I’ve owned horses with both good and bad senses of direction and have always found it clear how good their sense of direction is. However I’ve had my current horse for 1.5 yrs and I’m just now starting to question his sense of direction out on trails. Does anyone know of a good way to test a horse’show sense of direction?
Take horse on trail ride. Get lost. Let horse pick the route. If you get home, your horse’s sense of direction is okay.
Ditto what Highflyer said. Go out on a trail you know well so that if you get lost YOU can find your way home. Pick the trail you want to take going out. Let your horse find the way home.
One note, though. Horses don’t always use the “trails” to get back. I’ve done this a lot with my mustang and he will use the shortest and most direct route possible to get us back, which may or may not mean being on the trail - we could be bushwhacking!
It is actually quite fun to do this. I’ve done it on purpose to “test” his sense of direction, and since I know he’s quite trustworthy and accurate, I’ve allowed myself to look for new trails and then gotten lost in the brushy desert and said screw it and dropped the reins and trusted him to get us back. And he did. Exactly to the spot I asked him to (water crossing which is a couple miles long - I asked him to get us to a particular spot).
Bring your favorite GPS app if you plan any of the above methods 
[QUOTE=Chall;8593642]
Bring your favorite GPS app if you plan any of the above methods ;)[/QUOTE]
:lol:
[QUOTE=rrock129;8593523]
I’ve owned horses with both good and bad senses of direction and have always found it clear how good their sense of direction is. However I’ve had my current horse for 1.5 yrs and I’m just now starting to question his sense of direction out on trails. Does anyone know of a good way to test a horse’show sense of direction?[/QUOTE]
They don’t have a “sense of direction”. As in N, S, E, or W. It doesn’t exist for them because they don’t orient themselves by the sun or compass points. They are creatures of habit and tend to go where others have gone before them via paths, etc. All horses do have a sense of where “home” (stable, pasture) might be if you hacked from it, BUT usually you have to be close enough to home, or on a well established path you take with them a great deal, or one that you just left a strong scent on that is still viable, in order to trigger that desire in them to take the lead and retrace their steps.
Many, many case in point of trailered horses that lose their riders on trails, and run off only to be found hours or days or (sadly) weeks later just yards away from where they initially got lost.
If you go out and deliberately get yourself lost, some horse may backtrack home for you, but generally they bow to their long standing training of being subject to our direction and most just wait for you to take the lead going home.
How do you tell the difference between a horse with a “bad” sense of direction and one that does not want to go home?
I think my horse believes that “home is where the hay is.”
I’ve had 2 horses that had a sense of direction in that they always knew the shortest route back to the trailer. On trails we’ve never been on they would know which way to go. All my other horses relied on back tracking. I think it was scent vs remembering the trail. Every horse or trail ridden would, at some point, put their nose to the ground and seem to follow their nose.
But like the poster with the mustang, the 2 that could find their way back to the trailhead clearly seemed to be using a “sense of direction”. Unfamiliar territory, on different trails? I think they are like a few people I know, they always know where their are in relation to where they started.
[QUOTE=Palm Beach;8594852]
How do you tell the difference between a horse with a “bad” sense of direction and one that does not want to go home?[/QUOTE]
I would think a horse with a “bad” sense of direction would be one consistently opting for a wrong direction after you have repeatedly “showed” them the proper direction to go. IE: a horse that would keep going down one trail at a fork in the road where the other trail was the proper turn. Or one that maintained a straight line of travel when you knew that a turn or two just past was one that should have been taken. Again, that may all fall back on the horse just doing what you told it to do: “go straight”.
A horse that doesn’t want to go home will just usually stop and start eating…if there is anything to eat. Or they will just stand there, or take the initiative to select a random trail and keep going onward, not back.
JMHO.
My horse definitely always knows where the trailer is. We do Hunter Paces, on private trails that we are never, ever on. The trails differ for each ride, and even if we are riding with the same organization year after year, they always choose different routes. No matter where we are or how long the trail is, my horse is always very purposeful about which way he wants to go. I have mentioned his insistence about turning a particular way to the folks at the halfway point and am always told, “Oh, if you had turned that way, it would have taken you back to the trailers.”
He does this no matter where we are. We have miles and miles of trails near our house, many of which we have never purposely ridden on … but on nearly every ride, I get to the point that I am ready to go back. And that is when I start letting him choose which way to go at each option. Bingo, we are back to the trailer in no time. He does keep to the trails, though, which is good as the trails near our house are for public use, but abuse of the trail system could end the equestrian use and I surely do not wan that.
I love my horse with his built-in GPS System!
SCM1959
I forgot to say that there is a trainer (in Oregon?) that trains search and rescue horses. It has been proven that when trained, a horse is a better tracker than a dog. (Don’t shoot me, I’m just quoting what was in the paper) But having had horses that would use scent to find their way back to the trailer, I do believe a horse can be trained to “track”.
Thanks for the reminder, Gestalt, I had found that person in Oregon who trains “scent horses” last year and was interested in doing a clinic. Maybe if she’s got one this summer - that would be fun! If I do, I’ll report back!
I had a mare like your mustang. She always new the way home or back to the trailer. Just give her her head and she’d take you the way the crow flies, so it wasn’t just back tracking. My current horse is a little directionally challenged…
Horses are just like people–some gifted in this way, some not.
My mare is quite smart and also one who frequently uses scent tracking I’d love to have her trained as a search and rescue horse–if any were needed in suburban Connecticut!
gingerbread, I believe the oregon woman first trained with a man in Missouri. Maybe you could train your horse to be an urban pet finder. 
[QUOTE=Palm Beach;8594852]
How do you tell the difference between a horse with a “bad” sense of direction and one that does not want to go home?[/QUOTE]
One method is to go for a ride in the New Jersey Pine Barrens with a friend who claims she knows the area well, get lost and let the reins loose so the horses can “find their way home”. Turns out they were happy to spend the rest of their lives out in the woods. Definite fail.
We did eventually get home but good lord, it all looks the same out there.
