This volume constitutes the proceedings of the Horses and Humans Symposium, held in 2000 at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History Powdermill Nature Preserve, in Rector, Pennsylvania, USA, in honor of Mary Aiken Littauer.
An eye-opening game-changer of a book that sheds new light on how horses learn, think, perceive, and perform, and explains how to work with the horse’s brain instead of against it. In this illuminating book, brain scientist and horsewoman Janet Jones describes human and equine brains working together. Using plain language, she explores the differences and similarities between equine and human ways of negotiating the world. Mental abilities—like seeing, learning, fearing, trusting, and focusing—are discussed from both human and horse perspectives. Throughout, true stories of horses and handlers attempting to understand each other—sometimes successfully, sometimes not—help to illustrate the principles. Horsemanship of every kind depends on mutual interaction between equine and human brains. When we understand the function of both, we can learn to communicate with horses on their terms instead of ours. By meeting horses halfway, we achieve many goals. We improve performance. We save valuable training time. We develop much deeper bonds with our horses. We handle them with insight and kindness instead of force or command. We comprehend their misbehavior in ways that allow solutions. We reduce the human mistakes we often make while working with them. Instead of working against the horse’s brain, expecting him to function in unnatural and counterproductive ways, this book provides the information needed to ride with the horse’s brain. Each principle is applied to real everyday issues in the arena or on the trail, often illustrated with true stories from the author’s horse training experience. Horse Brain, Human Brain offers revolutionary ideas that should be considered by anyone who works with horses.
From the recent spate of equine deaths on racetracks to protests demanding the removal of mounted Confederate soldier statues to the success and appeal of War Horse, there is no question that horses still play a role in our lives—though fewer and fewer of us actually interact with them. In Precarious Partners, Kari Weil takes readers back to a time in France when horses were an inescapable part of daily life. This was a time when horse ownership became an attainable dream not just for soldiers but also for middle-class children; when natural historians argued about animal intelligence; when the prevalence of horse beatings led to the first animal protection laws; and when the combined magnificence and abuse of these animals inspired artists, writers, and riders alike. Weil traces the evolving partnerships established between French citizens and their horses through this era. She considers the newly designed “races” of workhorses who carried men from the battlefield to the hippodrome, lugged heavy loads through the boulevards, or paraded women riders, amazones, in the parks or circus halls—as well as those unfortunate horses who found their fate on a dinner plate. Moving between literature, painting, natural philosophy, popular cartoons, sports manuals, and tracts of public hygiene, Precarious Partners traces the changing social, political, and emotional relations with these charismatic creatures who straddled conceptions of pet and livestock in nineteenth-century France.
Winner of a 2020 Border Regional Library Association Southwest Book Award “Truly transcendent.” —Jessica Lustig, New York Times Book Review This riveting memoir follows professional horse trainer Ginger Gaffney’s year-long odyssey to train a herd of neglected horses at an alternative prison ranch in New Mexico. Working with her is a small team of ranch “residents,” men and women who are each uniquely broken by addiction and incarceration. Gaffney forms a bond with them as profound as the kinship and trust the residents discover among the troubled horses. Through these unforgettable characters—both animal and human—Half Broke tells a new kind of recovery story and speaks to the life-affirming joy of finding a sense of belonging.
As much as dogs, cats, or any domestic animal, horses exemplify the vast range of human-animal interactions. Horses have long been deployed to help with a variety of human activities—from racing and riding to police work, farming, warfare, and therapy—and have figured heavily in the history of natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Most accounts of the equine-human relationship, however, fail to address the last few centuries of Western history, focusing instead on pre-1700 interactions. Equestrian Cultures fills in the gap, telling the story of how prominently horses continue to figure in our lives, up to the present day. Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld place the modern period front and center in this collection, illuminating the largely untold story of how the horse has responded to the accelerated pace of modernity. The book’s contributors explore equine cultures across the globe, drawing from numerous interdisciplinary sources to show how horses have unexpectedly influenced such distinctively modern fields as photography, anthropology, and feminist theory. Equestrian Cultures boldly steps forward to redefine our view of the most recent developments in our long history of equine partnership and sets the course for future examinations of this still-strong bond.
