Categorically-Challenged

Credit:@arrowthefloof(instagram)     

Credit:@reginaldthecavoodle(instagram)     

The truth is that horses see what they think are nether beings, I guess. They have a perfect storm of sensory perception that, useful for prey beings, marks false positives on mortal danger all the time. Which is advantageous to a flight-based prey species: running from danger when you’re super fast is much ‘cheaper’ than fighting, so you waste almost nothing from running from a threat that’s not there. Versus, you blow everything if you don’t see a threat that is there.

Horses also have their eyes positioned on the sides of their heads, which gives them an incredible range of peripheral vision almost around their entire body with only a few blind spots you can sneak up on them in. But this comes at the cost of binocular vision; they can only judge distance for things straight ahead of them. Super useful for preventing predators sneaking up from the sides or behind, but useless for recognizing familiar shapes with the precision we can.

Basically we now have a walking couch with anxiety its going to get attacked at any second, that can see almost everything, but mostly only out of the corner of its eye. It has a few blind spots and anything that suddenly appears out of them is terrifying to it. Combine that with that it actually has far superior low-light vision than us, and that its ears can swivel in any directions like radar dishes, and you’ve basically given a nervous wreck a highly accurate but imprecise danger-dar.

To be concise: all horses, even the most chill horses, on some level believe they are living in a survival horror.

This means that you could approach it in a flapping poncho and if it can’t recognize your shape as human, they mistake you for SATAN… or you could pass this one broken down tractor you’ve passed 100 times on a trail ride, but today is the day it will ATTACK… or your horse could feel a horsefly bite from its blind spot and MAMA, I’VE BEEN HIT!!!… or you could both approach a fallen log in the woods but in the low light your horse is going to see the tree rings as THE EYE OF MORDOR.

However, they actually have kind of a cool compensation for this– they are social animals, and instinctively look towards leadership. In the wild or out at pasture, this is their most willful, pushy, decisive leader horse who decides where to go and where it’s safe. But humans often take this role both as riders and on the ground. They are always watching and feeling for human reactions to things. This is why moving in a calm, decisive way and always giving clear commands is key to working with this kind of animal. Confusing commands, screaming, panic, visible distress, and chaos will signal to a horse that you, brave leader are freaked out… so it should freak out too!

On one hand, you’ll get horses that will decide that they are the leader and you are not, so getting them to listen to you can be tough– requiring patience and skill more than force. On the other hand, a good enough rider and a well-trained horse (or a horse with specialized training) can venture into dangerous situations, loud and scary environments, etc. calmly and confidently.

Horses can’t see your hand, they smell the treat (and use very sensitive skin/whiskers to feel.) Some horses are garbage at doing this gently, just absolutely awful, but remember - they can’t see what they’re doing.

Horses also have partial color vision - they see horse relevant colors. Blue, yellow and therefore green. No red derived colors. If you want to see an anxious couch have a bad trip, ride it in an arena with alternating sections of purple and yellow seating. Grey grey YELLOW YELLOW HOLY SHIIIIIIIT. Every single horse would walk past the purple seats and go OH MY FUCK at the yellow ones. This is why the bright red (grey) bucket isn’t a problem, but oH my FfffffffffSHIttTTTT do they notice a stray yellow plastic grocery bag.

I was riding out on the Wyoming range, with a group, on a well-trained, finished horse when I felt my horse start to tense in readiness to GO. I was taking a deep breath because this was not a place for it.

Before I finished, she’d relaxed again.

I looked around.

Then I saw the wolf.

Yup.

Wolf.

Not that far away from us, a bit further down in the valley.

My horse, with her honed prey senses, had spotted the wolf, identified it as a predator, assessed what the wolf was doing and decided it wasn’t a threat. I hadn’t even seen her.

Yes, her. We know it was a her because the person with field glasses determined that she had a little squirming scrap of grey fur in her mouth - a breeding bitch moving her pups to a new den.

My horse knew that this one, very busy wolf was not a threat to eight horses and humans.

By: Pavlov the Corgi

Date: October 18, 2018

Location: Salt Lake City, Utah

More: This cutie bb boi is such a lil wiggle butt!!! 

The preferred breed of Queen Elizabeth herself, the corgi name comes from the Welsh language. Cor =“dwarf” and Gi=dog, so we are literally calling them, “Dwarf Dog.” 

Some folklore suggests this breed was employed by the fairy kingdom. Fairies would use them as mounts, literally riding herd on these herders, making them truly enchanting. Come on, you know you want to see a little fairy coach being pulled by a team of corgis!