What a really excellent point and observation.
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My first thought when I read thru it, besides thinking of this thread, was as a teacher/trainer/coach you could use it as a way to improve your communication to your student. Especially if youâre having trouble getting thru to them.
I mean, we all know the most gifted teachers have a zillion ways of saying something until it clicks, right?
Which I guess is what she says towards the end⊠(doh! read clear til the end dummy!) 
Given that Colorado State has an excellent vet school that trained several of the best equine vets Iâve ever used, the woo-woo tone and apparent lack of hands-on horse experience surprises me!
Thereâs plenty of equine experts right there at the school who could have proofed this and made it relevant to actual adult owners. 
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And Iâm not saying it in a âyou donât understandâ way - because a lot of horse owners DO understand the full range of work necessary in keeping horses, and therefore they choose to board so that they can have the âpartnershipâ part of the relationship.
But the original survey sounded very much like what you would ask someone who shows up at a barn 1-2x a week, not someone that actually owns horses, let alone someone that is in a caretaker role. I suspect the majority of barn owners/managers have different opinions of a horseâs personality/temperament as the caretaker versus the rider. My daughterâs horse is (to most people) - inquisitive, personable, and tuned into humans. As a riding horse, sheâs kind of brainless - meaning she listens and responds without a lot of evasions.
From a caretakerâs perspective - sheâs nosy, bargy, unaware of her size. Sheâs the lead mare so she gets all the pets, treats, apples, brushing, etc. unless sheâs stalled. And sheâs kind of brainless, so she does a lot of stupid things like knock over full wheelbarrows, breaks doors trying to get into places sheâs not allowed, reacts to other horses getting silly and can be a little dangerous (again because sheâs big and unaware of it) etc.
The same qualities that make her a great âfriendâ and âpartnerâ make her a really annoying horse to care for.
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Ah. Itâs quite possible Psychology never talks to Vet School, they are likely in different buildings, maybe different campuses. And there may be mutual distrust.
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I didnât read the survey, because the âlease/rentâ wording clued me into what was going to be asked. I think a large part of the chasm between the touchy feely crowd and (I guess Iâll use) us is that even a small to medium pony is a large animal that can hurt you.
No one wants to see anybody hurt, so naturally we react to something like this.
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I thought the survey was carefully crafted to get a certain result. Not a true measure of how horse people feel about, or relate to, their horse.
Itâs sort of like asking a population of people which color they like better, pink or orange. They didnât ask more broadly âwhat is your favorite color?â They will only get answers relating to pink and orange, because thatâs all they asked about.
The questions present a narrow view of a human-horse relationship that excludes the ways most COTH adults have expressed the relationship.
Reading COTH threads indicates that this population is caring and compassionate with their horses. But also pragmatic and understanding of horse psychology, which is very different from human psychology. It is rare to read a thread on COTH that has much of the âmy horse is my best friend, no one else understands me like he/she doesâ emotion.
The fact that the survey is being plonked down in Internet horse forums also indicates to me that they are not really serious about it. They have no idea who are the people answering. Are they professionals, backyard horse owners, competitive amateurs, etc.
Probably a schooling show for freshmen psychology, students, as it were.
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I liked the âI think of my horse as âmy horseââ answer.
Horses are animals. They are wonderful amazing animals with thousands of years of history with us, but they remain animals. For almost the entirety of that history, the answer would have been âtransportationâ and âwork animalâ.
Because of what we ask them to do, we need to understand and communicate with them far more complexly than we do with, say, sheep. But it seems to me that the modern era of using animals as human substitutes is a weird one. Like so much of the modern era, really.
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The really wonderful thing about horses is that they arenât people.
Much easier to make a horse happy than a person.
Horses are clear and immediate in their responses. You need to get on the horse wave length to be around them safely.
And while they talk a lot, both in words and gestures, itâs nothing like having to run the gauntlet of human small talk.
So yeah. I love them because they arenât people which reduces chances to anthropomorphize except jokingly.
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