Home Current News News Archive Shop/Advertise Ridecamp Classified Events Learn/AERC
Endurance.Net Home Ridecamp Archives
ridecamp@endurance.net
[Archives Index]   [Date Index]   [Thread Index]   [Author Index]   [Subject Index]

Re: [RC] Being the Herd Leader - Dyane Smith

----- Original Message -----

Do not forget why we came to have a domestic relationship with horses, and that as intelligent animals horses have a capacity to learn.

1. As I have mentioned before, read Stephen Budiansky's books: "The Nature of Horses", and "The Covenant of the Wild". These books detail why the inherent nature of horses as herd animals allowed them to become domestic animals. Their social organization, and body language was an absolute requirement for the change in their status from wild animals to domestic partners with humans. This partnership has been beneficial to both species.

2. Horses are intelligent. They can and do learn foreign languages. Human is one of them. Young horses are born with some instinctive knowledge of horse communication, but have to learn much of it. If you don't believe this, put a horse that was raised alone into a herd. I boarded a horse for a couple of years that had only been with its mother and then had been alone in a pasture for 5 years. Every morning she would try to steal food from the herd boss. He would give her ears. She would ignore him. He would then turn around and give her both hind feet in the side or rump. She would then move off and sulk. The next morning it was the same thing. She had not had a chance to learn how to be polite at the critical age, and never did get it. I was very happy when she moved on

 

It is easiest to teach a horse to respect humans and human language, if the human tries to make his language and requests as close to the herd leader as possible.

I really agree with this, but my experience (limited to a small bachelor band) is that the herd relationships are much more complicated than what most people think of when they hear the term "pecking order".  My horses all get along very well, but the leader is not the horse that gets the food first or even the horse that wants to get the food first.  The leader (the horse that the others want to be around and will follow anywhere) is the diplomatic horse, who gets his way through persistance rather than force.

 

Mark Rashid describes this kind of leadership in several of his books.

 

Dyane Smith

Snowy N. N. CA


Replies
Re: [RC] Being the Herd Leader, Dbeverly4
Re: [RC] Being the Herd Leader, Sisu West Ranch