Conversation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36040505
I responed because the article talks about setting and keeping boundaries well. From the original article:
“If a dog misbehaves - chases stock, plays with a lamb, or gets out of the paddock, for example - I'll use a gruff voice and a hard look. If the dog persists in the undesirable behavior and looks for approval, I'll refuse to look at it or face it.”
What people in the country who work with animals learn that people in cities typically don't is how to relate to other animals, and the importance of things like consitency, principle, fearlessness, physicality, competence, moral clarity, being unhesitant, ownership and responsibility, and other techniques that can often imply some underlying philosophical values. You need physical competence to form the plan that expresses clear intention though your actions, which must be consistent so that another animal can understand.
I came to it late, where I am very much from the city, and spent most weekends in the country growing up, but as an adult I have spent most of my free time with dogs and horses and I can say that it cultivates a wordless presence that I apply to relating to people as well. The example I would use is just last week I walked into a herd of horses who were engaged in a power struggle because a late-gelded former stallion had been added to the turnout that day. He was disruptive enough that the whole herd had to re-establish its order, which meant a lot of biting and rearing and kicking and stampeding in the field. They don't understand words, but they understand intention. I was able to separate the herd's leader, a gelding who was protecting his role from the new guy by keeping him away from the mares, and walk him a couple hundred yards to the gate because he's the horse I ride these days, but then my concentration broke, and he started bucking and rearing on the lead and acting uncontrolable. The rest of the herd saw the commotion with him and, seeing that he wasn’t out of play just yet, ran away from the new contender and all 20 or so of them ran across the field towards us at the fence. I was able to unclip his halter from my lead and let him go before the rest of the herd stampeded in, and he ran out to head them off, and they all ran back out into the field together. But I had to go back out there again to get him, because once he knew there was uncertainty in my actions, any further attempts would only teach him and the other horses how long they could get away with ignoring me, and that creates dangerous situations for everyone involved. I walked out there again and stood among them in the herd to re-establish an equillibrium and set a boundary for a while, but without trying to bring any in. Once the herd was calm, I left, but only after establishing my intention and their acquiescence to it by being able to direct them to move together across the field to the left and the right, even if I couldn't separate their leader from them without letting the new guy cause chaos again. You don't always get what you want, but you do have to prevail on them.
Taking one big stupid risk like that can offset a lot of constant reocurring random risks down the road, and given there are other people who ride these horses and care for them, my failure to separate my horse could set a precedent that puts others in danger, and so it felt like a responsibility. A real horseman would have known about the volatility in the herd beforehand and brought the whole herd in together, which is how the barn staff resolved it, and my emboldened response to a failure was the consequence of an inferior upstream prior choice - I didn’t solve a problem I hadn’t caused. However, this is where I am in my own training, and this whole pursuit is about finding my level and improving it every single time.
Going back out there to assert myself after a failure might seem like pride, and to a great extent it was. Among humans it would be petty, and our relationships are dynamic and complementary, if not even somewhat equal, but among animals, you either assert your humanity and the necessary boundaries of its domain, or you are just another animal to them that is smaller, weaker, slower, softer, fearful, and subject to the whims of nature. I didn’t go back out there to win, but to establish a memory with the herd where we were in balance again. Offering kindness or affection to animals is fine when you are in a position to share it, but as a barter or with expectations you can't expect them to understand, it's just bargaining that dangerously diminishes your humanity. That said, this is about working with animals, so your mileage may vary on applying it to the rest of you life, because people are more complicated than animals, mostly.