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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. And, by meeting horses halfway, we not only save valuable training time and improve performance, we achieve other goals, too. 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; and we reduce the human mistakes we often make while working with them. 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.

Table of Contents

Part One: Animals in a Human World
Chapter 1 - Horse and Human Teams
Chapter 2 - Evolving a Brain

Part Two: Taking the World In
Chapter 3 - How Horses See
Chapter 4 - Training with Vision
Chapter 5 - Did You Hear That?
Chapter 6 - Powers of Smell and Taste
Chapter 7 - Pulling the Senses Together
Chapter 8 - Mutual Communication by Feel
Chapter 9 - Building an Equestrian Brain

Part Three: Learning to be A Human’s Horse
Chapter 10 - How Horses Learn
Chapter 11 - Negative Reinforcement
Chapter 12 - Training by Reward
Chapter 13 - Seeking the Good
Chapter 14 - Indirect Training
Chapter 15 - Easy Does It

Part Four: Attention, Emotion, and Forethought
Chapter 16 - Earth to Horse: Capturing Attention
Chapter 17 - Stay With Me: Keeping Attention
Chapter 18 - Equine Emotion
Chapter 19 - Pointing Fingers

Part Five: Horsemanship is More Than Knowledge
Chapter 20 - True Horsemanship

Source Notes

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Glossary

Index