As an equestrian, a great deal of what I do either directly involves horses or ties back to them in some way. This summer I had the chance to work with a horse who has a particular personality, and although he was far from easy to like at the beginning, he has become a horse I genuinely look forward to spending time with. Now, why bother writing about this at all and trying to get non-horse people to read it? Because this horse has taught me a great deal about myself. In trying to get to know him, I found that there were many things I could learn about myself and others just by spending time with him and figuring out how to appreciate him. And, even though he may just be a horse, interactions with him have taught me at least as much as getting to know any person.

1. Everyone is struggling with something, and we should strive to be kind and understand.

After spending a few days working with this horse, the best analogy I could come up with for his personality was that he was like a person who was constantly afraid their relationship would fail and thus resorted to sabotaging it at every opportunity so as not to be let down. I couldn’t force him to like me or believe in me, so I decided that simply showing up and being consistent would have to do. After a few weeks, he did indeed get better, and he even got a little bit sweet instead of constantly being angry. In my comparison between the horse and someone with a boatload of emotional issues, I decided that at the very least, I should try to be kinder to the people I know. Even though this horse came across as angry, that was not the real problem at hand: an expectation of nothing but bad interactions left him to default to angry. When he figured out that sometimes things went well, he got a bit less angsty about life. Sometimes it just takes someone showing up repeatedly and making a small difference.

2. Even if you don’t like someone, mutual respect is probably a good place to start.

When I started working with him, I decided that even if this horse never liked me, he would have to respect me—mostly because he is vastly larger than I am. Horses, like kids, do well when they have boundaries and know what reactions certain things will get, so I worked hard on making sure we understood each other and had ground rules. After we had basic ground rules, things got much better, and even before he liked me, he was at least more tolerable and easier to deal with.

3. Positive speaking and thinking are actually hugely important.

This horse, like most, is very intelligent, but he might be a bit too smart for his own good. A joke around the barn is that he can understand actual words, particularly negative ones directed at him. So, when I worked with him I made a conscious effort to only say positive things and be kind. That sounds a bit silly, but he would genuinely get angry if someone said something bad about him within his hearing. On top of that, when I was in high school, my mother used to tell me that I shouldn’t think negatively about my horses because it would impact the way I interacted with them, and I believe that one hundred percent. Even on days when things did not go well or this horse was difficult to ride—which was completely understandable as he still has relatively little training—I would always try to keep my thoughts positive. Being negative only makes it harder to deal with everything (and not just when confronted with a sassy horse).

4. You might be the hard sell at some point.

And wouldn't you much rather someone took the time to get to know you before they simply wrote you off? This might be the idea that I’ve had in my head the longest as I thought about this article. I know that I myself am not necessarily the easiest person to love all the time, but I certainly hope that people like and respect me. The lovely, familiar phrase, ‘Treat others how you would like to be treated,’ or the Golden Rule that we learned in grade school, certainly applies here. Much like this horse, most of us would probably love respect and consistency in our interactions with others, regardless of the mutual feelings. Whether or not we like someone, we should at least afford them the decency of trying to understand why they are the way they are. In addition we are often our own worst critics and judges, somehow unable to give ourselves the compassion we would readily show to others. A little compassion definitely goes a long way, whether it is towards ourselves or others.