is...
Learning Awareness
Finding Connection
Healing & Empowering Us
Our Horses & Our World
We decide who our horses live beside — who comes in at night, who moves to the empty stall — and we rearrange it constantly, for reasons that have nothing to do with them. We have never once thought what this does to them.
A note on what this is.
The articles in this work are written to be felt. This page is written to be checked. It is the room where the studies behind the herd pieces are kept — what each one actually did, what it actually found, and what that finding lets us see. If something in an article made you want to know how we know it, this is where to look. And if you teach this material to others, this is the ground you can stand on when someone asks you to defend it.
One honest thing first. Almost all of this evidence comes from feral and wild horses — the Kaimanawa ranges of New Zealand, the hills of Serra d'Arga in Portugal — horses living more or less on their own terms. That is both its strength and its limit. These studies cannot tell us directly how the horses in our barns and paddocks ought to be kept. What they can tell us is what horses do when they are free to choose — which is exactly the baseline we need before we start making the choices for them. Read them that way: not as instructions, but as a picture of the thing we are working with.
Each study below is paraphrased in plain language, with the full citation so you can go to the source yourself.
Linklater, W. L., & Cameron, E. Z. (2000). Tests for cooperative behaviour between stallions. Animal Behaviour, 60(6), 731–743.
In the Kaimanawa ranges, the researchers compared nine bands held by more than one stallion against eighteen held by a single stallion. The question behind it was whether extra stallions help — whether they cooperate to hold and defend a larger or stronger group of mares. They don't. The number of stallions in a band had no positive effect on the size of the mare group, on how stable it was, on the quality of the range it used, or on how successfully it bred. Bands with several stallions were no better off, and the relationships between those stallions were marked far more by conflict than by cooperation.
What it lets us see: if the stallion were the thing holding the herd together, more of him should mean more herd. It doesn't. Whatever does the holding, it is not the stallion's defence of the group.
Linklater, W. L., Cameron, E. Z., Minot, E. O., & Stafford, K. J. (1999). Stallion harassment and the mating system of horses. Animal Behaviour, 58(2), 295–306.
The same population, seen from the mares' side. The researchers compared mares living in single-stallion bands, mares in multistallion bands, and mares who belonged to no fixed band at all — the ones they called social dispersers, or maverick mares. Across a range of measures — how far the mares had to travel, their parasite loads, their body condition, how many foals they raised and how many survived — the mares in multistallion bands and the maverick mares came off worse. The researchers tied this to harassment: the pursuing, driving, and pressing a mare undergoes, and what it costs her when there is more of it.
What it lets us see: a mare's place in the social structure shows up in her body and in her foals. It also names something we tend to overlook — that mares are not fixed possessions of a band. Some stay; some travel.
Cameron, E. Z., Setsaas, T. H., & Linklater, W. L. (2009). Social bonds between unrelated females increase reproductive success in feral horses. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(33), 13850–13853.
This is the study that turns the picture over. Working again with the feral mares, the researchers measured how strongly each mare was bonded to other mares, and set that against how successfully she bred. Mares with stronger bonds raised more foals. And these were bonds between unrelated mares — so this was not kin helping kin, the explanation that muddies most primate studies of the same question. It was friendship, built on familiarity and chosen company, and it paid off partly by reducing the harassment a mare endured. The bonds themselves were strong and lasting, and built around preferred partners.
What it lets us see: the friendships are not a pleasant extra laid over the real structure of the herd. They are the structure — measurable in the hardest currency there is, the foals a mare raises. And they are made of familiarity and choosing, not blood.
Maeda, T., Ochi, S., Ringhofer, M., Sosa, S., Sueur, C., Hirata, S., & Yamamoto, S. (2021). Aerial drone observations identified a multilevel society in feral horses. Scientific Reports, 11, 71.
A different population entirely — the feral horses of Serra d'Arga in Portugal — and a different method. The researchers flew drones overhead at regular intervals, recorded the exact position of every horse, and used the distances between them to map who kept company with whom. Two things came out of it. First, the horses fell into small "units" — family groups that genuinely held together. Second, those units did not scatter at random; they associated with one another to form a larger "herd," and within that herd the big mixed-sex family groups tended to hold the center while the all-male bachelor groups stayed out toward the edges. A society with more than one level to it.
What it lets us see: the herd is not one thing with one correct shape. The family band, the lone and bachelor males, the larger gathering they all belong to — these are not exceptions to a rule, they are the structure. And because this turned up in Portugal while the bonding and harassment work was done in New Zealand, it is not the quirk of a single place.
Linklater, W. L., Cameron, E. Z., Stafford, K. J., & Veltman, C. J. (2000). Social and spatial structure and range use by Kaimanawa wild horses (Equus caballus: Equidae). New Zealand Journal of Ecology, 24, 139–152.
Underneath the more pointed studies sits the patient descriptive work: who lived with whom, where they ranged, how the bands and the wider population were laid out across the land. It is less dramatic than the others and more important than it looks — it is the map the other findings are placed on. A great deal of the New Zealand horse work shares this ground, which is worth holding in mind: much of what we know in fine detail comes from this one, unusually well-studied population.
