Twin Tree Farm

The things that wise and veteran horse trainers DON’T say----
If you spend long hours down in the training arenas with the men and women who have spent years training, you won’t hear “He’s doing this because he’s a brat.”

Or “He knows better.”
Or, “He always tries to embarrass me.”
Or, “He loves to show off.”

Or any of the many anthropomorphic statements that less savvy humans make about why a horse is or is not doing something. So many people think emotionally about horses rather than rationally, and somehow they think that horses are somehow big, furry mini-humans in the ways that they react and respond.

They will say “my horse loves---” or “my horse hates,” or “my horse wants” placing human-like reasons for behaviors which have little to do with how horses evolved as a far different species from humans.

But try to un-convince them---It is a way of processing that I heard described as “eight year old thinking.” Actually, the way that I heard it from a veteran teacher went like this---She said, “It’s OK to think like a little 8 year old when you’re 8. Hell, what do you know when you’re 8? Not so OK to hear it when they’re 18 or 80.”

As I say, hang around the true experts, hear what you hear.