Who Shapes How You See Your Horse/Dog? How Perception Influences Behavior

This episode is a departure from my usual format.

I’m sharing something more personal and vulnerable, rooted in what’s happening in the world right now, because it feels too important to ignore.

At its heart, this episode is about perception. How easily we can be influenced to see what we expect to see, and how that plays out not only in current events, but also in the way we interpret our horses’ and dogs’ behavior.

I share a simple but powerful story about how expectation can override reality, and why certainty, especially when shaped by social influence, can disconnect us from what’s actually happening in front of us.

This same dynamic shows up frequently in animal training and handling. Animals labeled as stubborn, dominant, or difficult are often responding to discomfort, fear, confusion, or past experiences. When we rely on others’ interpretations instead of sensing for ourselves, we can miss what our animals are truly communicating.

I also reflect on why developing inner authority matters, how cultivating awareness supports clearer perception, and why these qualities are foundational to connection, with our animals and with each other.

This episode is not about telling you what to think. It’s an invitation to slow down, question assumptions, and reconnect with our shared humanity.

Resources:

Grab your FREE video training to help your dog. 🐕 https://www.marydebono.com/lovedog 💥

💥Learn how the Feldenkrais MethodⓇ can help improve your seat, position, and balance on your horse! Free rider videos masterclass: https://www.marydebono.com/rider 💥

Free FeldenkraisⓇ videos suitable for both equestrians and dog lovers. (No opt-in required.) https://freeclasses0723.movewithyourhorse.com

Get Mary’s bestselling, award-winning book, “Grow Young with Your Dog,” for a super low price at: https://tinyurl.com/growyoungwithyourdog. Demonstration videos are included at no extra cost. ⬅️⬅️⬅️

All information is for general educational purposes ONLY and doesn't constitute medical or veterinary advice or professional training advice. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider if you, your horse, or your dog are unwell or injured.  Always use extreme caution when interacting with horses and dogs.

About the Host:

Mary Debono is a pioneer in animal and human wellness, blending her expertise as an international clinician, best-selling author, and certified Feldenkrais Method® practitioner. With over three decades of experience, Mary developed Debono Moves, a groundbreaking approach that enhances the performance, well-being, and partnership of animals and their humans.

Mary's innovative approach draws from the Feldenkrais Method®, tailored specifically for horse and dog enthusiasts.  Her methods have helped animals and humans:

• Improve athletic ability and performance
• Enhance confidence and reduce anxiety
• Reduce physical limitations and discomfort
• Deepen the human-animal bond

Mary's flagship online programs, "Move with Your Horse" and "Easier Movement, Happier Dogs," provide animal enthusiasts with an innovative approach that combines the concepts of Feldenkrais® with her signature hands-on work for horses and dogs (Debono Moves). Through this transformative approach, both people and their animal companions discover greater harmony, ease, and connection.

#Feldenkrais #Debono Moves #horses #dogs 

Transcript

Do you know if you're making up your own mind or if you're unduly influenced by others? And stay with me here, this actually relates to training your horses and your dogs. So, for example, you know, there, there are so many ways that we're influenced all the time by people in person. You know, maybe we're working with trainers or people at the barn or, or the obedience club. Maybe we belong to.

Or certainly on social media, we know that's a big one. And actually, before I tell you a quick little story, let me tell you who I am. If you're new here, my name is Mary DeBono and this is the Easier Movement, Happier Life podcast. And many years ago, several years ago, before all the other social medias came out, like tick tock and all that stuff, someone had posted, it was probably on Facebook a video about something disgusting she said she found in her tea bags.

Now, I'm a tea drinker. Many of you know that I love my green tea. A jasmine green tea is my favorite. And so this woman was drinking some kind of. It was Lipton tea. I don't usually buy Lipton, but okay, I was interested because she's like this, you need to know about this. This is really gross. She said, I found worms in my tea bags and I thought, worms in the tea bags.

And she was explaining how she knew something was weird when she was making her tea. And so she cut open a few of the tea bags and put the contents on her table. And she said there were all these white worms and they were moving. She said, it's so gross. And she. And then she had the camera on the open tea bags and indeed I saw these white, quote unquote worms moving.

And it was gross, you know, to think that they, they were in her tea and she wanted to just make everyone aware of this and not to buy this brand and blah, blah, blah. And from the comments that people posted after the video, many of us saw those worms moving, okay, and thought, you know, thought, okay, this is strange and kind of gross. But then I thought about it and, you know, I realized, and I can't remember now exactly if she had realized it later and then posted like a follow up or if I came to this, I'll be honest, I don't quite remember.

