Do horses have emotions? I am often asked this question and I have to say that my answer has always been no. How could they?  Horses are simple animals that are unable to reason and have no conscious perception of self. Such a simple creature surely cannot process the complex information that is involved with emotions. While doing research for another article I found myself once again plagued by this question.

In my search for answers, my eyes were opened to the possibility that I may have been incorrect with my assumptions. These new possibilities lead me to ask some very important questions. If a horse does truly possess the ability to have emotions, then how does this impact the way we train, house, and interact with them?

My quest for answers, led me to a wonderful book by one of my favorite authors, “Animals in Translation, by Dr. Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson”. Dr. Grandin’s work primarily revolves around the slaughter industry and she has done a lot for the humane treatment of these animals.  In one specific chapter Dr. Grandin makes a very interesting case for animals having emotions.  She described emotions as simple and complex. Simple emotions are fear, rage, discovery, confusion, gain, loss, happiness and depression. Complex emotions are shame, guilt, embarrassment, greed, respect, contempt. She makes reference to the fact that animals don’t have the ability to have mixed emotions, that they aren’t ambivalent and don’t have love/hate relationships. As humans these emotions are second nature to us. We don’t think about being unable to express joy or sorrow, empathy or indifference.

The differences between horse and human are much more than metaphysical. The horse lacks the complexity that makes up the human brain. Emotions come from the cerebral cortex and in humans this area of the brain is very well developed. Research has shown us that the measure of intelligence is based on the number of folds in the brain and brain size to body ratio of the organism. Horses have relatively small brains with little folding. The more folds in a brain the greater the overall size, thus the more intelligent the animal is.  This does not mean that horses are not intelligent but shows their intelligence in relation to humans.  In fact there are many studies that show the horse as having a highly effective memory. They can recall past experiences and react to them readily. This alone doesn’t make the horse intelligent or unintelligent just unique to its species..  
After months of reading and study and observing my horses I now believe that horses do feel the simple emotions of fear, anger, confusion and possibly happiness. I can say for sure that a horse doesn’t feel these emotions like you and I. The way emotions are processed in the human brain is different from the horse because of the compartmentalization of the horse brain(perhaps another article). We as humans, have the ability to reason through why we feel a particular way. Horses simply feel emotion because they don’t have the ability to rationalize the reason for feeling..

Knowing this should change the way we train our horses. Realize that horses don’t feel animosity or contempt towards us; their misbehaviors aren’t premeditated attempts at getting back at us. They are simply expressions of what the horse is feeling at that given time. If the horse is fearful, it is because it is. If the horse is unsure and confused about a situation, it is because that is what it is feeling. You wouldn’t punish a child because they were scared or confused, nor would you use fear and intimidation to try to teach a child a new word or life lesson. We wouldn’t do this to our children and we shouldn’t punish a horse for its own attempt at feeling either.

This brings me back to my stance on particularly harmful training methods like round-penning and desensitizing.  I strongly believe that round-penning a horse (the act of chasing a horse in a round pen) is possibly the most harmful thing you can do because horses are prey animals and the round pen lesson teaches fear. Dr. Grandin makes this point also when she says that she believes "that instilling fear in an animal is far worse than pain.” Horses are prey animals, they are the embodiment of the fear response, and since fear is quickly remembered and never forgotten it doesn’t make sense to assist in the installation of the fear response. The same holds true for desensitizing. I realize that this is a very popular term and function in the training of horses. However, when done improperly it can have far reaching adverse affects on the horses psyche.
I often wonder if natural horsemanship is such a great thing. since there is still such an over-abundance of horses with behavioral problems. I literally get hundreds of emails every month from owners with horse problems. I think the obvious reason lies in the misunderstanding of the horse’s psychological makeup. I have spent years studying how horses learn, how they interact with humans and why particularly common misbehaviors are so prevalent. I have come to the conclusion that most horse owners don’t interact with their horses correctly. Their cues are confusing, complex, and not at all consistent.  This miscommunication can lead to many  of the emotions we are talking about and then so often to behavioral problems.

My goal as a clinician is to get across to the general horse public that horses can become confused when confronted by opposing cues, or similar cues that are too close together. Your horse is a living feeling creature that when pressed into a stressful environment will do what it thinks is best for itself and not for you. That may mean the horse bucks you off, runs away with you, or generally misbehaves. These misbehaviors are what the horse needs and what it feels will make the pressures go away. It is your responsibility to enlighten yourself to the possibility that you may be causing many of the misbehaviors your horse is expressing. As I think back to time spent with my mentor Dr. Andrew McLean, I am reminded of a conversation we once had about the emotional horse. His view was always that horses have no emotions, that they are simply products of their environment. If your training is bad and inconsistent, your results were bad and inconsistent. I believe that this is very true, but overly simplified. If we don’t understand what the horse is feeling, then we as feeling beings find it hard to relate.  We then become confused when our training goes wrong and this translates to our horses.  We are quick to blame the horse for their mistakes and never fully realize that the problem is truly our f

ault. We are the teacher, they are the student, our lesson should always be more clear to us than to them.  So how do we become better at communicating with our horses?           
Knowledge, we must never stop learning and developing new and better ways to communicate with our horses.  Do horses possess the ability to feel simple emotions, yes they do.  Do they feel and process these emotions the way humans do, no.  

This simple knowledge should change the way we interact with our horses and how we train our horses. It should make us realize that horses can feel pain, they can feel fear and they can feel lonely, confused, sad and possibly happy. It means that every time we scare our horses with improper training techniques and use improper training equipment we cause irreparable damage to our horses and takes us one more step further from our ultimate goal; to have a connected relationship with our horse.  This change in my thinking about emotions did not come easy.  My Connective Horsemanship training method already works.  It works better now because I have new knowledge that is based on research and not just what seems right to me.  Knowledge is power and power should be used for the benefit of others.   Seek out new knowledge. By doing so you will benefit yourself and your horse.  For more information contact us at www.connectivehorsemanship.com or 1-800-359-4050.