Since we've been spending the last several weeks cramped in a small, un-air-conditioned, furniture-deprived office space working on nothing but recording, recording, recording, a few weeks ago, the band decided to go on a field trip. Where did we go, you ask? Dave & Buster’s, the Philadelphia Zoo, or a bar, at least? Close. We went to a small arena in Salem County, NJ, where we had a team-building session with professional equine* therapists Shannon (my wife) and Jeanne (not my wife).
How does an equine team-building session work? Well, Shannon would assign us a task, for example: “put a halter on one of those four horses,” and then we would fumble our way through the task, after which Jeanne and Shannon would evaluate our choices, behavior, and interactions. Since 3 out of 4 us have never even been near a horse before, and the 4th of us (me) has only minor experience with equines*, we found these simple tasks quite challenging.
The post-task evaluations were enlightening. Together we discussed a wide range of topics:
--why I decided not to inform the band how to put a halter on a horse, even though I knew full well how to do so. (my answer: “uh... what now?”)
--why Matt had to hold the halter up to his face before attempting to put it on a horse.
--how Darren took advantage of Matt’s moment of distraction and stole his horse.
--how we communicate (or, more often than not, FAIL to) with each other.
We covered so many different areas about how we work as a team, and each area was something we had NEVER thought about before. One area in particular jumped out at me and has stuck with me since, though I’m not sure exactly why. Shannon instructed us to get a horse to move over a long pole, and to stand in a box... without touching the horse. We thought about it for several minutes and came up with a few solutions for this challenge, all of which failed MISERABLY.
We tried forcing the horse to walk over the bar by pulling it underneath his legs, but the horse just stood there (and possibly laughed, though I’m not a horse whisperer or anything so I could be mistaken). We tried running over the bar ourselves, while encouraging the horse to follow us. Once again that solution was met with horse derision and laughter.
Our last and biggest idea that we were SURE was going to work has two important distinctions: 1) It has never been tried by any other session participant and 2) is impossibly stupid. Believe it or not, we actually tried walking to the opposite end of the arena, and ignoring the horses, in hopes that they would get curious about what we were doing and follow us as we casually walked over the bar and into the box. Surprisingly, this was NOT effective. The horses did walk over and sniff us a few times (one even bit me on my lower back), but they wouldn’t follow us anywhere.
After our colossal failure, we talked the situation over with Jeanne and Shannon, and discovered that Jason had an idea that he kept quiet about during our planning stage. He had wanted to throw a barrel into the arena and roll it behind the horses, chasing them over the bar. Jeanne asked Jason why he didn’t share the idea. Jason sorta shrugged and said something about the band being set on the “let’s just ignore the horses” idea, and for the sake of a unified attack, he held back. Jeanne said the idea probably would have worked, which of course meant that though we already felt stupid about our awesome “ignore them” idea, we now felt AMAZINGLY stupid.
After we finished discussing our fail-itude, we tried the task again (slightly modified to waving our sweatshirts and jackets instead of rolling a barrel to herd the horses) and we were able to get TWO horses to jump clear over the bar and stand in the box, with no problem. (Note: If you ever do an equine team-building session, which I highly recommend that you do... you can’t cheat and use our idea. You have to come up with something on your own, cheater!) And, though Matt was nearly killed in the process when the herd chased him into a corner of the arena, I think we all learned a valuable lesson: If Matt is frightened of a charging herd of horses, he hides it very well.
Speaking of which, I think most blogs are supposed to come to thoughtful conclusions, or have a lesson that you can take away and apply to your life. I’ve always avoided that kind of thing, perhaps because I watched too much Full House and Family Matters as a kid... Whenever they would start playing that sappy music and Bob Saget would teach an Olsen twin an important lesson (“lying is not, in fact, good; it is very very BAD”), they kind of lost me.
Saget-failure notwithstanding, I’m very tempted to try and squeeze a life-changing soundbyte from our unique equine experience, but I think that’d be missing the point. Our experience was OUR experience. It might not mean anything to you, so I don’t want to force it on you. We learned a lot about how we work together, but chances are you don’t work with us, so how does that help you?
Well, how about this: let me take a step back and say that the four of us were all skeptical about this event before we got involved with it. Therapy? Horses? Whaaaa? However, we unanimously agreed that it was a positive, beneficial, thoroughly awesome time. So, the lesson is, try something new? I, uh, guess? Oh god that’s weak.
*The term, ”equine” is Spanish for “large hooved dog.”
