What language do you use with your horse?

What language do you use to speak to your horse? Have you even given any thoughts to it? I began to reflect on it as I exercised, over the course of a few summers, a horse in England while I was on holiday there. I am French, and a French native speaker. Yet, when I first started to ride this horse, I spoke to him in English. Because that’s what his owner did. Because I assumed he would understand my vocal cues better. Because it was what he was used to. 

And I did not think much about it. It’s not as if I was having long discussions with this horse. I told him to “walk on”, “trot”, “canter,” “stop”, that he was “a good boy” (or a naughty one sometimes – often). He did not listen to me very much, anyway. An off-the-track thoroughbred, he liked doing his own thing, knew he was stronger than me, and had moments when he did not hesitate to gallop away with me, in spite of my protestations, both vocal and physical. When he was in a certain mood, he listened to neither body language nor spoken language.

The last summer during which I rode him, I became fed up of speaking to him in English. I’m not sure why. Maybe because he did not listen anyway. Maybe because I’m just used to speaking to horses in French. So I switched to my own language. And I had the surprise of realising that he was listening to me better, especially when I was talking to him to calm him down. I think it was because speaking in my native tongue made my intentions and meaning clearer. Or was it because if found the sounds and intonations more soothing? Or both? Are some languages, because of their melody, more suited to horses than others?

Horses learn to understand vocal cues, just as they learn to read our body language and to decipher our facial expressions. But is it the actual words that they respond to? Or the tone? Maybe they base their response on a series of other cues, such as subtle changes in our demeanour or on all sort of physical indications of which we are not even aware but which they instinctively decipher: think of Clever Hans, a horse who, in the late 19th and early 20th century was thought capable of solving mathematical problems but was basing his answers on subtle bodily cues unconsciously given by the people interrogating him. 

I have moved to England now and have taken my French horse with me. I still speak to him in French, as I’ve always done. If other people speak to him at the yard, they do so in English. I haven’t been able to see his reaction then. I wonder what they would be. I guess he would understand them as well as he understands me. Though I’d be curious to know if he would react to “back up” as well as he does to “reculer” – backing up is one of his favourite exercises and one of the vocal cues to which he responds best. This is something I’ll have to try out! 

As for the two Dartmoor Hill ponies I got in November, I decided to talk to them in French, because that is the language that comes to me spontaneously. I even gave them French names, to which they now answer. They react when I speak to them, looking at me, raising their head.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that the intent behind the words is more important than the words themselves. And that the best language to use with horses is the one that makes your feeling the clearest. The one with which you are the most truthful. You cannot lie to horses. They read us too well and grasp too easily the real meaning behind our words. So it doesn’t matter which language you use: as long as you are sincere, horses will understand.