Yes!
This is the difference between adults and horses interacting and children and horses interacting.
4 Likes
Ha! I’m pretty sure my one old lady mare considers me staff. It’s her herd, I just provide administrative support 
8 Likes
After reading the above, I believe I’ll skip actually taking the survey 
I love my horses, my cats & even my chickens & the goldfish in my stock tank.
But each “love” is different & all differ from the human version of same.
Sounds like this survey is leaning towards anthropomorphism.
Always a mistake when dealing with a different species.
ETA:
Okay, I checked out the survey & yeah, 
on the touchy feely questions 
10 Likes
Yeah it reads like a therapist’s questionnaire for a “troubled kid” whose parents put them in therapy.
Horses aren’t people.
6 Likes
IF you are a multiple horse owner it says to base answers on the horse you have had the longest. That’s my surliest, testiest, crankiest, curmudgeon of a horse, so all the questions were even farther afield for me.
Definitely a bizarre list of questions. Like, I have never believed talking to my horses would solve my problems. . .
7 Likes
why not just go Back to last year to read the results of the survey asked for last year?
8 Likes
Good catch, lol!
2 Likes
Oh how bizarre. What’s going on here? Are these just first year students let loose on the world to try out a survey? Or is there some course on human/animal psychology and you get assigned a species? Or it’s 18 year olds trying to remember being 11 year old horse crazy tweens? In any case that’s two really oddly slanted surveys from the same school so I’m assuming it’s a repeat undergrad assignment rather than professor or graduate student work.
The same week too! Clearly an assignment.
6 Likes
Welp, the researcher named on the survey page is a PhD student, not a freshman…
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleigh-zaker-b87253137
(Her full name is listed on the survey page, so I think it’s okay to share her linked in?)
And she was seeking responses last year, too, so probably the same person as the other post. Here is the same request on Reddit from last year.
4 Likes
Haha. I was just looking at COTH user name and they were different 
Ok I see from the reddit that she’s trying to get answers that will fit some idea about Equine Assisted Services.
But those questions come from misunderstanding.
Equine Assisted Learning is likely totally useless as a therapy for horse people. It’s something you do with people who are totally new to horses to open them up to something fresh.
4 Likes
Yeah. This account was just created today, so probably forgot the login details for last year’s post/account?
Exactly
Is this where I trot out my story about a vet student (not pre-vet, actually doing veterinary research) and how my eyes rolled so hard I about had to be hospitalized?
I worked in a dairy barn. It was often chosen/boss signed up to have researchers from the vet college come in to use the herd as part of whatever research project they were doing.
The year in question they were studying bedding depth’s correlation to lameness in dairy cattle. So I’m moving through the barn with them chatting and keeping them safe while they were bent over with their rulers, etc. and assessing soundness of the cows.
We came to a stall with my latest ‘pet’ cow who had had a claw amputated recently. Keep in mind I said claw, not dew claw, claw as in half of one foot was gone, bones and all. Buhbye coffin bone, gone. She had half a foot. Half.
“Why is she wearing a bandage.”
“I have to treat it daily and keep it wrapped until the stump gets a good callous on it.”
“What happened to her?”
Here I stupidly wasted far too much breath on telling them the entire tale from initial subsolar ulcer all the way to the signs I saw (flaming red coronet band) that told me that half of the foot had to go* or she had to be PTS immediately.
I concluded my story by telling them that the claw had been surgically amputated and she was recovering extremely well.
Now keep in mind, this is not Joe off the street. This is not a grade 6 child who has just learnt that lizards can regenerate parts.
“Will it grow back?”
“What?” (I was busy thinking what, the hair around the coronet band of her now non-existent claw? Why would they care?)
“Her foot.”
Oof.
*cool thing about cows is that half of a foot can go and the cow might just fully recover to lead a normal life
9 Likes
Did the survey, since you all said it was weird…yup, definitely weird. I am inordinately fond of my pony, and have been known to escape to the barn on a bad day, but I’ve never expected the undying loyalty on his side to last any longer than the supply of peppermints.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my ponies, and I get a big warm fuzzy when I call them over and they trot up making happy pony noises. I also realize I’m the food lady.
The only distress I feel when Mr O’Pony doesn’t understand me is frustration at myself in not giving a clear cue, and if he could talk, it would probably go a little like this:
Me: Hey, Buddy, I’m having a real existential crisis here and
Pony: peppermints?
Me: I’m really stressed out at work, my kids won’t
Pony: food time?
Me: do anything I ask and no one picks up anything around the house and
Pony: FOod TIME
ME: I just don’t have the energy to deal with my parents and that whole situation is
Pony: (CHOMP)
Me: dammit, Darby! That hurt!
Pony: FOOD TIME!
17 Likes
I’ll give your student a break & suggest perhaps they thought - like a hoof capsule* - the part would regrow.
*I found this out when a subsolar abcess in my WB became an anaerobic infection that would cause the hoof to slough, but it could regrow.
Sadly, a long & painful process that I chose to not put him through @19yo.
6 Likes
I won’t. 
it was abundantly clear that the entire claw was gone. Bandage and all you could tell there was no structure of any kind left. It would be like lopping off the entire foot of a horse. There was literally nothing left to regrow. Not a resect or sloughing of the hoof capsule - the entire thing was gone.
Maybe the easiest comparison would be de-clawing a cat but only taking a claw or two and leaving the rest. The ones removed would not regrow as they would have been completely amputated. The ones remaining would carry on as normal.
I just took the survey and that was…. bizarre.
“I think my horse is just a horse” well yeah? 
Do I have a good relationship with my horse? Yeah, I’m the treat lady and also I’ve created some measure of trust that he knows I won’t ask him to do anything that’ll get him eaten. He will do things for me that he might balk at with someone else, cause I let him think and reapproach things to keep him under threshold. That’s training and basic understanding of body language, not some majickal “bond”.
Like everyone else said, this reads like a silly quiz for 8 year olds on a horse game site. I wonder if this is some project that’s required in class on how to set up an online survey. Maybe it’s more about the legal-ese and language than the actual subject matter? Either way, clearly someone (the person who made the survey or the person running the class) has zero horse experience, and I’d argue zero animal experience outside of the family cat.
4 Likes
Maybe she should post this on TTHW’s facebook page. That would get some interesting responses.
2 Likes
Evidently most here didn’t read or understand the original post which clearly states the purpose of this survey. The questions are all relevant and appropriate given the purpose of the survey.
From the OP
I am a student researcher from Colorado State University in the department of psychology. We are inviting participants who are over the age of 18 and who own or rent/lease a horse. Participation will take approximately 20-30 minutes. This is an anonymous online survey. Participation in this research is voluntary. We will not collect names or any other personal identifiers. While there are no direct benefits, we hope participants will learn more about the relationship they have with their horses. They will also be helping to inform the practices of Equine Assisted Services that use horses to promote human well-being.
Right, but equine assisted therapy service was part of my focus in school and these questions have almost no relevance to that topic. Besides the weird childish type of questions, it’s very focused on people with their own animals, whereas most therapy and learning is done with program horses NOT owned by participants.
ETA, maybe “childish” isn’t the right word; perhaps anthropomorphic is better.
7 Likes
