Melodie was about four years old when she took on the responsibility of leading our herd…That’s about twenty in human years, which seems awfully young to be responsible for an entire community, but Melodie has always been a bit of an old soul.
When she arrived at Missed Path Sanctuary, there wasn’t much of a herd to lead…Just Annie, our miniature horse, who had previously led a herd of about twelve horses…Now, before you get too impressed with Melodie, consider that Annie managed to keep twelve horses in line while standing barely three feet tall…Proof that leadership has very little to do with size, and even less to do with how intimidating you can be.
Annie was a good leader, but I suspect the responsibility had taken its toll on her…She’d already endured more than her share of neglect, and when Melodie arrived, something rather beautiful happened…There was no struggle for dominance, no jockeying for position…The two simply settled into a comfortable rhythm…Annie seemed relieved to have someone watching out for her for a change, and Melodie seemed perfectly happy to take on the responsibility.
When Sunny arrived, Melodie had her work cut out for her…He’d been beaten and battered by his previous life, and while he had the potential to become a wonderful second in command, he wasn’t ready for the job…He needed time to heal and find his confidence…And Melodie gave him that time…Today, Sunny is an excellent partner in the business of keeping our little community safe and functioning.
That’s one of the things I admire most about Melodie…She doesn’t need everyone to be something they’re not in order to be an effective leader…And she certainly doesn’t confuse leadership with control…Watch Melodie for any length of time and you might wonder whether she’s actually doing anything at all…She rarely needs more than a movement of an ear, a shift of her head, or a subtle change in her energy to communicate what she wants…The other horses respond because they’ve learned to trust her judgment, and she’s never given them much reason to question it.
She also gives them room to make their own decisions…Rather like a mother watching her children at the playground, she’s happy to let them explore and figure things out for themselves, but she’s always keeping an eye on what’s happening…Even when Melodie and Sunny are up in the upper pasture getting their exercise, Melodie keeps a loose eye on the herd below, knowing Annie can handle things in her absence.
Daisy, our blind mare, is particularly attached to Melodie, and with good reason…This is Daisy’s third herd…The first rejected her when she went blind, and while the second tolerated her, none of the horses took responsibility for her safety…She lived in a constant state of stress until she arrived here, where Melodie and the others welcomed her without reservation…Occasionally, when Melodie is up the mountain, Daisy will call out to her…Melodie answers, and Daisy goes right back to whatever she was doing…She doesn’t need Melodie standing beside her every minute of the day…She just needs to know she’s there.
Of course, Melodie isn’t perfect. She occasionally gets irritated and might make a bigger request than necessary, but once the situation is resolved, so is the energy…She doesn’t hold a grudge or continue escalating to make sure everybody knows who’s boss…She simply returns to being Melodie.
She uses the energy the situation requires…And no more…
In the work we do at The Thirsty Horse Academy, we call that Softness…And softness is often misunderstood…It isn’t weakness or passivity…It’s the ability to use precisely the amount of energy necessary to achieve an end result without wasting energy on force…Softness is the distinction between POWER and FORCE. And if you want to see what happens when that distinction gets lost, allow me to introduce Emil…
Now, I love Emil…But he’s not exactly what you’d call a benevolent ruler…Emil is a Connemara pony with a complicated history, and he’s currently working through some challenges that make it difficult for him to regulate his energy…I’ve known him for eight years, and even before his current difficulties, he had a rather heavy-handed approach to getting his way.
The thing about Emil is that he seems to have an awful lot going on between those two fuzzy ears of his…And while I can’t pretend to know what he’s thinking, I sometimes wonder whether he’s so busy managing whatever is happening inside his own head that he has very little energy left to consider what’s happening in the heads of those he’s supposed to be leading.
It’s almost as though every situation requires him to reestablish his authority, whether anybody has challenged it or not…And when a leader is constantly occupied with proving he’s in charge, the needs of those being led can become something of an inconvenience…Which is unfortunate…Particularly when you’re the one being inconvenienced.
