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by Dennis Bright People often approach me about the problems they are having with their horses. In most situations, the horse owner is at a complete loss as to why their horse is misbehaving and would like to know why their mild-mannered, reasonably well-trained equine companion has suddenly become untrained and miserable to be around. To begin with, every horse is an individual with their own personality and life experiences, much like their owners. So every situation is a little different. Where most people run into trouble with their horse is that they project a human's personality onto their horse. In other words, they look at their horse as being able to think and reason to the degree of a human. Unfortunately they can't. Horses have a completely different type of intelligence. They have been designed by Mother Nature as a food source. I often use the analogy of the difference between an adult and a child, to help explain the differences between horse and human. I'll ask my adult students if they can remember what it was like when they were ten years old and if given the opportunity, would they be able to act like a kid again. Their usual reply is, "Sure, that's easy." Then I'll ask them if they know any child who would be capable of acting as a mature adult. Their answer is, obviously, "No." The reason, of course, is because a child has never been an adult, and it is completely out of their life's experience. What I hope to teach from that analogy is that no matter how much we love our horses, they will never be able to relate to us on our human level. We, on the other hand, must learn to think at their level like a horse. Once we begin to understand this, that a horse is not a stupid animal just because they think differently, then we're soon on our way to establishing a better relationship with our horse. The other point I mention is that the horse has, at best, the emotional maturity of a seven year-old child and that physically they mature three years to our one. When working with horses, we're basically dealing with 1,000-pound pre-schoolers. Our horse training philosophy is about establishing communication between horses and humans. This is a training method based upon pressure and release, (pressure equals punishment, and release equals reward.) We reinforce the positive results through consistent condition and response exercises. As I mentioned above, our students must understand the fundamental differences between horses and humans. Horses have evolved since prehistoric time as a prey animal, in other words, a food source, for meat-eating predators. Therefore, they learned early on that there was safety in numbers. It was their instinctive need for survival that created the herd relationships that we know today. Horses are individuals with their own personalities yet they must be able to blend in with other horses of their herd for survival. They understand the need for establishing their role within the hierarchy of the herd. The most aggressive horse will assume the leadership role and like rungs in a ladder, the other horses will fall into their respective places, similar to the expression "pecking order." We all know how difficult it is to reach a quick decision by committee. Can you imagine what would happen to a herd of horses if they had to reach a consensus between them about which way to run as they were being attacked by a pack of wolves? The odds would be definitely in the predator's favor. This is why when a group of horses are standing together in a pasture and one of them spooks and takes off, the other horses gallop off without even hesitating. The horses that stopped to look around and see why everyone was in such a big hurry, by Mother Nature's rules, quickly became lunch. Last modified: Sunday, July 28, 2002 |
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