Mental Makeup of Horses

Can human mental characteristics be trained into our racers? Or do horses have some of these traits naturally-- motivation, competitiveness, focus, and so on?

Obviously horses are competitive, pimping and jousting in the pasture like a bunch of human 6th graders. Just got myself soundly kicked getting somehow in the middle of one of these confrontations.

Things I've observed about horses:

1. They enjoy bounding along similar to birds enjoying flying.
2. While bounding they are in mode of:
a. maintaining their proper place within the herd, or
b. seeking to make a pass.
3. Their reactions while running are birdlike, flocklike. Initial spurts give way fairly quickly to a sedate orderliness were most just follow the one immediately up ahead, and being content to maintain position.
4. On occasion when clear opportunity presents itself one behind will spurt past the one just ahead.
5. On rare occasions you see one behind actually intent on getting in front of the whole herd.

Things change a little for the horse when we put rider on board. Discuss this next post.

Training:
Fri. 7/21 Off.
Sat. 7/22: Very light riderless session. Occasionally disastrous training sessions. First, my left leg unable to bear the weight cradling Rodney's rear leg while shoeing. Decline to get on again for fear of reinjury. The riderless session goes caput when the older horse jumps the fence and escapes, and I, mostly due to horribly humid low pressure weather, am unable chase big lunk Rodney, who quickly figures this out and mostly just trots.