[JBandRio]

Originally Posted by skeeta-123

Natural horsemanship is a load of bull! the un natural part of anything horse is the point of riding them! they really should change the name of it to something like horse BC :P

You should really read more of this thread The "natural" part of it means communicating to the horse in a way he already understands. NOBODY has tried to say that riding a horse is natural.

[cowboysmom]

This kind of made me giggle--last night I was walking my gelding and my husband, who has only handled draft horses/pullers and knows absolutely nothing about saddle horses, was telling me about this guy he watched on RFDTv the night before. He was telling me...."this guy had a stick and he stood in front of the horse was making the horse turn right around"...............on and on he went. He said "it's something called Natural Horsemanship, it looked really cool!" I asked him who it was, he couldn't remember the name. (He was reallly trying to be helpful!)

But after all the hub-bub on here over the past several days, it kind of made me giggle

[JBandRio]

"Last night" being Wednesday, he probably caught Pat Parelli

[cowboysmom]

Would have been Tuesday night--whatever that would have been. He told me about it on Wednesday night, but he had watched the show the evening before LOL! Are we confused enough yet?!!!

[JBandRio]

Oh, lol, gotcha!!

[SweetSavannah]

"The Centaur" Andrew McLean

Research indicates the following four criteria as evidence of some higher mental faculties, such as basic reasoning abilities, in animals.

The ability to imitate new motor behaviour exhibited by another animal

The ability to solve new problems on the first attempt

The ability to take shortcuts in mazes, also known as detour learning

The ability to form concepts

Like most other grazing animals, horses are not adept at any of the above. Published investigations indicate that horses are unable to learn new behaviour by observing another horse performing that behaviour….
I am specifically referring here to the learning of new behaviour by observation. Most mammals are capable of copying some of the behaviours that are already hard wired in their repertoires….
Research also shows that horses are not good at solving novel problems. In (tests) horses are presented with a choice of two feed buckets, one which always contains food, while the other contains nothing. The horse has to learn to return to the bucket where it first found the food until its location is switched, after which it has to try the new one, find the food, and return there until the food is switched again and so on. Some animals, such as chimps, quickly learn the correct approach, but horses are much slower to grasp the rule. Locating grass and herbs requires no problem-solving strategies, so horses have never needed to evolve the higher mental abilities that we take for granted…
When horses learn to do such things by trial and error they are generally able to solve the problem again on a future occasion. But experimental evidence strongly suggests that they cannot “see” the solution without prior practice. The clever things that horses have been known to do, such as open gate latches, are not the result of reasoning, but of trial-and-error- learning. What makes us different from horses is that you and I can do this trial and error in our heads.

[MaggieSue]

SS, you know what's so great about studies?? In 10years another 'scientist' will come by and completely disprove it!!
You say horses do not learn by watching others? Tell that to a cribber. Tell that to a horse following another on a trail, learning how to cross creeks and obstacles by watching the horse in front of him go. OH, I guess the study wasn't done on a trail??!

[LGGL]

Tell that to a cribber.

What??? You say horses learn cribbing from another horse by watching them? My horses off and on have been exposed to a horse that cribs and they have never shown any sign of cribbing. Where did you here this?

[JBandRio]

Originally Posted by LGGL

What??? You say horses learn cribbing from another horse by watching them? My horses off and on have been exposed to a horse that cribs and they have never shown any sign of cribbing. Where did you here this?

Cribbing is not SOLELY a learned behavior. If the genetics aren't there, a horse will not pick up cribbing. It's been pretty well proven there is a genetic component.

[Kitari]

If horses cannot problem solve then i need to tell Poco she is a freak.