ta - so how do I/we instill bodylanguage wise confidence in a horse encountered and what is to be avoided?
entirely innocent question i stress - no intention of deceiving/entrapping a horse.
Maybe I have a natural affinity with the mysterious creatures - my ponderings on this theme come from an encounter with a couple of horses on a fairly recent ride to Lytham.
they wandered over but I was in a bit of a hurry so I felt a bit guilty at dragging them across a field.
It was fine that you left them. For their health, horses need to move much more than most domesticated horses do - some of which necessary movement was achieved by their wandering over to you - and by leaving them you didn't disappoint them in any way, you merely confirmed that humans are totally harmless. It's likely that, unknowingly, you already have the relaxed, non-aggressive sort of posture that tells the horse you're not a threat, which is why they wandered over to you.
Horses are stoic - it protects them as a prey animal - and not very vocal about life in general, so we often think they are not very communicative but we couldn't be more wrong. From body language to facial expressions, they are actually very communicative. Just not in the ways
we usually think of communication. They have a much greater ability to understand - and follow! - us through our body language than most of us have of theirs, or of our own. Phenomena like
Clever Hans display this to perfection; Hans was responding to cues which his trainer
did not know he was giving.
Of course all horses are different, but basically don't be loud and blustery, avoid fast sudden movements, but don't be silent and creep around them either; those are the ways that a predator will act.
Don't approach directly, staring at them with your shoulders back, striding out. Instead, half turn away, slump your shoulders a little, mutter a bit or sing, observe them closely - but out of the corner of your eye. If they are wary, watching you from a distance behind the gate, turn sideways to them or even turn your back on them - this will encourage them to approach. You might then feel hot breath on the back of your neck ...If that happens, please don't jump away in shock or shout when the whiskery muzzle touches you! That's just the way a horse finds out about something new or strange - by touching it with its muzzle. Turn your head slowly and speak quietly, acknowledging its presence. If it was that wary, it'll probably already have backed away, anyhow.
In a leaning-over-the-gate 'hello' situation where the horse is happy to approach you, many horses enjoy having their head or neck rubbed or stroked; being patted is not something they generally like as much - it's more of a learned acknowledgement for doing something. Many horses are not keen on their ears being handled but if they want to have behind their ears scratched, they're perfectly capable of making it clear by stretching out and tipping their head and neck towards you! Sometimes scratching them under the chin can elicit a 'flehmen' response, or if you have something smelling a bit odd on your hands (odd to the horse, that is - you might not even be aware of it). A normal horse rather enjoys close physical contact with others and with humans, of course they are so very much larger, stronger and heavier than us that injuries - fortunately usually of a minor sort - are almost inevitable when 'mixing it' around them. They will lean on you and rub against you and it's easy for them to push you over (but they rarely do). Push on them and they'll simply push back harder. For many years I rarely had a full set of intact toe-nails ... there's no issue for the horse if I step on its toe, but there's a big issue for me when (not if!) it steps on mine! But it was rarely more than a black toe-nail as they know they're stepping on something and remove that (often iron shod) hoof pretty fast!
My farrier grandfather and uncle both had something of the 'horse whisperer' type skill/ability, long before it was widely recognised and sought out; unknowingly I must have picked (inherited?) some of it up from them; I used to spend a lot of time at the smithy from being a tiny tot but there's another story in that.
