It’s always been important to be clear-eyed and thoughtful. . . in just about any forum. Take work and play for example. I have been a good runner and cyclist, I like to take pictures. I process a lot my thoughts in written form. And, academically, historically, passions ran to English, journalism, and social psychology. On those long, overnight drives to Florida at (what used to be called) Easter vacation, I would do mental math calculations, averaging rates of speed (odometers are never quite accurate!), mileage (converting, again at the time, US MPG to Canadian gallons and dollars), and ETA’s (usually courtesy of our trusty CAA TripTik). So I guess we’d have to throw ‘stats’ into that mix as well.

The catch of course is that I was never going to be a pro photographer, successful author, humanities prof, or win the Tour d’anything. Becoming the next Edwin Zimbardo was not in the cards. (Bit esoteric, but next to the great and now infamous Milgram ‘shock study’, a masterful designer of social psych ‘experiments’.) In short, I was never going to keep pasta on the table doing any of the above. These were, at most, long-cultivated hobbies. Essentially, play.

Leisure time or otherwise, my interest in human behaviour has remained a constant. While clinical psychology has (happily) continued to be the ‘bread and butter’ — if we’re allowed gluten-filled, high fat metaphors anymore — it’s been the ‘dividing the world into two camps’ that fascinates. Reductionist, overly simplified to be sure — but captivating nonetheless.

The buzz phrase of late has become ‘evidence-based’. For very good reason, one would like to build one’s practices and beliefs around the science, the data, the verifiable outcome of a particular approach, intervention. Hard to argue with that position. Well evidently not. Which is where the social psychological genie finds its (gender neutral) way out of the bottle. Seems ‘the evidence’ is a very fluid entity — wildly eager to be influenced by all manner of factors that have precious little to do with fact. What we want (need?) to be true, becomes true — becomes ‘the science’. Anecdote replaces tested evidence. Opinion becomes gospel (in too many cases, literally). Experts abound — and are oh so willing to share the ‘wisdom’.

Following the State of the Union night a month or so back, talking heads (on both sides of the great divide) speculated about the gap between the data (inflation is stable, even decreasing, crime is on the decline, and the sky is blue) and perception (cost of living is killing me — not to mention those nasty, evil-minded migrants, and the last election was a fraud). What’s the deal? Turns out it’s one of those ‘it depends’ things. Depends who you ask. Depends where you live. Depends on which side of the bed you got out of. What it doesn’t depend on is ‘the data’. Those (depending on one’s agenda!) are biased, incomplete, or just . . . wrong (apparently).

And thus to horses. The apple of my wife’s eye is a four year old mare. The relationship began some two years ago, initially as a gateway back into the world as Covid began to ebb and connection at something less than six feet distant was tentatively allowed. Relative newbies to ‘vertical condo living’ when the portal closed with a crash in early 2020, we adjusted badly to ‘containment’ (pandemic- as well as residentially-determined). Despite the idyllic location — spitting distance from Lake Ontario in a welcoming building on the edge of ‘old Oakville’ — my wife’s proclamation came as no surprise, as it mirrored my own sense of entrapment: ‘I just want to go and shovel s____!’ In deep ‘garden withdrawal’, reliant on elevator travel as a prelude to going anywhere (including walking the dog at 2:00 a.m.), bounded by rule arbitrariness on all sides, and (somewhat ironically, given that this was immediately post-pandemic) eager to be quit of people for a bit. . . this made perfect sense. 1200 pounds of Equus caballas was just the ticket — both as a source of said focus for shovelling and insulation from humanity.

And so began the next iteration of band membership. Preceded by church affiliations, choral participation, group travel, exercise packs — all with their established ‘oaths of allegiance’ — the benefits generally far outweighed the admission fee (sort of). And as with any ‘organization’, formed around a common theme / interest, barns of course are no different. They may look like big horse houses. . . but in reality, the ponies are the justification for gathering. As with sociology of any stripe, humanity, and all the variations therein, forms the raison d’être, defines the ‘club rules’, and, of course, scripts the mythologies and lore — you know, those things that displace ‘the data’. 

‘Horse sense’ is something of an oxymoron — at least in the human context. Horses, as it turns out, are pretty sensible. Green garbage bags flapping in the wind, a tractor rumbling down a mow ramp, snorting and lurching, the random crack of a whip — all, to use the common parlance, trigger warnings. To the human, behaviour to be ‘corrected’, suppressed, sadly, even punished. ‘Clear’ indications that said 1200 pound psychopathic beast is headed down the rocky road to chaos and erraticism. Signage above the hay net and water bowl, giving the (human) head’s up that strange and dangerous creatures may be about today and ought not to distress. . . about as useful to this prey animal as the caution on the lecture hall door that upsetting topics will be addressed in today’s class discussing Lady Chatterley’s choices. 

Happily my wife’s predisposition for listening over pronouncing, eschewing the compulsion to engage the anecdotal over the evidence-based, has stood her in good stead — mostly with the horses; who, as it turns out, are ‘speaking’ the only language they have — behaviour. As with all those other ‘speechless’ species, there are no bad horses (well, maybe one or two). There are a lot of folklore-schooled, eager to share humans — whose ‘behaviour’, again as it turns out, is pretty indicative of what colour state they may hail from, which side of the great divide they would land on (if tossed in the air on a windy day — as often happens), which ‘sacred book’ they consulted before pontificating. And so, much s____ has been shovelled . . . and heard. And the relationships thrive.