So, so, so. But the bottom line is it turned out she had bought tea with lemon. You know, it was lemon flavored tea. And what those white pieces were, were dried lemon peel or whatever they Lipton used to flavor the tea bags, and they never moved. They weren't moving. And when I revisited the video later, knowing that in fact those quote unquote worms were not wiggling around, but yet I would have told you that I saw them move because she was so convincing and she, she led up to it, right?

So I saw what I thought I was going to see. And we do this all the time. I'm sure there's many, many ways I'm doing it, even right now, right? There are certain things I'm seeing because I. I anticipate seeing them, right? I believe I'm going to see them. And the reason this is relevant to you is this. When you're working with your animal, your horse, your dog, et cetera, people may influence you to see things as behavioral issues that need to be swiftly nipped in the bud, right?

People may tell you that your horse is not moving forward that much because your horse is stubborn. Your horse is trying to dominate you. Your horse is being a jerk. I hear that one a lot, right? When in fact none of those are true. Right? And the same thing with your dog. Maybe your dog's recall isn't so good. Your dog is distracted by something or reacts in a way you don't want to when something, someone skateboards past him.

And, you know, some people will tell you that you need to, you know, dominate the animal. You need to show force over the animal. You need to intimidate the animal in some way, either physically or through your words, through, you know, certainly like things like leash corrections or pulling on the. The reins with a horse, or kicking them, or using spurs or whips, etc. Or all those violent ways, because that is all they see, right?

So many people, many people just assume that's the case. I cannot tell you how many times I've come across this, both with my equine clients and my canine clients, where the people will assume that the behavior of their animal is due to something like that, like them being stubborn, belligerent, etc. My own horse was before he became mine. My horse Breeze, who's since passed, I had him for many, many years.

He had a very big reputation around the barn as being belligerent, that he was the most stubborn horse. And yet after he became my partner, people would constantly asked me how I got, which is an interesting word, my horse to be so enthusiastic. So it was quite the turnaround. However, I never saw him as stubborn. I never saw him as belligerent. I saw him as a partner. Yes, he had a lot of baggage from prior bad handling, bad training, bad very traumatic experiences.

And I worked with him. So how are we seeing things in the world? How are we seeing our animals? Hey, just changing that lens, changing our perspective is, will be life changing for the relationship you have with your animals. And we have to ask ourselves too, are the things we're doing resonating with us? Just because someone else tells us to do them doesn't mean that that's the only way, the right way or anything like that.

So, you know, again, this is so prevalent in our, in our world and we get more and more kind of like we want to identify with a certain way of being, so we don't even consider looking at any other way. And I think that's really harmful to us. I think that really limits us. It can cause us to not relate to others well, to really be, you know, in our own silos and not really learn all the options we have available to us and then we can discard the ones that, that don't serve us, of course.

But it's this idea of just, you know, being influenced and then seeing what you expected to see. Right. That's really, really harmful. So, you know, and this is another reason why I just love, love, love the Feldenkrais method for humans. Because this is the approach that will help you move better, feel more comfortable in body and mind, be more creative, be more open and very importantly focused through the whole process.

You are developing your inner authority there. In the Feldenkrais method, there is no one telling you this is how you do the movement, this is what you should feel like. You are learning how to sense yourself, how to be more aware. And then that not only will just completely enrich your own life, but it can translate then into how you see others, how you relate to your animals, how you can help them.

Many of you know, I developed an approach called De Bono Moves which is strongly informed by the Feldenkrais method for humans and its hands on work applied to horses, dogs and other animals. And it's the same idea. We, we don't follow a script, we don't have a recipe. But we get to know each individual animal and find ways of supporting and helping them improve how they move, how they feel and how they relate to us.

And the reason I think that this is such a compelling topic right now, I mean, it's always been a compelling topic for me. This whole idea of self awareness and autonomy and you know, agency is a very foundational value for me. And I want to help other people develop that if they, if they wish. And at this time in Our culture in this time in our history. I'm in the United States of America.

I was born and raised here. I still live here. And we have some very tragic events unfolding right now. And I've spent the last several days crying, actually, over innocent people being murdered in the streets of our cities. And, you know what's really fascinating about this, and very tragic. Very, very tragic is that people have. They started anyway, in two different camps. Either you're on this side or you're on this side.

