This blog and web site are dedicated to the well-being of horses, dream animals that live alongside us. Tragically, horses need protection from various kinds of abuse at the hands of human beings. The mistreatment takes many forms. Horses are left to die in some obscure pasture or damp stall. They're trained brutally and senselessly. And they're deliberately killed. My writing here and in my novels is a small way to help animals I've owned, ridden, and bred, and at all times, loved completely.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Temple Grandin's Wisdom
Temple Grandin's chapter on horses in her book Animals Make Us Human is filled with such valuable advice on working with horses that if I were training a horse I'd memorize what she says. Here are a couple of examples: "The real secret of horse whisperers and expert horsemen is that they understand the behaviors associated with different emotional states and they have also figured out that a reward or a cue has to be given within one second after a desired behavior occurs for the horse to make the association." And "Behavioral trainers never talk about vices and depravity. Behaviorists are some of the most 'optimistic' . . . trainers there are, because if . . . an animal isn't learning, a behaviorist is trained to examine what he is doing wrong, not what the . . . animal is doing wrong. This means that behavioral . . . trainers don't blame the student."
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