The Journal of Animal Consciousness Vol 1, Issue 2 Vol 1 Issue 2 | Page 18

thorough understanding of the techniques and
differentiations involved, and therefore the potential to
affect the individual horse through misapplication of
conditioning modalities is great. And to get to the crux of
the matter – how can one ‘separate’ the individual from his
behavior?
In the second instance, the ‘natural instincts and
communication methods’ that are used within NH are
typically defined through a spatial-dominance model.
Regarding dominance, what this means in natural
horsemanship parlance is that, within a horse herd there is
seen to be a dominant leader, typically a mare and referred
to as the ‘alpha’ with the other horses following a sort of
‘pecking order’. Regarding spatiality, horses are perceived
to more or less aggressively move another out of ‘their
space’, with the exact definition of ‘space’ primarily being
up to the individual NH practitioner. This supposedly has
to do with the horse getting close enough to the human
handler to cause bodily harm; yet we ride our horses in
extremely close contact, riding being by some estimations
one of the five most dangerous sports (for girls). The
methodology of NH confers the right to the human to
move horse out of her space if he should ‘intrude’. The
problem with the dominance model in general is simply
that it doesn’t exist in nature, and is a construct of resource
restrictions (perceived by the horse) (Rees 1985, ©1984,
pp. 55–56) (Kiley-Worthington 1987, p. 139). Dominance
relationships among mares in the wild, in fact, are fluid:
“Rarely were the same females consistently the dominant
members of their bands. Dominance relationships changed
regularly and most often over periods that spanned a few
days to several weeks” (Berger 1986, p. 158). It has been
my personal observation that, once the resources are
adequate for the number of horses involved, the horse do