Horses and the blanket study

"A horse doesn't care how much you know, until he knows how much you care." - *Pat Parelli


A recent study shows horses can express themselves in ways that are just now being considered ... think "cue cards"...

In the study, a group of horses was shown cards with symbols and taught how to select a card to indicate when they wanted a blanket or when they didn't need the blanket. Every horse figured it out and could clearly indicate a preference: Blanket on or blanket off.

 
Time to rethink a few other beliefs about what animals can and cannot do and in that respect, what they can teach us. The first step is upgrading, improving and adapting our communication methods.


Read the story at Washington Post.

A few other animals we can learn from -
Chimpanzees
Alex the African grey parrot
Koko the gorilla
Strongheart the dog

“Are dogs anti-uniform? Could it be that you dogs are linked together in some kind of confederacy to get humans not only out of uniforms, but out of their rapidly increasing uniformity and conformity?”- Letters to Strongheart, J. Allen Boone

With each new discovery, we continue to gain insight and awareness into how animal intelligence can be defined by a much broader range of abilities than had been previously thought.

Animals are capable of teaching us how to communicate with them. In continuing to experiment with different methods of learning, we discover it isn't that animals can't or don't know how to communicate, rather, we have to become more creative in our thinking to find what method works best for each animal.

*Here's a wonderful story from the Parelli Blog. A boy and his horse are transformed. His horse had a history of problem behavior, but introduction of a new game changed everything.