Riding Home:The Power of Horses to Heal, Horse Nation's must read book of 2016, is the first and only book to scientifically and experientially explain why horses have the extraordinary ability to emotionally transform the lives of thousands of men, women and children, whether they are horse lovers, or suffering from deep psychological wounds. It is a book for anyone who wants to experience the joy, wonder, self-awareness and peace of mind that comes from creating a horse/human relationship, and it puts forth and clarifies the principles of today's Natural Horsemanship (or what was once referred to as "Horse Whispering") Everyone knows someone who needs help: a husband, a wife, a partner, a child, a friend, a troubled teenager, a war veteran with PTSD, someone with autism, an addiction, anyone in emotional pain or who has lost their way. Riding Home provides riveting examples of how Equine Therapy has become one of today's most effective cutting-edge methods of healing. Horses help us discover hidden parts of ourselves, whether we're seven or seventy. They model relationships that demonstrate acceptance, kindness, honesty, tolerance, patience, justice, compassion, and forgiveness. Horses cause all of us to become better people, better parents, better partners, and better friends. A horse can be our greatest teacher, for horses have no egos, they never lie, they're never wrong and they manifest unparalleled compassion. It is this amazing power of horses to heal and teach us about ourselves that is accessible to anyone and found in the pages of Tim Hayes's Riding Home. The information and lists of therapeutic and non-therapeutic equine programs, which are contained in the book, are also available at the book's website.
Can horses really teach us to be better human beings? In this groundbreaking work, you will discover that the answer is a resounding "Yes". While working with severely disturbed youths, therapists Adele and Deborah McCormick discovered the best healers were their herd of Peruvian Paso horses. Through their work with horses, the McCormicks' patients were initiated into the hidden world of animal energy and instinct, and found a safe and natural way to learn about their own dualistic natures. Patients learned to tap into their primal "animal" mind and energies and apply them toward more creative and responsible living. What took days or months to uncover in an office setting took onyl minutes when patients were on a horse. You will read case after fascinating case of people discarded by society and the psychiatric community whose lives were turned around by the intuitive guidance and friendship of their equine therapists. What People are saying... "This book got me. It is about personal growth and the cultivation of wisdom, and is one of the wisest contributions I have come across in years...Its implications for healing are utterly profound. Horse Sense and the Human Heartis a breakthrough work." --Larry Dossey, M.D. author Prayer is Good Medicine and Healing Words "Horse Sense and the Human Heart is an eye-opening and heartwarming adventure. In sharing their pioneering therapeutic discoveries, Adele and Deborag McCormick take us on a shamantic interspecies odyssey. They reveal a secret world governed by wise equine masters, availalbe to help heal our psyches, and guide the human spirit on its journey toward wholeness." --David Jay Brown, author, Brainchild and Mavericks of the Mind
This book assesses the impact of the horse on human society from 4000 BC to 2000 AD, by first describing initial horse domestication on the Pontic-Caspian steppes and the early development of driving and riding technologies. It traces the radiation of newly mobile equestrian cultures across Europe, Asia, and North Africa. It then documents the transmission of steppe chariotry and cavalry to sedentary states, the high economic importance of the horse, and the socio-political evolution of equestrian empires, which from antiquity into the modern era expanded across continents.
This original and insightful book explores how horses can be considered as social actors within shared interspecies networks. It examines what we know about how horses understand us and how we perceive them, as well as the implications of actively recognising other animals as actors within shared social lives. This book explores how interspecies relationships work, using a variety of examples to demonstrate how horses and people build social lives. Considering horses as social actors presents new possibilities for improving the quality of animal lives, the human condition and human-horse relations.
In this remarkable new collection of her work, renowned portrait photographer Lucy Sewill turns her lens to the animals that she has loved her whole life, revealing the amazing bond that they have with their owners and handlers.