Are there good horses and bad horses?

by Elaine Polny
(Palgrave, Ontario, Canada)

In order to answer the question with accuracy we need to first become aware that an animal does not have the conscious capacity to understand the terms good or bad to begin with. It's far more accurate to say that this is a human term to determine if a behavior is liked or not liked, wanted or unwanted. So when we use phrases like, "My horse is being good today", what we really are saying is, "My horse understands and has learned what is wanted and I like it". And when we use phrases like, "My horse is being bad", we need you become aware that what it really means is, "My horse does not understand or has not learned what I am asking and I do not like it". Can you feel the subtle differences between the conclusions?

It's helpful to look deeper into the natural "raw" instinctual needs of animals to get a clearer picture, this allows us to understand why a horse would react to situations differently than we would expect. Horses have as many different personalities as people do! Which means we all learn at different paces, have different experiences to draw from and different needs to be addressed. We seem to want to put all training and expectations the same on each horse we deal with. But when we consider the "raw" instinctual needs first like survival, not being eaten, living in herds etc. it is much easier to see that there is no such thing as a good or bad horses amongst them!

Which brings up the other problem, "expectations". What we would term as a good horse, would be the horse that does do what is expected (from the human point of view). And the bad horse would be the one that does not do what is expected from a human standpoint. Yet from the horse's standpoint, they are doing exactly what they have interpreted from the situation. It is not that we shouldn't have expectations but we need to recognize that it is about "learning" , "teaching" and the "relationship" first.

So let us all remove the words good or bad when discussing our horses needs and behaviors and replace them with words like "they understand", or "has learned" or "needs to be taught" instead.

Elaine