The other day, a friend was talking to me about relationships and what she looks for in a guy... her criteria was contrary to how I would have described her. We talked about this and clearly we could both see that oddly enough, in many cases, opposites DO attract.
This started me thinking about horses and humans, perhaps the ultimate in "opposites". The obvious is the prey vs predator angle, but it's oh so much more than that. Or maybe I should have said so much more detailed than that. Here are a few thoughts on this:
Approaching other Creatures:
Humans (as predators) stalk in their body posture, approach tends to be direct, eye's focused on the subject or target, a direct line to the target.
Horses (as prey animals) often don't take the direct approach, they tend to be wanders, following their current whim, and direct eye contact means aggression to them. If they move directly at another horse or creature, it's meant as aggression.
This means: when we look at a horse, in our normal, direct manner, they read that as aggression and potentially triggers the flight tendency. When we walk directly toward a horse with forward vision and body posture, they may this as a predator "attach" posture. Granted, some horses learn to ignore some aspects of this but as a rule, this holds true.
Noticing Details:
Humans (as predators) don't notice the tiny details. We tend to see more gross, larger movement and postures, specifically because as a predator, we don't NEED to see the tiny details.
Horses (as prey animals) very existance in the wild depends upon noticing the tiniest change in the environment.
That means: Horses notice when something changes, there is suddenly a jacket draped over the fence post that wasn't there yesterday or the day before. As humans, we often don't notice or interpret the tiny cues we put out there nor do we always catch the signals that horses give us. Just as they notice tiny changes in posture, expression, position, they also use those tiny changes in their own communcation.
Defense Mechanisms:
Humans (as predators) primary defense is to push back or apply pressure when things are not going our way.
Horses (as prey animals) primary (and only) defense is to flee when something is amiss.
That means: When things begin to go wrong, the natural human behavior is to push, increase pressure or volumn (or both), which causes the horse to want to escape. What we should be doing, counter to human nature, is to back off, and give the horse MORE space so that he never feels the need to escape.
Learning Speed:
Humans (as predators) don't need to be terribly fast learners, because making a mistake for a predator generally doesn't result in death. Moderate learning speed is sufficient. This learning pace evolved because as a predator, hunger is the motivator to suceed, a moderate motivator at best.
Horses (as prey animals) must learn VERY quickly from their own experiences, otherwise their last experience could literally be...well, their very last on this planet. This learning pace evolved because as a prey animal, survival is the motivator to suceed. Facing life or death is the strongest motivator possible in most cases.
That means: Horses need very few repetitions to commit something to memory, including behaviors we might prefer they don't remember. It only takes a few repeititions for a horse to have a new behavior firmly entrenched. This is great IF the trainer is very clear about what they want. Not so good if the horse is busy noticing how to evade something while the human is thinking they are learning somethign else entirely.
Memories:
Humans (as predators) don't have the greatest memory. A keen memory isn't required for survival and often our memory is clouded by our interpretation of what happened or our emotions.
Horses (as prey animals) developed a keen memory of details in order to survive in the wild. They need to remember how things should look when everything is fine so that they can detect changes that should trigger alarm.
That means: If a trainer is clear and communcates well, horses can learn new behaviors with as few as 3 repeititions. If the trainer is not clear, it can take much longer. One of the failings of humans is that we often do the same thign over and over again, and expect a DIFFERENT outcome, regardless of the lack of sucess in prior repetitions. This tendency greatly hampers the horse's ability to connect the dots and get the point. Also, horses remember when they are treated badly or frightened seriously, and those memories can bubble to the surface literally years after the event, perhaps they horse has changed owners several times since the fearful moment happened and it will continue to worry the horse because of his keen memory. When we have a horse with training "issues", it is showing us all of the poor training and unfortunate events in it's past, regardless of the time or number of humans involved. Why something happens isn't as important as changing the outcome for the horse so that he can learn he no longer needs to hold on to this memory.
So, I have to conclude, opposites do attract, at least for some of us, otherwise we would only be interested in sharing our lives with other predators, who speak our language and share so many of our qualities.
