abruptly separated, often developing what we call “separation
anxiety”. Both of these practices affect the horse for
the rest of its life.
My experience with horses spans across being a Veterinarian,
racing as a jockey, competing in jumping, dressage,
and endurance, but regardless the situation I concentrate
on horsemanship as the performance tool.
In Human Horse Sensing we consider horsemanship as an
always dynamically changing, and instantly manageable
state, independent from training. We base our interaction
with horses on five social concepts that are natural for
horses of any age, and work bridging the gap between human
and equine behavior using social interactions through
the natural elements of space, movement, and time. When
it comes to relationship horses do not sign a contract,
and promise to be loyal forever, we need to be worth the
position of leaders at all time. The focus is not on building
a “bond”, it is instead on modulating the communication
through the senses, using social meanings, and developing
the horse’s interest for the time spent with people. Being
social is a common trait to human and horse and is always
present in the horsemanship, with a meaning that is independent
from the action that is happening in any equestrian
performance. Interaction through trained behavior uses
the horse’s ability to execute a learned action in response
to a fixed stimulus that we give him, and cannot cover
every instance we live with our horses Spontaneous interactions
are moments when the horse expresses himself, and
do not need any training, so they are a great resource with
young and untrained, or unknown horses.
With young horses, giving them the chance to develop
their social skills, and to have freedom of choice in relating
with horses and humans, is the first step to develop a
balanced mind. Ideally they should be able to share space
and time with other mare and foal pairs. When it comes to
weaning, the process should be done in stages, gradually
letting the mare and foal experience situations of being
apart through each one of their senses. This process works
by building the skills necessary to stay apart in the mare
and the foal, along with building our relationship, and also
avoiding the development of separation anxiety. After
being weaned, young horses can live in groups, and even
have an older mare as leader. In Human Horse Sensing
we work with herds composed by young horses between
seven and twelve months to teach them to respect space,
and interact with us in the presence of food, both relevant
issues with horses of any age. The young horses learn to
get groomed, to have their hooves cleaned without being
contained, then later to be haltered, and lead properly
without being forced.
When it comes
to weaning,
the process
should be
done in stages
rolling with training. Input to the brain coming from different
sensory receptors, can actually develop different behavioral
responses. An example of this is the inability to train
from the ground where communication happens through
sight, and elicit the same response through touch, which is
the main communication used when riding. Once again,
something I do not compromise is to leave force, and fear
out of horsemanship. It has been scientifically proven that
fear causes changes in the nervous system at the cellular
level, that reflect on behavior of the animal that has experienced
it. The resulting behavior can be out of the voluntary
control of the animal, undesirable in horsemanship, and
very difficult to modify.
66 www.EliteEquestrianMagazine.com
Space and food are natural
subjects for horses and can
allow us to let horses learn
in a cognitive manner while
we train them, rather than
by the classical conditioned
training methods, where
often the action has no
meaning for the horse, and
emphasis is put in the timing
and reward. There is much
more to the learning process
than just what we are cont