Leadership, something to strive for? Or...

I've been pondering the concept of leadership since ISES this summer. What is leadership for you? Is it something you strive for, or do you interpret it as something that dominates your horse in a way that his/her personality is stifled?

Scientists don't want us to use words like ”leadership” or ”respect” when we talk about the way our horses relate to us. They say that horses don't have the same ability as humans for abstract reasoning. I agree with this. Scientists also say that the way horses behave is all about learned behaviour. Whatever the horse does is, from this point of view, something you taught the horse to do and has nothing to do with any feeling of love, respect etc that the horse has for you, or if the horse sees you as a leader.

But, horses are herd animals. This mean that a horse always knows who the leader is in a herd, even if this herd only consists of one horse and one human. Or at least the horse always knows who at the moment is in charge of looking after potential danger spots in the surroundings. As Maria wrote in last week's blog:

”Within a horse herd there is a situation-based leadership. Different jobs have different 'leaders', some individuals are responsible for certain stages of the everyday activities of a herd. One is good at finding water, one being the guard, one finding herbs, minerals, one fostering the fillys and one being ready for defence, etc. ”

So, OK, horses cannot perform abstract reasoning, they don't write blogs and don't read any for that matter. But there is for sure a big difference in being with a horse that doesn't see me, walk all over me, does whatever he/she feels like but not whatever I asked for (follow me from the field to the barn, stand still when mounting, loading, pick up the correct lead etc), and a horse that calmly follows me, and in a calm and attentive state responds to my light requests.

The horse that response with lightness to my light request, does he/she see me as his/her leader? Well, I don't know what the horse calls it, but to me this is leadership. Leadership to me is to gain the horse's attention so that I can communicate with my horse. If I have the horse's attention and ways to communicate, at the least I can let my horse know I don't particularly like being physically pushed around by backing him/her out of my space. So, if the scientists don't want us to use words like “leadership” and “respect”, what words should we use to describe the difference in behaviour between the first and the second horse?

Whatever word you choose to use, leadership or learned behaviour, the one thing that both science and NH have in common is the emphasis on the horse handler's behaviour. If I want to teach my horse to behave in any particular way I will have to behave in a way that the horse can understand. What this is called seems to differ with different communities.

What do you want to call it?

PS Thank you to Mark Stanton of Natural Horsemanship magazine for proof reading!