When Melodie is absent and Emil has access to the smaller herd, he tends to appoint himself leader… And to be fair, he does many of the things a leader is supposed to do…He establishes boundaries, manages movement, and makes sure everyone understands the pecking order…The problem isn’t necessarily WHAT he’s doing…It’s HOW he’s doing it.
Where Melodie might begin with a whisper, Emil starts with a shout…His energy seems to say, “You’re going to listen to ME now!”…And just in case anybody missed the announcement, he’s perfectly happy to repeat it…It’s exhausting just watching him…And I suspect it’s considerably more exhausting being one of the horses he’s trying to lead. The difference becomes particularly apparent in the way he treats Daisy…
Having finally found a herd where she belongs, Daisy is understandably comfortable with the arrangement…Unfortunately, Emil seems to have a rather different opinion…When he’s allowed into the herd, he’ll drive Daisy away from the others, and even after she’s retreated, he’ll go out of his way to intimidate her again…It’s possible that he’s responding to some ancient evolutionary instinct to protect the herd by excluding a vulnerable member, but whatever the motivation, he seems determined to make sure she STAYS away…I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on in Emil’s mind, but the result is unmistakable…Daisy becomes isolated and anxious in the very herd that normally provides her with safety…And Emil’s approach doesn’t just affect Daisy…It changes the energy of the entire herd.
Under Melodie’s leadership, the horses are generally relaxed, cooperative, and comfortable with one another…There are disagreements, of course…They’re horses, not a collection of enlightened monks…But disagreements tend to be resolved quickly, and everybody gets on with the business of being a horse.
Under Emil, there’s more tension, more vigilance, and more energy spent anticipating what might happen next.
The strongest vibration in a herd eventually becomes the vibration of the herd itself…Not necessarily the most functional vibration, but the STRONGEST one…
Horses are extraordinarily sensitive to the energy around them, and they adjust their behavior accordingly…When the prevailing energy is calm and confident, that calm tends to spread…When it’s forceful and controlling, the other horses begin adapting to that instead…Over time, those adaptations can become habits, and eventually, the character of the herd begins to change.
If I allowed Emil to continue leading through force, I suspect we’d eventually have a pasture full of little Emils…Everybody pushing, everybody defending their position, and everybody using more energy than necessary just to get through the day…What a delightful place THAT would be to spend an afternoon!
And here’s the irony…Emil would probably still accomplish many of the things a herd leader is supposed to accomplish…The horses would move when he told them to move, yield when he demanded it, and learn the boundaries he imposed…From a distance, it might even look like effective leadership.
But compliance isn’t the same thing as cooperation…And neither is necessarily evidence of trust…Force can produce a result, sometimes very quickly, but there’s a cost to using force instead of power…And that cost is often paid by everyone EXCEPT the one exercising it.
Melodie doesn’t need to prove her authority every five minutes because her authority is already established…She doesn’t need to control every decision because she trusts the herd to make many of those decisions for themselves…And she doesn’t need to exclude a vulnerable member to maintain order because her leadership is strong enough to accommodate that vulnerability.
In fact, I would argue that Daisy’s place in the herd tells us more about the quality of Melodie’s leadership than almost anything else…It’s easy to lead when everyone is strong, confident, and capable of keeping up…The real measure of leadership may be what happens to those who aren’t.
For now, Emil has his own space where he can enjoy the company of the other horses without disrupting the herd…He also gets time in the upper pasture with Annie, who, despite being roughly a third of his size, has absolutely no intention of tolerating his nonsense…And somehow, they get along rather well…I suspect Annie could teach Emil a thing or two about leadership, assuming he can get past the indignity of taking instruction from someone who barely reaches his knees.
Meanwhile, Melodie continues to do what she’s always done…Quietly watching over her herd, making room for each member to be who they are, and stepping in when her leadership is needed…She isn’t perfect, and she doesn’t need to be…What makes her extraordinary isn’t that she never uses force…It’s that she understands the difference between having the ability to use it and needing to.
A leader doesn’t simply determine where a herd goes…A leader helps determine who the herd becomes along the way…
Because sooner or later, the energy we lead with becomes the energy we live in.
—by Marc DiFrancia,
Co-founder