People sometimes get cranky with a horse for stuff he does because we think “he should know better” or “he knows not to do that.” But if he knew better he would not do it.
The way a horse is can always be attributed to two things, nature, and nurture. Everything a horse does, how it responds, and what it understands, is a combination of what it learned from its life experience and what it inherited in its genetic makeup.
We deal daily with our horses exhibiting a vast array of behaviours. Some we want and some we don’t. We spend much of our time with our horses correcting or re-training the behaviours we don’t want.
When horses apply pressure to each other they are generally focused on directing movement and not on changing emotions. When a horse uses pressure to chase another horse away from the hay they are not concerned about the ill feelings it might create in the other horse.