What it lets us see: the baseline picture — what a horse society looks like when it is laid out across real country and watched closely over time. Everything else is read against this.
This room will grow. As the herd work goes on — into how horses bond, how groups change, and what happens when we are the ones deciding who lives with whom — the studies that ground each new piece will be added here, in the same plain form: what was done, what was found, and what it lets us see. It is meant to be one honest place to stand, for anyone who wants to know how we know.
*Pulling Them into Our World or Stepping into Theirs
So brilliant watching an Equine Facilitator asking the herd, "Who wants to come to work today and help me with this very special client?" And then watch one of the horses answer. Walking up to the gateway waiting patiently for the halter to be put on and walk through the gate and say they are offering their services.
We ask and they answer.
Amazing to experience. Amazing to watch.
Brilliant is so many different ways.
The horse leaving the herd behind to come into our world.
An offering, freely given. Saying, "I can come and help."
But there is another possibility.
A different experience we can have.
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Between Lesson
The Lesson | I will keep you safe
This is what we want our horses to learn in this lesson.
Tools Needed: One dog on a leash that barks on command.
Our response we place ourselves between the horse and the dog.
Facing the dog, our back to them. And this is very important.
By giving them our back and giving the dog all the attention we are saying we trust you behind us.
By placing yourself in the way of harm we give a clear indication that we will protect you.
With my back to you, this says that leave this to me. You can just relax while I take care of this.
A lesson that horses take to naturally. Find the Lesson of Billy and the Herd
I didn't know what I was doing.
Not then.
It just made sense to follow the recommendations of this long lost master. That when riders were aboard my school horses that they knew better than interact. No throwing heads, no nasty looks, no nibbling at each other. If a rider was on they were to ignore each other.
Amazingly how easy this was to teach them. It seemed all it took was a single "No, I don't think so." and usually they were okay with that. Of course, that ease might have been because they were our school horses, but once introduced no horse that came on the property seemed to have a problem with it either and quickly picked up that it was fine to stand there together resting while their riders listened to the long explanation from the instructor.
Of course, we expected the same while on a lead rope. And not okay to get cranky with the horse in the stall next to you if a rider was in the stall with you. That one was a little harder. I think in part because this was where they were fed, but even here we insisted especially if it meant the riders would be kept safe.
And I didn't realize what this meant to the horses.
As I said I didn't know what I was doing.
But unknowingly I was laying the base for the conscious herd.
Many talk about the conscious horse, few are aware of the difference it makes when you have a conscious herd.
Once you've worked with a conscious herd, you come to understand why we insist that any facilitated program needs to have one. We know deem this so important that it becomes the first lesson that that we start with.
More than that, we train our teachers on how to evaluate a herd, a test we ask all that join us to take before they start or re-start their facilitated programs. A requirement that we make necessary for all that participate.
So what is so brilliant, so important about the Conscious Herd?
There is another dimension, another level these horses are at that will change what happens when you help your clients experience being with the horses. Almost instantly feeling a beautiful calmness and you feel there is something here. And you are surprised at how easy it is for us to feel it. The horses easing us into connection with all living things that is with us in this moment. A different connection that usually isn't available here in a man-made herd. And we don't even miss it because we haven't experienced it before to know that it should be missed.
Hard to put down into words what it feels like. The connection, the calm, how everything just looks a little more beautiful. How the horses are calmer, more at ease, more gentle, more settled. Putting up with nonsense from man and beast because there is a peace within them. There is a calm in the herd that all the horse's share in. A connection that isn't just in the herd but on the very property that they live on. You feel it as you open the car door to step out. This is a place of magic. A place of healing. Only possible because of the horse that live here. This is when you can't deny the connection, the relationship between horses, the place, and every life that lives here.
So what does that have to do with telling two horses to ignore each other when riders are on their backs?
Because if this is something that we want, need to have to create a place of serenity and healing then the question is. How can we make this happen? Is this something that we have control over? And if this something that we can create, is this something that we can hurt, destroy inadvertently?
And unknowingly this is what I began to create when I said to the two horses behave yourselves.
Not because I took charge. Not because I became the dominant one, which I know some will think is the answer.
But for a very different reason.
When we protect one from the other, tell all that they need to behave better with each other, they feel safe, taken care of and nothing makes a greater change in an animal that is a flight animal that needs to be on alert at all times to stay alive.
Safety brings peace, helps the adrenaline settle. Calmer, better settled... this is the beginning of the change.
Not saying this is the only thing, but it starts something.
Later we will discuss how we can evaluate the level of health of a conscious herd.
And the exercises that we can employ to help the horses understand that they are safe here. That this place is special.
Creating a Healthy Herd
And how to raise the healing level of the herd
How to raise the sensation of peace and healing of the herd
How to raise the awareness level of the herd to a new level, so they can more powerfully do the work that we are all tasked with.