This is the simplest of questions and yet it is often something that people who have spent a lifetime with horses cannot answer. Even career, equine professionals, with forty years experience behind them cannot answer this question, – and yet of all the things a horse owner must understand about a horse THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING! It is quite simply, the key to understanding everything your horse does, it is the key to your relationship, it is the key to a long happy and healthy life for you and your horse it is, – the key to everything….

Without a thorough understanding of this fact and all the things that it implies, you are building all your equestrian knowledge on a complete misunderstanding in which little or nothing you do to your horse will make any sense to it.

So here it is, the secret behind every horse whisperer, behind all natural horsemanship, behind all the ancient wisdom of the horse masters throughout history and also don’t forget, ethology, behavioural science and a great deal of modern veterinary science too. It is very simple, it is this:

THE HORSE IS A PREY ANIMAL

If you remember nothing else about the horse, remember this simple truth. If you do, and you keep this thought in the front of your mind when dealing with horses the ‘lights will come on’. Suddenly you will see the ‘why’ behind the outcomes, the cause behind the effects.

Of course, this is only half of the truth that I call the horse/human equation, here is the second part of that equation

THE HUMAN IS A PREDATOR ANIMAL

So now you know what a horse is and now you know what a human is (as far as the horse is concerned). Like humans horses can be defined in many other ways as well, but all these other definitions are a result of the idea that the horse is a prey animal.

My second principle of natural horse keeping states:

We base or relationship on the ethogram of the horse. That means

Life in a herd, a life full of natural movement, a diet that closely relates to the natural fiber based diet and barefoot .

The first thing about this principle that you might want to understand is, what is an ethogram?

Technically an ethogram is a list of the recorded (natural) behaviors of an animal species. These observations are made by scientists who specialize in animal behavior, collectively these scientists refer to themselves as Ethologists.

Early Ethologists often worked for zoos and some were also animal collectors, because in those days (late 1950s to the early 1960s) zoos animals existed in a very different environment from that we know today, basically the zoo animal’s purpose was to be on display for public amusement, entertainment and interest. Therefore they were housed in practical environments that were easy to clean and maintain with diets usually adapted from that of domestic farm animals. The survival of an animal was of relatively little consequence and it’s death not much more than inconvenient because, of course, wild animals could always be replaced from the ‘infinite’ wild, (having an empire helped!) However, as we know only too well today, the world is not filled with an infinite number of animals and obtaining new ‘specimens’ became more difficult with the destruction of habitat and increased human influence.

So zoos sent out their collectors to more and more remote parts of the world in the search for new species. Among these collectors were people such as Gerald Durrell and David Attenborough who originally began their illustrious careers as collectors and went on to found and influence world conservation as we know it today. As these collectors traveled they took with them cameras to record their adventures and the films they made they showed on the new medium of television.

This had a profound, if not surprising effect, on zoos, – In the 1970s people stopped going to them. Why was this?

It was because the behavior people saw on their television screens in the comfort of their own homes bore no resemblance to the behavior they saw in the cages of zoos. Public opinion began to change radically, it was as if, for the first time the public started to see not just the animal but also the cage. Many zoos closed down, the public decided that it was no longer acceptable to display animals simply for public entertainment and amusement as had been the case in the traditional zoo utility model, the Victorians referred to as a ‘menagerie‘: another area that was similarly affected was circuses.

Zoos across the world realized that they had to change; they discovered ethology. Consequently, today most animals are not simply there for public display but are housed in environments and fed diets that mimic their natural behavior. This leads to animals that are happier, healthier and so, crucially are more likely to breed.

Modern zoo keepers spend a lot of time thinking up what they call ‘environmental enrichment activities‘ these are activities that allow animals to use their natural instincts and behaviors, for example, their instinct to hunt or to travel or to socialize with other members of their species, in other words, environments that the animals don’t just live in, but environments they interact with.

So what has all this got to do with horses?

Well, there are several strange parallels with stories of zoos and circuses and with the world of horses. In the utility/menagerie model animals, like horses were kept in small restricted livestock houses and if they were lucky given a rectangular featureless paddock. It was considered quite adequate just to supply food water and shelter and this was believed to be all that was needed for the animal to sustain it’s life. Naturally all this was backed up with arguments about how a system must be practical in terms of time money and labor and other resources. This was all very well, but let us ask ourselves, how much say does the animal have in all this? How much opportunity does the animal have to express it’s natural behavior, to interact with others, to find the things it needs in it’s environment, to escape from things that it fears such as predators? The answer is of course, none.

So let us return to the second part of our principle of natural horse keeping, I believe that our horses have a ‘right’ to live:

Life in a herd, a life full of natural movement, a diet that closely relates to the natural fiber based diet and barefoot .

I will explain this in much more detail in other posts.

The ethogram of the horse is well documented and forms the basis of both the Ethological Model and the Natural Horse Keeping Model. The Ethological Model is really just the natural behavior of the horse and the Natural Horse Keeping model is derived from it. When we keep horses according to the ethogram of the horse we try to set up management systems that reproduce as much of the natural behavior of the horse as possible within a domestic situation. This is the Natural Horse Keeping Model, it is based on the seven principles of natural horse keeping and it has several major advantages, for example, our horses are fitter, healthier, more relaxed and generally safer to be around.

Once a horse has become like this, (because of our management based on the seven principles of natural horse keeping), we can begin to train it, using methods that are in accordance with it’s natural behavior and instincts, these are ways that respect the horse for what it is, not just for what it can do for us. For example:

• we always respect the horse as a prey animal and try to remain aware of our own instincts as a predator animal.
• we do not attempt to coerce the animal in any way.
• we acknowledge the prey animal’s instinct as a flight animal and allow it to move it’s feet if it needs to.
• we do not attempt to sneak up on it and ‘catch’ it.
• we do not attempt to trick or deceive the horse into doing what we want
• we do not trap or restrict the animals escape options – within reason
• we find ways to to reward the animal for doing the right thing (positive reinforcement)
• we never criticize the horse for doing the wrong thing
• we do not teach by ‘correction’
• we know all methods based on negative reinforcement and positive punishment, threatened or direct, are predatory and coercive and will have inevitable side effects
• we will attempt at all times to build with our horses a relationship based on mutual, liking, trust, respect, and thus cooperation

The ethology of the horse affects every aspect of our relationship with the horse, it is present every time the horse shows us new behavior, it is present every time that behavior is the opposite of what we want.