19/08/2026
A question I am drawn to over and over again, and one which I increasingly challenge my students with, is 'Who are you as you approach the horse?'
This very thoughtful piece from Emotional Horsemanship by Lockie Phillips is worth a read.
BEYOND BEHAVIOUR AND CONDITIONING
One of the things I am becoming increasingly interested in is the difference between what we think we are communicating to horses, and the total amount of information they may actually be receiving from us.
Learning theory has given the horse world an enormously useful framework. What did the horse do? What happened before it? What happened afterwards? What reinforced it? These questions helped move us away from explanations like spite, stubbornness or a horse simply being “naughty.”
I don't want to lose any of that. But I increasingly think it is an incomplete framework for the complexity horses present us all the time.
Underneath a horses observable behaviour is a living mammalian nervous system and their emotional lives that govern it. An event can finish while its effects on the horse continue, which makes a question I have asked for years increasingly interesting: What event is actually motivating the horse?
It also complicates the idea that horses live entirely “in the present moment.” I don't think horses are standing underneath a tree constructing narratives about last Tuesday or worrying about next Thursday. But horses remember, recognise patterns, form associations and anticipate outcomes. Recent experimental work has even produced evidence consistent with horses adjusting their behavioural strategy according to changing consequences, which researchers have discussed in terms of model-based learning. So I think we need to be cautious about assuming that a different neural architecture necessarily means an absence of cognitive complexity.
A horse becoming agitated before feeding is a simple example. The food isn't there yet, but the quad has started, buckets are moving and a particular gate has opened. The horse is responding to things happening in the present, but the meaning of those things has been created by what happened before and what they predict may happen next. I discussed this once this week already here on my page.
Then there is us. The impact we have on our horses is wide and deep and constant.
Research increasingly shows just how much information horses can obtain from human beings beyond the framework of behavioural conditioning. Horses have demonstrated different responses to happy and angry human facial expressions, including changes in gaze and heart rate. They can also discriminate between human body odours collected in contexts of fear and joy.
More recent research goes further. In an experimental study of 43 horses, human odours collected during fear and joy conditions influenced horses' subsequent behaviour and physiology. Horses exposed to fear-associated human odour showed greater fear responses and reduced interaction with humans compared with joy-associated and control odours.
That fascinates me.
Before we ask whether horses can “read our minds,” perhaps we should reckon with how much of our bodies they can read without needing to.
Someone recently told me that several horses she cares for dislike having sunscreen applied to their noses. She discovered that if she stopped, breathed and genuinely settled herself before approaching, they became significantly more willing to accept it. No change to the behavioural conditioning framework was needed. She changed how SHE felt and the horses responded to a difficult task, differently. No need to train them differently. This is a keystone of my research and my work.
I don't need to invent a mystical explanation for that. Nor do I need to dismiss the observation because I cannot precisely explain its mechanism. Her breathing may have changed. Her muscle tone, face, movement, anticipation or timing may have changed. Given what we now know about horses detecting information through visual and olfactory channels, there is already plenty of plausible information available to the horse without invoking anything supernatural.
The experience can be real before our explanation of the experience is correct.
That idea is becoming increasingly important to me. I don't want horsemanship to become so mystical that every unexplained experience becomes an extraordinary claim of cosmic proportions. But I equally don't want horsemanship to become so intellectually rigid that we discard observations simply because our current framework doesn't have somewhere convenient to put them.
This brings me back to technique.
If I apply my leg, technically I can analyse exactly what I did. How much pressure? How long? When did I release? What response did I reinforce? This aspect of my work will be unending and a continuous study.
But the horse didn't receive a disembodied leg floating through space. They received MY leg, governed by MY balance, breathing, hands, muscle tone, anticipation, movement, our history together, the environment, their own physical and emotional state... and somewhere inside that enormous package of information, my leg. When my client or student applies the leg in an analogous manner, the horse can and will offer an entirely different array of responses. Because the leg aid is secondary to WHO is offering it. This is something many of us struggle to come to terms with because it makes our work and relationships with horses deeply, profoundly personal.
We cannot hide in front of horses. They see all of us.
Technique asks, “What signal did I give, and was it correct?” Horsemanship asks, “What information did the horse receive?” Emotional Horsemanship asks, "What impact am I having on horses regardless of my intention, action or technique?".
This doesn't make technique less important. It makes good technique considerably more sophisticated.
One horse may need twenty seconds. Another needs two. One needs stillness. Another desperately needs movement. One needs us to lower the intensity. Another becomes clearer when we increase the clarity of the question.
The craft is not possessing the correct rule we apply to all horses without discriminating between individuals. The craft is becoming good enough at observing the horse that we know when the rule no longer applies, and when it might.
I don't want to romanticise horses into enlightened spiritual beings, nor reduce them to input-output machines because that's easier to explain. There is an enormous landscape between anthropomorphism and mechanism.
I think horsemanship lives there.
Take the science seriously. Take learning theory seriously. Take technique seriously. But remain curious enough to notice when the horse gives you information your framework wasn't expecting.
Transcending technique doesn't mean abandoning technique. It means becoming good enough at technique that eventually you can see beyond it.
Research used in this article:
1. Mammalian Emotional Architecture
Biphasic Emotion Dynamic & Persistence:
Deisseroth, K., et al. (2025). Brain-wide neural dynamics underlying transient emotional triggers and persistent affective states in mammals. Nature / PubMed Central.
Single-Neuron Computational Power in Mammals:
Segev, I., et al. (2026). Human vs. non-human mammalian cortical micro-circuits: Implications for computational processing and cognitive abstraction. Neuron / Hebrew University Research.
2. Equine Emotion & Communication
EquiFACS Ethogram (805 Facial Displays & Platysma AUH21):Lewis, K., McBride, S., Parker, M. O., & Proops, L. (2025). An ethogram of facial behaviour in domestic horses: Evolutionary perspectives on form and function. PeerJ, 13, e19309. [DOI: 10.7717/peerj.19309]
Olfactory Discrimination ("Smell of Fear"):
Jardat, P., Destrez, A., Damon, F., Menard-Peroy, Z., Parias, C., Barriere, P., Keller, M., Calandreau, L., & Lansade, L. (2023 / Extended 2026). Horses discriminate human body odors between fear and joy contexts in a habituation-discrimination protocol. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 3285 / PLOS ONE. [DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-30119-8]
Cross-Modal Integration & Physiology:
Smith, A. V., Proops, L., Grounds, K., Wathan, J., & McComb, K. (2018 / 2019). Horses categorize human emotions cross-modally based on facial expression and non-verbal vocalizations. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 16751. [DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-20771-3]
3. Cognition & Strategic Decision-Making
Model-Based Strategy in Horses:
Evans, L., Cameron-Whytock, H., & Ijichi, C. (2024). Whoa, No-Go: Evidence consistent with model-based strategy use in horses during an inhibitory task. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 277, 106339. [DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2024.106339]
Did you read the whole article? Comment "read" in the comments, if you comment, so folks know which commentators are reading the entire piece. :)
