In my early days, I was frequently told that horses are herd animals and had a rigid order based primarily on strength, which suggested the strongest horse bossed round the rest. I now know, after a life spent with horses, that they’ve got a social structure, nevertheless it is definitely not primarily based on fear. Neither is the head horse always at the front of the herd. Horses in a herd are basically terribly protective of each other, as is abundantly demonstrated when a mare gives birth: she’s surrounded during the process and care of her new born foal is looked on as the entire herd’s responsibility.
The head pony reaches his or her station through respect earned the tough way, by acing practical tests in the herd’s life. Some tests were planned, but most were not , and the head pony was certainly the one that handled tough’s scenarios best.
There were similar strategies used to allot a place to each member of the herd. I haven’t seen horses rebel or luxuriate in trade unionism, so I presume each horse was fine with his or her place in the herd.
I also realized that this was less complicated to cope with horses if you appealed to their entrenched herd instincts. These instincts are robust, because they are part of equine evolution.
When you train a pony, you either let it control or you rule. While you strive for a relationship of equals, one entity has to be more equal. When you establish yourself as the more equal party, you are pretty much taking the place of the herd leader, and the horse begins to offer you its trust and obedience. You can’t achieve trust through bullying or a punishment-oriented approach. Things work much better with a reward-based approach that doesn’t compromise on your (subtle) predomination. At times of emergency, the herd leader or some other dominant horse takes the lead, and the rest follow with total and unquestioning trust. That is the sort of trust you would like to earn.
Clearly, you do need to know your horses. Like human youngsters, they come in all types: compliant and rebellious, dominant and meek, inquisitive and unquestioning. Again like with human kids, if you dig deep into it you’ll find that horses respond to the treatment they receive. With patience , you can work nearly any pony into line. Their herd instincts are far stronger than their sense of individualism.
Just remember: horses think along straight lines. When you teach them something, they don’t forget, so long as they’re not confused by contrary instructions later on. Horses aren’t capable of the kind of multidirectional thinking human beings are. Horses can’t reason the way we can. Thus, it is down to you to initiate relationships: you’ve got to reach out to the pony because you cannot expect it to relate to you mentally. Put simply, you adapt yourself to thinking along one direction, like a pony.
You are literally capable of joining its herd, but it isn’t capable of joining yours.
Horses are Heather Toms passion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100s of articles with other horse lovers, like all things about mini chaps
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