09/05/2026
Yes yes yes! Science is so important to help us understand our horses better, and to help us let go of outdated training and horsekeeping practices that we have enough evidence to support are not ethical. AND it is not the be-all-end-all. We still need to keep questioning, learning, feeling, and most of all listening to the horse in front of us.
Here’s a hot take: I think science is great. Science is important. I think we should study it, learn from it and allow it to challenge what we think we know.
But I also think we have to be careful about the place we give it.
Science is not the end all be all. It is not everything there is to know. It is a snapshot of what we understand at a particular period in time, based on the questions we have thought to ask and the things we have figured out how to measure.
Our understanding changes. New information challenges old information. There are variables we haven’t accounted for, questions we haven’t thought to ask yet, and things we simply don’t have the ability to measure.
Science can give us what we believe to be certainty, and certainty gives us comfort. Not because science itself is necessarily certain or predictable, but because a scientific explanation gives us something that feels concrete to hold onto. We can name it, measure it, categorize it and explain it.
There is comfort in that.
It is much less comfortable to stand in front of a horse and admit that we don’t entirely know. To feel something we don’t yet have language for. To recognize that what we know may not explain what is happening with this horse, in this moment.
But I think that discomfort is an important part of horsemanship. Because the danger isn’t science. The danger is our desire for certainty.
When we become too certain in what we think we know, we stop being curious. We stop asking questions. And eventually, we can stop listening to the horse.
Science is one way of making sense of the world around us. A very valuable one. But it is not everything.
And when it comes to horses, there is one limitation we can never get around:
We are not horses.
All of the science in the world will never allow us to see exactly what a horse sees, hear exactly what a horse hears, smell or taste exactly what a horse does, or feel the world through their body the way they do.
We can study those things. We can try to measure them. We can learn an incredible amount about their sensory systems, their nervous system, their movement, their behavior and the way they communicate.
But we are still interpreting the horse through a human body, a human mind, and a human experience.
I think there has to be some humility in that.
We can study all of the science. We can study biomechanics, learning theory, behavior, anatomy, physiology, the nervous system and horse communication. We can learn all of the terminology and understand all of the concepts. But until you can feel the horse, and feel yourself, and understand why something feels good to the horse and good to you, it is all still just concepts and theory.
At some point it has to become horsemanship.
You have to be able to feel when the horse’s body changes beneath you. Feel when something becomes easier. Feel when resistance is actually imbalance. Feel when you are creating tension instead of resolving it. Feel when your own body is interfering. Feel the difference between getting a response and actually helping the horse find something.
And then you have to understand why.
That doesn’t mean abandoning science in favor of intuition.
Science can help us make sense of what we feel. It can challenge what we thought we felt. It can show us where our assumptions may be wrong. It can give us language for things horsemen have observed and felt for a very long time, and it can show us things we may never have discovered on our own.
But feel is where that knowledge becomes usable.
You can know every muscle in the horse’s body and still not know what it feels like when a horse truly lifts beneath you.
You can understand the nervous system and still miss the moment the horse begins to leave you.
You can study communication and still have no feel for timing.
You can know a tremendous amount about horses and still struggle to be with the horse standing in front of you.
And I think this is where we have to be careful.
Because when I see people diminish the horse into its parts, I fear we have lost a sense of who they are as a whole.
The horse is more than whatever part of them we happen to be studying.
They are not simply biomechanics. They are not simply a nervous system. They are not simply behavior. They are not a collection of measurable responses.
They are a living individual experiencing the world in a way we can study, but never completely experience ourselves.
And somewhere in all of our knowing, I think we can forget about the soul of who that horse is.
Not in some romantic sense that ignores the fact that they are horses. Of course they are horses. Understanding the nature of the horse is incredibly important.
But this is also *this* horse.
This horse has a history. Preferences. Sensitivities. Expression. Ways of protecting himself. Ways of becoming curious. Ways of engaging with us. Ways of telling us yes, no, not yet, I don’t understand, that helped, that didn’t.
And if we become so busy explaining and intellectualizing the horse that we stop listening to them, then what good is all of our knowledge?
This is why I don’t think science and feel belong on opposite sides of an argument.
We need both.
Study the science.
Learn the biomechanics. Learn anatomy. Learn about the nervous system and behavior and communication. Let it challenge you. Let it expose the places where tradition or intuition may have led us wrong.
But then go back to the horse.
Put your hands on them.
Ride them.
Watch them.
Feel what changes when you change.
Feel the horse, and feel yourself.
Notice when something feels good to both of you and become curious about why.
Because ultimately, that is where everything we think we know has to hold up.
Horsemanship cannot exist only in our heads.
At some point knowledge has to travel through our hands, our bodies and our awareness and become feel.
Science can tell us an extraordinary amount about horses. I hope we never stop studying them and questioning what we think we know.
But all the science in the world will still never make us a horse.
And I think remembering that is important.
I think maybe the greatest danger isn’t that we don’t know enough. Maybe it’s becoming so certain in what we think we know that we stop listening to the horse and ourselves.
