Mutual interaction within the horse-and-human team depends on communication between two species’ brains.
To develop mutual interaction of this sort, ask yourself what’s going on inside the horse’s head. Suppose you want your horse to lead quietly. Most educated handlers start with the question, “How can I teach him that?” But you need to take a step farther back, asking, “How does he learn?” You want him to stop shying at unexpected sights, “How does he see? Why is he afraid?” You’d like to develop a closer attachment with him, “How does he bond? What does security mean to him?”
All well and good, you might say, but tick…tock…. Asking these questions and learning the answers takes time. It’s faster to just make a horse follow orders. (Well, sometimes.) But forcing is not teaching, and it doesn’t last. Instead, why not pique the horse’s interest, appeal to his natural curiosity, encourage him to want to meet our needs? And, in turn, let’s meet his!
Working with a horse’s brain—instead of against it—smoothes every mutual interaction, from a pasture greeting to open flight over an eight-foot puissance wall. Too often, horse-and-human partnerships are a one-way street on which we command and they respond. To a surprising degree, many horses accept unilateral pronouncements. But training improves by leaps and bounds—becoming safer, gentler, faster, more effective, and immeasurably more interesting—when communication within the partnership flows in both directions. We then begin to experience the world through the brain of another species. It’s an amazing feeling, and it illuminates everything we can know about true horsemanship.
Cross-Species Communication
Asked which species of animal is best at mutual communication with humans, most people would guess dogs. After all, dogs are the most common pet and have evolved an innate alertness to human signals. But I believe the potential for cross-species communication is much greater between horses and riders. Why? Because in addition to the voice, gesture, and body language we use with dogs, our bodies are in frequent contact with our horses. Each party transmits and receives information through skin, muscles, tendons, weight distribution, and balance. This contact triggers that dance between equine and human neurons that I mentioned a moment ago.
Despite their size, horses are unbelievably sensitive. Imagine asking a horse to slow his pace while working under saddle. One of the cues a good rider offers is to squeeze her shoulder blades together, opening the upper chest. This change causes a neural network to fire in the horse’s brain. The trained horse instantly responds by slowing slightly. That response is conveyed through the rider’s body directly to her brain, which sends the next message to the horse. And so on, with neurons firing from equine brain to human brain and back. It’s the equivalent of a direct neural link with no translation needed—like mainlining nitroglycerine straight to the heart instead of letting a pill melt under your tongue.
Horse Brain, Human Brain explores our own and our horses’ minds to achieve several goals:
We can deepen bonds by adapting our forms of communication to theirs. Connect with a horse, and suddenly he trusts you to take him to fearful places and ask him to perform difficult feats.
With knowledge of his brain, we can train an animal with insight and kindness instead of force or demand. If the animal knows we understand his fears and will accommodate them while teaching, we are on the road to success.
We can comprehend a horse’s misbehavior in ways that prompt creative new solutions. Why is this sorrel mare refusing to load? Let’s look at how her brain works and what she’s telling us with her form of communication.
By analyzing the differences between species’ brains, we can reduce our own mistakes. Any animal trainer will tell you that the hardest part of the job is training the human.
Obstacles to the Goal
We could yammer all day about the need for brain science in handling horses. Most people would agree it’s a reasonable idea. But in practice, there are obstacles. Let’s push them aside right now:
“Brain science? Are you kidding? I barely escaped college.” Brains might be the most fascinating frontier in the universe, but they are not the easiest. In this book, I will talk “brains” in the most direct way—without a wheelbarrow full of high falutin’ Latin syllables. You don’t have to grasp every nuance of neural operation in order to apply some useful knowledge to your riding.
“Pfft. I’d rather ride than read.” For sure, riding is a lot of fun. But it’s even more fun when you ride well enough to establish a true relationship with your horse. Understanding how he thinks will help you do that. Plus, it’s not only about the riding. Your horse wants to get to know you. With his help, you can prove that brains rule.
“Just show me the ‘obey’ button.” Ah, if only I knew where it was! The behavior you want is probably too complicated for one or two buttons—getting a racehorse to stand still, for example, takes scores of buttons. Now, it is true that you could take your horse to a trainer for a year or two of tutoring, and that trainer might create some buttons and teach you how to push them. But then you’re not really interacting with the animal. If you just want an “obey” button, buy a golf cart. It eats less.
“Anything with the word ‘science’ is boring and obscure.” Scientists are just regular people. We’re curious about the hows and whys of life, and we break our work down into basic steps to manage it from one day to the next. You probably do the same in your job. It’s actually kind of fun to learn how your brain works: “Why did I think that? Uh-oh, why did I say that?” It also feels good to see the interest in your horse’s eye when you try something brainy with him and he gets it.
“I’m the human, the horse does what I say.” One very natural aspect of the human brain is that it is centered on itself. It has to be in order to survive. Human egocentrism has been part of horse training ever since the Greek philosopher Xenophon wrote about riding back in 350 BC. But getting a 1,200-pound fear-based prey animal to do your bidding isn’t like training a puppy. You can’t just press his hips down and say, “Sit!” in an ever-louder voice. Learn about your horse’s brain, and you will be much more likely to succeed.
“Riding is easy. Let’s not make a big deal out of it.” Most anybody can huff and puff onto a mounting block, stretch their legs into the air like long pretzels, and slither up onto a school horse’s back just long enough to get dizzy from the height. Real riding, however, is not easy. It takes strength, coordination, effort, knowledge, skill, and a boatload of practice. In return, all that work brings joy and mastery to our lives. It makes for comfortable healthy horses, too.
That Horse Nerd
My interest in horses and brains began in Scottsdale, Arizona, where horses were a way of life and a means of childhood transportation. Scottsdale was a four-square-mile cow town of 10,000 people back then, surrounded by large horse and cattle ranches. Most of my childhood was spent reading in a palo verde tree or sweating on the back of a horse. We kids rode ponies on dirt tracks to each other’s houses and hopped bushes in the desert for fun. At some point, my father took me to a horse show where he explained why the riders were bouncing up and down. “It’s called posting,” he said, and I was instantly obsessed. Riding was now my mission.
For years, I lived at a 60-horse barn, riding under the supervision of two trainers. Most of our mounts were young or difficult because that’s what training stables get—a diverse influx of babies who don’t know the human world yet and bad actors no one else wants to handle. I schooled seven or eight of them a day and taught beginning riders.
The brains came into it early one morning
