Many horse care professionals and horse owners do not understand the importance of a horse’s behaviour and psychology until they face the inability to make a horse accomplish what is required.
They then often use harsh tactics like punishing the horse, when they don’t do what the owner or trainer wants.
If we wish to cooperate with these magnificent creatures, we must recognise our differences and try to understand their needs and objectives as best we can.
Learning more about Equine psychology and how they think teaches you how to perceive, interact, manage and train horses in a much more effective way.
Through equine psychology, you will be able to understand and recognise normal behaviour in your horse and how to respond correctly to their behaviour. The study of equine behaviour lays the groundwork for more sensitive and knowledgeable horse care and training.
To accomplish this, we must examine the horse’s origins and learn how horses lived in the wild. Equine psychology gives us insight into horses’ natural behaviour and helps us prepare living conditions that suit them best.
The more you understand about how horses think helps you to make them feel safe, more secure and therefore develop a closer bond.
About the Horses Psychology
The horse relies on flight as its primary survival mode as a prey animal. Horse’s natural predators are large creatures like cougars, wolves, and bears, its ability to evade these predators is natural.
To completely understand horses, we must first understand their intrinsic flightiness.
Horses are among the most perceptive domestic animals. They can identify predators because they are prey species. Unnoticed by humans, a stimulus often causes panic in horses; we frequently misinterpret this reaction as ‘spookiness’ or undesirable behaviour.
Humans must understand what stimulus affects the horse and how to train them properly. The horse has a rapid reaction time. To live, a prey animal must react quickly to a perceived predator. So horses might act in this way.Fearful stimuli can desensitise horses. They must soon learn what is dangerous (e.g., lion, cougar, etc.) and what is harmless (e.g., tumbleweeds, birds, a discoloured rock, etc.) so that they do not spend their entire lives fleeing.
Horses forgive, but they never forget. They remember bad situations the most. It is essential to ensure that the horse’s first training experience is enjoyable.
Horses classify most events as either- a) something not to fear, so ignore or explore it, or b) something to fear, so escape. As a result, when introducing something new, the horse must be shown that ‘a’ is the case.
Again, making all training experiences enjoyable for the horses and humans is essential. Horses are readily tamed. The horse is a herd animal with an established dominance hierarchy. Human authority can be quickly established throughout training if done appropriately, without causing the horse to become overly scared.
Horses assert authority by controlling their peers’ movements. Horses accept dominance when we force them to move when they do not want to, and when another animal prevents them from moving, they want to flee.
A round pen, long line, to control the horse, or a more dominant horse in the field chasing the less dominant one away are all ways to assert authority over the horse.
A horse’s body language is unique to the equine species. As a highly sociable animal, the horse communicates its feelings and intentions to its herd mates through vocalisation and body language.
Someone who works with horses must understand their body language to be a good trainer.The horse is a precocial species, meaning that newborn foals are neurologically mature when born. They are most vulnerable right after birth. Therefore, they can recognise danger and run away if necessary.
Summary
The horse is a prey animal and relies on flight as its primary survival mode.
Equine psychology helps us to understand the nature of horses for more effective training, better management, or simply to strengthen your bond with your horse.
We must understand horses to understand their demands. Only then can we notice behavioural problems that might come up and plan carefully how we deal with it.