Meeting points: choreographies of horses and humans

Lynda Birke

doi:10.23984/fjhas.53189

Abstract

In this paper, I explore horse-human interactions as ‘meeting points’, using three points or places at which we come together with horses. These are: in the stable, leading a horse, and riding. Each shapes the interspecies engagement, in a kind of trajectory. Ways of engaging with each other form within the confines of stable or corral, which then continue into other activities. The idea of meeting points serves to emphasise that these are meetings with an other, someone who has agency and who helps to create the patterns of subsequent interactions. These are meetings born out of individual experience, and which help to produce the mindedness of the horse.

Highlights

We live our lives in spatial relationships with many other animals
Human-animal relationships are lived through sharing of spaces; we cohabit within buildings, within cities, within parks and woods
Horses have largely moved out of cities, and today are predominantly associated with rural life, our encounters with them are usually constrained by, and shaped within, physical boundaries

Summary

Introduction

We live our lives in spatial relationships with many other animals. I live in an old farmhouse in rural England, along with two dogs. Human-animal relationships are lived through sharing (or not) of spaces; we cohabit within buildings, within cities, within parks and woods. Some of those relationships are just that: cohabitation, requiring little direct interaction, shaped and made possible by the spaces and buildings we have constructed. Like my relationships with the dogs and horses, seem to be more mutual, a shared choreography within those spaces. Expectancies develop such that each understands how the other moves, where they will be Such learning to orient around one another requires paying close attention, and is fundamental to our (sometimes) close relations with companion animals. I use these sources to explore three ways in which human and equine bodies meet and move around one another: the spatial practices of meeting in the stable, leading alongside, and riding

Meeting points in shared spaces

Meeting Point One

Meeting Point Two

Meeting Point Three

Trajectories