In today’s Norwegian podcast episode, I share a review of the book A Horse’s Life: The Neuroscience of Equine Welfare. I was lucky enough to get an early copy of the book, written by Dr. Stephen Peters, Crissi McDonald, and Mark Rashid. It will be available on May 3rd and is a must read!
Here is an English transcript of the episode:
For much of human history, ‘good horsemanship’ was measured in the simplest terms: feed, water, shelter, and an absence of obvious injury. That is survival, and survival matters. But it has gradually dawned on us that a horse can be well-cared for and still not be well. Thriving is not an abstract ideal. It is a physiological and behavioural reality.
A Horse’s Life is a book written with respect and compassion for horses, combined with deep insight into their nature, behaviour, and chemistry. Dr. Stephen Peters, or Steve as many of us like to call him, has already been a guest on the podcast, so I hope you’ve long since caught up on the episodes about the horse’s brain and nervous system.
Master trainer Mark Rashid and his wife Crissi McDonald complement Steve very well and it is truly a great enrichment that they all share stories from their own lives about unique encounters with both their own and other people’s horses.
The book is cleverly structured with vivid descriptions, followed by precise analyses, where you are not just told that the horse’s brain is shaped by good and bad experiences – but you get the opportunity to feel it, due to the personal and rich stories presented before Steve provides a thorough analysis of each individual case, firmly rooted in neuroscience, yet Impressingly accessable.
The essence of the book is, in many ways, that a co-regulated partnership between horse and human cannot be built on performance alone, but must be built with great respect for the brain behind the behavior. The book also serves as an important reminder that not all horses are suited for a life of human service, and it reminds us that recognising these limits is an essential part of ethical horsemanship.
The book is divided into three sections. The first deals with the horse’s nervous system and the challenges of understanding what we actually see. We meet five horses: Tuff, Blue, Lucy, Bridger, and Comet – and with each of the five horses, we get an organic and vivid story, told with great tenderness and respect for each individual horse. Steve then adds an extra layer, giving us insight into the world of neuroscience and equipping us to see a bigger picture in terms of what goes on inside the horse and how it manifests on the outside.
In this first section, we gain insight into, among other things, learned helplessness, stoic calmness, shut-down horses, freeze and flight responses, and it becomes very clear that the price horses often have to pay when we subject them to training that is too fast and/or heavy-handed is high. And even if we experience a short-term gain, which is the very foundation of the quick weekend courses still widely offered, the long-term costs are often overlooked. Slow and steady is better than quick and fragmented.
In the second section, which deals with neuroplasticity learning, and re-learning, we meet the horses Daisy, Sugar, Domino, Skipper, Misty, April, Banjo, and Cassie. In this section, we gain insight into how horses under high stress can be guided to find calmess, how fear linked to individual objects can be alleviated, how trailer loading and separation anxiety can be managed without increasing the horse’s stress level, and we get an uncomfortable insight into how challenging inbreeding can be, also several generations down the line.
In the third section, the focus is rehabilitation – where the question that is, in many ways, Steve’s signature serves as a subtitle: “Am I safe?” Here we meet the horses Mouse, Zephyr, Amir, Dante, Rusty, and Willow, and there is also space dedicated to the five domains that form a framework for assessing equine welfare, encompassing both physical needs and mental state as used by many equestrian federations.
The book concludes with three chapters containing each author’s final thoughts, with telling titles: Steve talks about how the welfare of horses is our privilege. A somewhat un-Norwegian way of putting it, but a privilege can be considered a gift or an honorable task. So, it’s not about a responsibility, a burden, or a duty, but rather something valuable we get the opportunity to contribute to. It’s ultimately about acknowledging the horse’s trust and vulnerability and seeing it as an honour to be someone who ensures that these aspects of the horse’s nature are preserved and protected.
Crissi summarizes by talking about the need for a kinder life for horses, focusing on lightness and softness. While Mark’s final words are that when we know better, we do better. He concludes by saying that it’s important to understand that the horse world is full of training methods based on tradition, speculation, training “systems,” educated guesses, made-up theories, and complete misunderstandings.
And here I would add, for my own part, that I hope this book will help in navigating better the choice of which trainer to seek advice from. It is painful to see, for those of us who have been in the game for a while, that some of the crap that was sold as gold in the 90s has experienced a resurgence, despite the fact that we know that the practice of setting up training in a way where the horse, by choosing correctly, avoids extra work, discomfort, chasing, or pain, is at best outdated, and at worst unethical. Unfortunately, there is much to suggest that P.T. Barnum, a pioneer in marketing was right when he supposedly proclaimed that ‘there’s a sucker born every minute.’ Don’t be a sucker. Be someone who makes informed choices. Someone who ensures prey animals feels safe with us, even in training situations. Nothing is more valuable to them than that.
The book is about 200 easy-to-read pages and the neuroscience is presented in an a way that makes it both accessible, and easy to decode. And as an obvious bonus, the possibility of misinterpreting Steve’s important message is significantly reduced with this book. Neuroscience is complicated, but this book serves as an invaluable reference aid for both leisure riders and equine professionals, apt to influence the way we think about horses and the way we treat them. The fact that the authors have chosen to give us an introduction to science through unique and well-told stories makes the theories come to life, thus making them easier to remember.
With this book, the equestrian community receives invaluable help to interact with horses in a way that is founded on scientific understanding and empathy, rather than tradition, old habits, or assumptions. A book that anyone involved with horses should own – a top rating of six. 👏🏼