How we manage and engage with our horses shapes their personality

Most horses will socialize well with humans, but only if the human responds to their cues. This is unlike dogs, who will initiate more interactions.

Eye contact is meaningful to horses. If a horse looks at you, they may be asking you to look back. If you do, and they continue to look at you, you've made the first step to connection. The ears will usually go forward at this point. That gives you permission to approach. If you then offer an open palm, you'll probably get a muzzle touching your palm. Now you've been accepted as being allowed to touch the horse. This little hello social ritual works with most horses, even ones who don't know you.

When you see someone approach a horse that knows them, they'll usually do this without thinking about it. You'll see the eye contact, the ear movement, and the muzzle touch, in that order. Horses have strong flight and startle responses, and this defuses those.

Read "Talking with Horses", by Henry Blake.[1]

So few people get this today that Horse Guards in London no longer lets tourists get near the horses. For over a century, they did, but the cluelessness level got out of hand, and about two years ago a white keep-out box was painted on the pavement. This is partly a cell phone problem. People would back up to the horse to position themself for a picture with the horse, without ever making eye contact. Horses read a backwards approach as an unexpected approach and possible kick threat. Some tourists got nipped.[2] The usual "No" sequence from a horse is ears back, bite threat, nip, serious bite or spin and kick. If you approach backwards, you don't see the horse saying no.

(You can discuss a "no" with a horse. I had to do this recently when I was getting my horse out of a new pasture. The boss mare, who's a good herd leader and protective of her herd, cut off my horse to keep her away from me. So I had to talk to the boss.

I walked up to her and stopped about a horse length away, outside threat distance. Made eye contact. Didn't get an invitation to approach. So, hands at sides, I took a step forward and motioned with my hands for her to back. She backed up a half step. That was a mild submission. Now I could catch up my own horse without her interfering. My own horse came to me when called, while the boss mare watched carefully. I haltered my own horse and took her out, with the permission of the boss mare.

This is not disobedience. This is a competent alpha mare doing her job. She watches over the herd, chases coyotes and wild turkeys away so the other horses don't spook, collects up the herd under a tree in bad weather, and somehow seems to settle disputes. The horses don't get injured.)

[1] https://archive.org/details/talkingwithhorse0000blak_r2k0

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up5_haF98z8

I own 3 horses. 3 mares actually.

The first one, who’s 11 and been with me for 8 years now, has incredible communication. She’s always been pretty close to humans but for the past year and a half we have had them at home (they were boarded before). Even my boyfriend who isn’t that much into horses can understand her. In winter they have blankets and up until we had them at home they were in stables. So the horse can’t really escape the blanket. Now they live outside. Well she figured out how to tell us that tonight she doesn’t want the blanket : when we approach, she moves, just one or two steps. And will repeat the move if we insist. And on days where she wants it, she stands still. I discovered that she endured a blanket for most of her life when she didn’t feel the need for one. Second time she blew my mind : one night coming home late in the evening, she came to block the car on the road. She had daily garnements still on. I removed then and she walked away peacefully.

The second one is 8, and grew up with very limited human contact for her first 5 years : breeder who barely manipulated them. She’s the least interested in humans, and the most friendly to other horses. I’ve had her for only 3 years but I don’t think we’ll ever reach the communication level of the first one.

The third one is 4, which is young for a horse, so she still has lots of playfulness and curiosity towards humans, and I haven’t owned enough horses to know how she’ll turn out, if it will fade or not!

The obvious irony of such formal studies and their confident reveal is that, as people who've had animals (particularly mammals) as part of their close 'family' long term, we know all that. In so much greater detail (10-20 full years of 365 full days worth) than they'll ever be able to perceive from a quick data sweep/inspect.

We develop bespoke languages to 'speak' with our long term animals, comprised of nuance between vocalisation type, and tone, body posture and bearing, type of approach, gestures, eye contact, actions.

Really live with another mammal for 5+ years (or full lifespan, for those animals with less) - e.g. as somebody who doesn't leave home much - and by the end of those years you will be living in a complex symphony with them, full of nuanced communication and understandings and mutual routines. Their moods and feelings and facial expressions will be almost as obvious to you as your own child's.

So when we-who-know-this from living it see these formal studies where a team of young scholars are essentially collating the outline of that reality and present it as a found conclusion - "the nature of the interactions between owner-and-horse actually defines part of the horse!" - we cannot help but feel a little as though we were just told that (e.g.) Food is Nutritious!

And conversely, there exists that cadre of formal animal studies which release findings which lean broadly-opposite to the above, such as "Actually, dog owners who think they can read their animal's facial expression, cannot". Quite funny when you think about it.

Hey, I'm not complaining about the existence of studies like the title. There are probably a great many people whose ways of thinking would be greatly changed - for the better - if they understood how similar many animals (especially mammals, but others too) really are to us, beyond the fantasies of great separation and uniqueness that we build around our own species with complex stories.

And formal releases like this are one positive part of that improvement.

> A new study reveals that horse personality is not only a matter of genetics, age, or breed but also systematically linked to how horses are housed, ridden, and cared for, and to the quality of the relationship they share with their owners.

I expect that genetics, age, and/or breed affect human expectations of the horse (e.g., 'this breed is aggressive'), which affects how they treat the horse, which affects personality.

Same with dogs. Pit bulls encounter lots of fear and human aggression, and are used for aggressive purposes by humans who expect that.

Same with humans, sadly.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Horses are almost as smart as dogs, and dogs personalities are heavily dependent upon their upbringing.

“ Photo: Star, the author's horse, scored very high in human sociability.” Very cute

I know its not intentional but the phrase "our horses" amused me, as if the author would be surprised to learn that not everyone owns a horse.

Science confirming intuition is important, but I would assume this is the case for all mammals. I’m not sure it is “revealing” anything.

so.... horses have memory and their memory guides their behavior. Yep.

Always a gamble here if the headline here is literal or metaphorical

Seems similar to what I’d expect for humans

Training data all the way down.