Do horses like us?

    In my wanderings around the internet, I found this website called the Country Squire Magazine. A British publication, it focuses on the British countryside.

   Deborah Jane Nicholas, apparently a frequent columnist, has had several articles published, some of which I read, but this one I found rather unusual, if not depressing. 

https://countrysquire.co.uk/2018/09/01/horses-dont-really-like-us/

Clipped from the 1 Sep 18 issue of Country Squire Magazine, author deborah jane nicholas

    Nicholas says, in essence, that horses do what we tell them to do. Period.  She sniffs at the idea that horses willingly do the strange things we ask of them. She says that horses don’t like us. 

    I’m really surprised at the tone in her post, and wonder what sort of relationship she has with horses.

    Mind you, she brings up good points. We ALL have met horses who don’t want to do what we ask of them. Much of that comes from prior handling, I agree, but I’m also convinced that in many cases, that’s just what the horse IS. You see it in ads on the internet: “more whoa than go.” Just like people, there are jocks, like Raven, and there are couch potatoes, like my first horse, McDuff. 

  Her point is that many times, the rider or owner fails to take into account the horse’s reactions to what we ask of them. For instance, she has a video of what can only be called a moron. The moron-probably inspired by some Hollywood movie, runs at the back end of a horse, attempting to mount it with a leap from the back. The horse, being a sensible beast, sees this human running at him from behind-just like a predator would-and simultaneously bucks the idiot off and gives a him a good kick in the chest.  The idiot had it coming, as far as I’m concerned.

   But then she shows a photo of a very nice dressage horse with its ears pinned. She implies that the horse is merely obeying, that he really does not want to be doing dressage.

   That may be true in this specific case, but how, then, can she explain Fuego de Cernada, aka Fuego XII, a PRE stallion I’ve written of in the past. Fuego’s 2010 WEG freestyle dressage performance could only have come from the stallion himself. I have never seen an animal produce such an emotionally charged performance in my life. You could see it: Fuego was doing it all on his own. He added so many flourishes, so much emotion into his performance that he was, counter intuitively, scored low. We in the audience boo’ed the judges scores. We saw a horse that adored dressage, adored the adulation, soaked up the cheers and pretty much, thoroughly enjoyed showing off. It was, after all, freestyle.

   How does she explain Beezie Madden’s fall from Authentic in the stadium jumping competition of the 2007 World Cup? The gelding continued jumping the course, all by himself. 

    While I’ve never watched the Grand National, (a steeplechase for my American readers) , I know that often, a horse will lose its rider and continue jumping the course. 

    I’ve certainly seen racehorses continue the race after losing their jockey. They win...and are elated! The horse doesn’t understand ‘disqualified’. He just knows he won!

    How does she explain Charlie, an OTTB in our barn who, if you put him in the round pen, will lunge himself. You needn’t be inside the ring. You don’t even have to pop a whip to get him going. He works himself. When he considers himself done, he calls to a human to come get him.

  How can any of these actions be called ‘forced”???

   The author also mentions that she has yet to find a photo of a pony with its child owner that looks happy.

   I can understand that. Children don’t usually have the experience of good hands and a good seat. Children don’t think of a pony as being an animal. The pony is another child. They treat it as a playmate. An adult who gives a child a pony must also teach the child that the pony isn’t a toy, it is another living, feeling being, to be treated with respect, kindness and patience. Note: the pony feels no such restrictions, by the way.

    The author goes on to say that horses don’t like us. They don’t hate us, but they’d much rather just be let alone.

    I’m not too sorry to say, that in my opinion, and experience, she’s wrong. Or perhaps she’s confusing cows with horses. I have no experience with cows, but I’m certain there are folks out there who will tell me their cow likes to be petted, sat upon, maybe even asked for a piaffe. I’ve seen pictures of people riding cattle, although it can’t be very comfortable.  Cows don’t seem to have much in the way of personalities. But that may be because we don’t normally think of a cow as being a pet, like a horse. To be brutally honest, cows are..well, creatures that we not only use their milk, but..we eat them. We don’t eat horses. They’re too much like family. 