How does an equine team-building session work? Well, Shannon would assign us a task, for example: “put a halter on one of those four horses,” and then we would fumble our way through the task, after which Jeanne and Shannon would evaluate our choices, behavior, and interactions. Since 3 out of 4 us have never even been near a horse before, and the 4th of us (me) has only minor experience with equines*, we found these simple tasks quite challenging.
The post-task evaluations were enlightening. Together we discussed a wide range of topics:
--why I decided not to inform the band how to put a halter on a horse, even though I knew full well how to do so. (my answer: “uh... what now?”)
--why Matt had to hold the halter up to his face before attempting to put it on a horse.
--how Darren took advantage of Matt’s moment of distraction and stole his horse.
--how we communicate (or, more often than not, FAIL to) with each other.
We covered so many different areas about how we work as a team, and each area was something we had NEVER thought about before. One area in particular jumped out at me and has stuck with me since, though I’m not sure exactly why. Shannon instructed us to get a horse to move over a long pole, and to stand in a box... without touching the horse. We thought about it for several minutes and came up with a few solutions for this challenge, all of which failed MISERABLY.
We tried forcing the horse to walk over the bar by pulling it underneath his legs, but the horse just stood there (and possibly laughed, though I’m not a horse whisperer or anything so I could be mistaken). We tried running over the bar ourselves, while encouraging the horse to follow us. Once again that solution was met with horse derision and laughter.
Our last and biggest idea that we were SURE was going to work has two important distinctions: 1) It has never been tried by any other session participant and 2) is impossibly stupid. Believe it or not, we actually tried walking to the opposite end of the arena, and ignoring the horses, in hopes that they would get curious about what we were doing and follow us as we casually walked over the bar and into the box. Surprisingly, this was NOT effective. The horses did walk over and sniff us a few times (one even bit me on my lower back), but they wouldn’t follow us anywhere.
After our colossal failure, we talked the situation over with Jeanne and Shannon, and discovered that Jason had an idea that he kept quiet about during our planning stage. He had wanted to throw a barrel into the arena and roll it behind the horses, chasing them over the bar. Jeanne asked Jason why he didn’t share the idea. Jason sorta shrugged and said something about the band being set on the “let’s just ignore the horses” idea, and for the sake of a unified attack, he held back. Jeanne said the idea probably would have worked, which of course meant that though we already felt stupid about our awesome “ignore them” idea, we now felt AMAZINGLY stupid.
After we finished discussing our fail-itude, we tried the task again (slightly modified to waving our sweatshirts and jackets instead of rolling a barrel to herd the horses) and we were able to get TWO horses to jump clear over the bar and stand in the box, with no problem. (Note: If you ever do an equine team-building session, which I highly recommend that you do... you can’t cheat and use our idea. You have to come up with something on your own, cheater!) And, though Matt was nearly killed in the process when the herd chased him into a corner of the arena, I think we all learned a valuable lesson: If Matt is frightened of a charging herd of horses, he hides it very well.
 |
| Since no one took any pictures of the event... here's an "artist's rendering": That's me heroically yelling for Matt to run to safety, and Matt (that's a hoodie he's wearing... he's not a hunchback) taking no thought for his own person. Also, that last horse was from the Wizard of Oz. |
Speaking of which, I think most blogs are supposed to come to thoughtful conclusions, or have a lesson that you can take away and apply to your life. I’ve always avoided that kind of thing, perhaps because I watched too much Full House and Family Matters as a kid... Whenever they would start playing that sappy music and Bob Saget would teach an Olsen twin an important lesson (“lying is not, in fact, good; it is very very BAD”), they kind of lost me.
Saget-failure notwithstanding, I’m very tempted to try and squeeze a life-changing soundbyte from our unique equine experience, but I think that’d be missing the point. Our experience was OUR experience. It might not mean anything to you, so I don’t want to force it on you. We learned a lot about how we work together, but chances are you don’t work with us, so how does that help you?
Well, how about this: let me take a step back and say that the four of us were all skeptical about this event before we got involved with it. Therapy? Horses? Whaaaa? However, we unanimously agreed that it was a positive, beneficial, thoroughly awesome time. So, the lesson is, try something new? I, uh, guess? Oh god that’s weak.
*The term, ”equine” is Spanish for “large hooved dog.”
I love it!
ReplyDeleteI see you used the same Spanish to English dictionary that Ron Burgandy used to define San Diego
ReplyDelete