world. I will not forget him, or all of them, lines of them, in their carriage "finery," smelling of the pungent stalls to which they return at the end of the day. I want each little act of love that everyone here in NHE is making to keep spreading and spreading. In fact, if I hadn't been in this forum this year, I would have just petted this horse but never given him a moment's help with his itchiness. And so I won't go on and on at this moment about how bleak is the plight of these horses, and what this makes me feel, but I will keep looking forward.”

Kevin Droski and young Silvestre. Photo by Lynne Gerard

What a lesson in being fully present in the moment! And, what a gift such presence is for the one embraced by our mindfulness. As Alene's beautifully written story makes so clear, it is all well and good to be saddened at the plight of horses and to be overwhelmed by feelings of despair and outrage -- especially if your feelings move you to contribute to, or join, organizations that are working to better horses‘ lives. But, all that does absolutely nothing for this particular horse in front of you right here, right now. Alene gave that noble Percheron the greatest gift anyone could have given him in that moment -- she acknowledged him, she listened to him,... and she scratched his itch. She gave him relief and likely some pleasure, too. She put her love for horses into action in the moment, and thereby brought some love into that horse's life. That act of kindness made the world a slightly better place.

That’s part of the big deal of scratching an itch. And there’s more...

On page 155 of “Empowered Horses” there is a 3-photo series of Reno of Stonebrook in reclining position being scratched by Imke Spilker according to his directions. The caption is entitled “On the Art of Finding the Right Spot” and reads: “How does a person learn the ‘feel’ for the right aids? Reno begins our first lesson in how to sense a horse by lying on the ground. This way he is less intimidating and can indicate the right spots calmly and with great patience. In the beginning we human beings must learn very concretely with our hands how what we do is received by the horse, as Reno demonstrates here with me. His pleased expression gives clear feedback.

In time, with such groundwork, a person develops a comprehensive feel and is able to sense the spot where a horse needs human aid, even when the horse is moving.”

So, there is another part of the answer to “what’s the big deal?” Learning to sense a horse -- to know where he is itching -- develops our ability to listen, to understand what he is "saying" to us. This improves communication between us -- a powerful aid to building a friendship. And this ability to communicate with our friend, to sense his needs, is very necessary if we want to begin working with him to develop his strength and suppleness.

This is affirmed by Alexander and Lydia Nevzorov. A few years ago, when I was a member of their forum and online school, the first active lessons were -- playing and mutual grooming. (Playing, also discussed extensively in “Empowered Horses,” is a subject for other entries.)

The people who came to NHE thinking they’d be handed some secret tricks of Nevzorov’s for getting a horse to perform haute ecole movements at liberty were sorely disappointed in these deceptively simple lessons. They couldn’t see the sense in it -- after all, they were "serious,", they came here to learn haute ecole, not game playing and grooming. They wanted to go right to the “real” lessons. Those folks left the school pretty quickly.

What they didn’t “get” is that it is in those apparently simple lessons that “the secret” lives. Those lessons are the heart of matter. The work of NHE (like the work described in “Empowered Horses”) depends on intimate, trusting communication between horse and human -- communication that can only take place between close friends who know each other well. The purpose of these simple lessons was to help students develop a close friendship and a certain quality of communication with their horses. Everything else, EVERYTHING, rests on that foundation.

Fada (behind Kevin and Silvestre) seems to be asking, "What about me?" Photo by Lynne Gerard

Kochet taught me a lesson about the power of scratching an itch. Initially, I had some issues with NHE's “grooming” lesson. I could not separate that word from the act of using a currycomb and brushes of varying stiffness in a certain order to get a horse clean. Whether the horse wanted to be groomed, how he felt about it, had nothing to with the matter. In traditional horse keeping practice grooming is a necessary thing -- often done mechanically or completely absentmindedly -- to which a horse is expected to submit. Khemo and Desna quite like being groomed, so that was not a problem. However, Kochet had always HATED being curried or brushed. I had tried firm currycombs and brushes and the softest ones I could find and the ones in between. It made no difference. Kochet wanted no part of it.

In the time before I entered NHE, I had made Kochet a promise that he would never have to do anything he didn’t want to do (unless it was a health emergency). This included grooming. So how was this grooming lesson going to fit in with that promise? What follows is an excerpt from my NHE diary entry of July 6, 2007:

“...Strangely, and much to my amazement, I have been able to both keep my promise to Kochet and follow instructions to spend time...grooming. .... As I thought more and more about grooming, I realized that when horses “groom” each other, it has nothing at all to do with getting each other clean. So I could forget about my brushes and sponges ... and the idea of having a clean horse. All I needed to do was figure out where Kochet itched and scratch him there. Thanks to the millions of vicious bugs we have this summer, Kochet has itchy bites on his belly, his inner thighs, his chest... places Desna can’t reach easily, and anyway, she doesn’t have fingernails. Kochet nearly always accepts my offer of a good scratch session...

Lately, Kochet seems to like having me around. He has begun to show me affection, and just last night he offered to groom me. I accepted... and Kochet scraped his teeth very gently all across the crown of my head, ruffling my hair a little. It felt wonderful and I thanked him profusely when he finished. As I said, for horses, grooming is not about cleanliness. When I was typing my diary entry last nigh after I had come back from the barn, I noticed my head felt a little itchy. I reached up and my fingers closed on a small clump of something that turned out to be a bit of partially chewed grass.. a little tangible souvenir of Kochet grooming me."

So many horses, so few hands. Photo by Lynne Gerard

So to sum up, the big deal about the simple,ordinary, everyday, act of scratching an itch is that it is a tangible expression of our love for Horse, an act of kindness and consideration between close friends. It is a powerful -- perhaps indispensable -- aid in improving communication and building a friendship. It helps us humans improve our "listening" skills by developing our perceptiveness and sensitivity. It brings us into the here and now, into a state of mindfulness. All in all, it brings us closer to the horses we love.

Author Neale Donald Walsch wrote: “What you should do is answer the simple question: 'What would Love do now?’" I've made it part of my practice to ask that question in my life when I'm unsure what to do next -- including times when I'm interacting with Khe-Ra, Kochet, and Desna. Very often, especially at coat shedding time and in bug season, the answer is: Scratch an itch!

Kevin and Zeus - Finding the "sweet spot." Photo by Lynne Gerard