In the realm of the social instincts, I made some experiences working with stallions that I trained in the presence of a mare, which was in a different enclosure, separated from the one where I was with the stallion, but close enough that they could see each other. The reason for having the mare involved in the training of the stallion was to have their interest in the action, which was learning to stand still, move at my side and come to me at my request. The horse was never on a rope and the communication was through the senses, about space, movement, and the qualities of a social relationship, such as coexistence, trust, respect, willingness to execute and attention. These social topics are instinctual to horses and keeping them as part of our interaction gives the horses a reason to be interested in it. While most people wondered how I could get the attention of the horse, when the mare was there, I never had problems in making it work, and repeated this same procedure, with different stallions, with the same kind of result. The stallions were of different ages, and some had breeding experience. The point for the stallion was to gain access to the mare’s vicinity, and to achieve that they had to be asking me to leave my territory. I was managing the space between them and the mare, claiming it as mine, and not letting the stallion get near the area of his enclosure that was close to where the mare was. I kept this up until the stallion would comply with my request. I always manage the interaction based on Human Horse Sensing, and at the end I was able to send the stallion off, toward the mare, and to call him away from her, and back to me, at my request. This was not a riding performance, just training horses for the purpose of handling them in breeding operations, and I was on the ground at all times, interacting with them mainly through the sense of sight. In other circumstances I applied the use of social instincts during training, such as having horses, of which I knew the behavior, present near the arena, while working with other horses that were new to me or not trained. This situation worked even when I had unbroken horses watch others practice being ridden, and learn from it. The key elements why this worked were the fact that the horse had an interest in the action, and the flow of the action. The interest could be a reward given by an assistant at the same time it was given to the horse that was performing, and the flow of the action without flaws, or the horse that was watching would learn the flaws too! Sounds like I am stating the obvious, but not to everybody. Many people, when I talk about this subject say that horses are not intelligent enough to act in this manner, and yet it is an accepted fact that all of the horses can learn vices, from being in the presence of other horses that have those bad habits. So I always think about equine behavior, their natural instincts, personality and past experiences, and clearly see the role instincts play in horsemanship, and even in riding performances. Of course, horses have some very defined and pronounced instincts, and I mentioned just a few of them, but instead of being afraid of the horse displaying a natural behavior, or coaxing them with fear, to display another desired behavior, we should use what we know about horse behavior to manage the performance. This would allow us not to alienate the horse to our presence, and to always be able to have its trust, respect, willingness and positive attention when we need it. 50 www.EliteEquestrian.us
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