Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

I am a little behind, but I wanted to comment my thoughts on this.

Horses are prey animals whose predators are all pretty much smaller than 
they are.  As such, they are driven by a very strong sense of 
self-preservation and tend to assume anything could be a predator.  When we 
first start training a horse, we use a lot of intimidation to get the 
response we want.  Even round penning and natural training methods use some 
intimidation to get the horses attention.  This does not mean that, once we 
get past that, the horse does not learn to enjoy their job and their 
relationship with their rider, even getting to a point where the trust that 
has developed is enough to get them past most scary things.  Regardless, 
they tend not to challenge us much because of that strong sense of 
self-preservation.  It is safer to go along with our demands.  Occasionally, 
they will encounter something they feel is scarier than our displeasure (a 
trailer for some horses, as an example) and will then refuse.  Do you really 
thing that, if they felt they could overpower and out-think us, they would 
ever let us force them into anything?  If you look at a horse compared to a 
mountain lion, the argument of superior size and such simply does not hold.  
They are smart enough to know that size does not have any bearing on skill, 
cunning, and weaponry.

My two cents,
Nikki



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