But My Horse Understands Me!

Perhaps you have seen this person, or perhaps you are this person: A horse is stepping backward out of a trailer. The human who is asking the horse to back out of the trailer is standing, watching the horse back out and the entire time is repeating the word "back, back, back." The horse continues to back out of the trailer and the person thinks that they horse understands the word "back." 

As a natural horsemanship enthusiast, this type of behavior is baffling to me. Because I understand that horses are incapable of discerning speech based human created language, I have never spoken to my horse and assumed that they understand me. It is just phyically impossible for a horse to understand human speech. Their brains are not made that way.

Thanks to researchers, scientists and animal behavior experts, we have a fairly clear understanding of the way horse's brains physically work. Dr. Stephen Peters, a neuro-psychologist, and Martin Black, a well know horse trainer, have written a book called Evidence Based Horsemanship, which I encourage everyone to read. It is a scientific explanation of the way a horse's brain works. For those science nerdy types like me, you will find the science in this book very fascinating. For those of you not so enamored of lengthy physiology-based speech, you might not enjoy it as much. 

As far as language and the horse's brain is concerned, they have this to say:

"The third layer (of the brain,) is the neocortex or cerebral cortex. It makes up most of the human brain. Language, speech, and writing are all possible because of this layer. It’s also where we perform abstract thinking, organize things, categorize ideas, reason and multi-task. The large human neocortex versus the underdeveloped version of the equine is one of the most notable differences between the way humans and horses operate."

Notice that they put the most important part of this paragraph in bold. Notice too that they use the phrase "underdeveloped." It isn't that horses have no neocortex, it's just underdeveloped, meaning their capacity to interpret, understand and react to human language is very limited or close to non-existent. 

This is always the point in the conversation where people say to me, "but he understands me when I say T-rot." You simply cannot convince people who think that their horse understands English that he doesn't, in fact, understand English. And on that note, why does he understand English and not French or Italian or Swahili? Nope, he only understands the English language. What a spectacularly chauvenistic beast.

I like to use the example of traveling to a foreign country where they speak a different language than us. (By the way, Canada is a foreign country, and French is spoken there, so technically you can use Quebec as an example, but only just barely, and only if you don't speak Francais.)

Let's say you are on vacation in Portugal and you need to use the restroom. Shouting at a Portuguese person - who is non-English speaking - is pointless. Pretty soon you will resort to using body language (which is universal by the way,) in order to get your point across. This is the same thing as speaking to a horse using human language. They just don't get it, and so repeating yourself or being so anthropomorphic as to assume they can understand you is not natural, and is not in any way, shape, or form, understanding the true nature of the horse.

So the next time you are tempted to open your mouth to talk to your horse, please remember that if you were in Portugal right now, you'd likely be wetting your pants.