And they've lost our common humanity. It's like they've convinced themselves they're going to see something. Now, I, truth be told, I spend very little time on social media. I'm on Facebook. I have. I run some Facebook groups. I belong to some Facebook groups that are very helpful. I post in there, whatever, but I'm not, like, looking at people's feeds and all that kind of stuff. However, I did the last few days, I did.

And what I noticed was people were sharing videos, for example, of the man, Alex Preddy, who was an IC ICU nurse in a VA hospital taking care of our veterans. A wonderful man who was just trying to help a woman when he was killed on the streets of Minneapolis. And he posed no threat. However, the agents apparently thought he was a threat or whatever reason they shot him.

But they're only, you know, their frame was to look at. At a person like that who was holding a cell phone and had his other hand empty was a threat. And. And they shot him many times. But what was interesting is people were playing video clips of that. They had video from many different angles. It's been independently analyzed. Alex Preddy was not a threat to anyone. His last words apparently were, are you okay?

He said to a woman that he was trying to shield from the abuses of the agents, and. But other people saw what they wanted to see. One woman kept saying, oh, you cut off the video right before he reached for his gun. Because Alex Preddy was legally carrying a firearm. He had a permit, and it's legal where he was. And he had no criminal record or anything. He never reached for the gun.

If you can see all the videos. He never, ever threatened anyone. But she was convinced. And I believe. And this is the thing I have compassion for, for everyone that's watching this, that's involved in any of this, because it seems. I mean, she was very adamant that he reached for his gun. He didn't even have his gun on him when they shot him. Another agent had seen he had a gun.

Again, Alex never reached for the gun. Someone had seen it. One of the agents had seen it, had taken it off of him, disarmed him and taken it across the. Started taking it across the street. So they shot him when he didn't even have anything on him, let alone he wasn't going for the gun anyway. But the fact is I, I can, I can in my heart understand that this woman wants to believe he did have it because people came out right away saying he was a domestic terrorist, that he was brandishing a 9 millimeter gun, blah, blah, blah.

And, and so people were primed to look for that. Just like I saw those war quote, unquote worms moving because I was primed for that. We do this all day. This is, this is a, this is a very tragic, maybe very dramatic situation that I'm talking about right now with the shooting of these innocent people, including Nicole. Excuse me, Renee. Nicole Good, who was clearly leaving, trying to leave the scene when she was shot dead in the streets of Minneapolis.

But people want to see something, so they, they, they, they literally see something different when they watch those videos. And by the way, with the Nicole, with the Renee Good video, I do understand that there are some AI generated, some AI edited videos out there that clay, you know, look like the car hits the, the agent. And those are, those have been proven to be false videos, by the way.

But they're out there, so that, that gets even to more dangerous territory because we have AI that looks realistic. So I didn't mean to make this into some kind of political thing. However, this is impossible for me to ignore. I mean, I literally. This is, this has been, you know, a cause for myself and my community to be anguished over this for several days. So it's hard to not mention it.

And it does. It does. You know, the way we look at this also plays a role in how we look at our animals and, and do we see what, what they're really presenting? Or do our own filters block us from seeing clearly? And we do all have filters. I, I get that. But this is where again, I want to say, the more you develop awareness, and I found the best tool for this is the Feldenkrais method.

I'll put links where. I'll give you free online resources. Okay. So in the show notes, wherever you're listening, watching this, there'll be free resources. This isn't a money grab, but the more you learn to listen and to listen also to your own heart and to, to take time where you're not being influenced by these, all these people on Social media and in your tribes, whether in person or not.

But you, you look for the commonality, you look for the good in each person. You know, that is something we do in this work, whether the hands on work with the animals, the debono moves, or the work with humans and Feldenkrais methods. We look for where movement feels easy and free and comfortable and feels safe. So can you find that sense of safety in another? Can you find that sense of, yeah, they're trying their best and have that common ground instead of just right away attacking each other, but to work towards the common good.

One of the taglines basically in my work is, you know, move with ease, live in harmony. So in other words, the more we develop a sense of ease with ourselves and help our animals develop that sense of ease in themselves, the more we can live in harmony. And this is true not only for how we live with our animals, but how we live with our fellow human beings.

So I'm going to leave you with this today. I. First of all, I want to thank you so much. Thank you, thank you for being the wonderful human being you are. And to know that I feel so much love, so much love. And I hope we can all just feel that collective love and work from that state, you know, be human from that state, from that sharing of our humanity and our love for our animals and help make this world a better place.

Let's enhance our movement and enrich our lives. So thank you, thank you so much for listening and again, making the world a better place. So I look forward to talking to you again soon. Bye for now.