    Horses have personalities. They have opinions, feelings, a sense of humor. They have favorite people, other animals, other horses. They can differentiate between intentionally inflicted pain from the accidental. I’ve apologized to my horses when I’ve done something hurtful and they certainly seem to understand. Or perhaps I’m so tuned to the equine persona that I can see personalities where Nicholas cannot.  

    Nicholas states that the only reason a horse comes to you in the pasture is because it hopes you have food.

    Isn’t that a thing all in and of itself? Isn’t 'hope'  something a thinking, emotional being does?  Cows don’t come up to you hoping for a carrot. They just look at you. The horse, at least, has learned that you come bearing gifts.

   But what if...as in the case of Raven...you don’t have a treat? What is it, then, that makes him nicker a hello and come up to me when I enter the paddock with a halter? The halter means ‘we are going to do something’. What it might be, he doesn’t know, but it’s probably ‘being ridden’. A horse that didn’t want to be ridden would run away from me. A horse that didn’t know me would just stare at me from the far end of the paddock.

   Even the oldest horse can outrun us any day of the week. Why does this horse...and virtually every other horse I’ve ever owned or leased, or even just made friends with..come to me when I clearly have something in mind for it?

   Is it “like”???

    How does the author explain the gauntlet I must run every time I go to retrieve Raven from his paddock...that being Laddie, the gigantic eventing OTTB. I must go through his paddock in order to get to Raven’s.

    I’ve never petted him, handled him, and certainly never given him treats.  Still, Laddie is right there at my elbow as I pass through his paddock. I have to shoo him away. He WANTS pets, he wants to interact. The look in his eye as Raven and I walk past him can only be described as envy.  He wants to work. His owner studiously avoids him, so is it loneliness? He has horses all around him. Has this horse, a racehorse/eventer who has spent his entire life working with people want to?

      How does she explain the Arabian stallion I massaged the day before a 100 mile endurance ride? His owner told me, I have to ride the hell out of this stallion or he’ll ride the hell out of me. The next day, I was working with my vet as a scribe when the stallion came in, lame, at the first 25 mile vet check. He’d been quicked three days earlier when he was re-shod. Despite being lame, the stallion did NOT want to quit. No, no, no, he insisted, get aboard Dad and let’s GO. He refused to get on the horse ambulance, he wanted to GO. He said so plainly, I can do this. I can. I want to. 

        We’ve all seen horses express refusal to do something: bore out at the track, refuse a jump, buck off a person they don’t want to carry. 

    These are actions of thinking, aware creatures, not slaves. I feel very sorry for Nicholas.  She sounds as if she read Descartes and believes what he said: that animals are merely animated machines, incapable of love, friendship, even, believe it or not, pain. 

    This isn’t to say that horses are incapable of disliking people. Rebel, a PRE cross in our old barn, definitely disliked people. He’d never been hurt or abused while in that barn but he was dangerous and ultimately put his owner in the hospital. 

   I owned (well, he was the ex husband’s horse) an Appy/TB cross gelding, Smoke, who also disliked..one could even say hated..humans. We'd never hurt him, but at some time in his past, he had been mistreated, and from then on, he then hated every human. He definitely tried his best to hurt US. He was truly an evil-minded horse who had vices the likes of which I’d never seen before and hope to never see again. 

   Both those horses could have been poster children for the author’s post.

    But those horses were few and far between the hundreds of horses I’ve known. Yes, I’m going to break the rules and be anthropomorphic. Horses are incredibly good judges of humans. Like humans, they are self-aware. They have opinions, can hold grudges, fall in love, be mischievous, curious, easily frightened or brave as lions, be lazy or workmanlike, have hobbies, keep pets, everything that enables a creature to be an emotional one. Now that we know that dogs can be autistic, I bet horses can even be mentally ill, just like humans. 

   I wish I could remember where I read it, but one man wrote that horses invited us into THEIR world, not the opposite. We become members of THEIR herd.

    I don’t know how many horses she’s met that demonstrate hatred or dislike of humans..but I wonder if it’s the HORSE that is the problem.  

     I have a feeling it’s the author, not the horse.

Do horses like us?