Horse Brain, Human Brain: The Neuroscience of Horsemanship
by Janet Jones
June 2020
In this illuminating book, brain scientist and horsewoman Janet Jones describes human and equine brains working together. Using plain language, she explores the differences and similarities between equine and human ways of negotiating the world. Mental abilities—like seeing, learning, fearing, trusting, and focusing—are discussed from both human and horse perspectives. Throughout, true stories of horses and handlers attempting to understand each other—sometimes successfully, sometimes not—help to illustrate the principles.
Horsemanship of every kind depends on mutual interaction between equine and human brains. When we understand the function of both, we can learn to communicate with horses on their terms instead of ours. By meeting horses halfway, we achieve many goals.
- We improve performance.
- We save valuable training time.
- We develop much deeper bonds with our horses.
- We handle them with insight and kindness instead of force or command.
- We comprehend their misbehavior in ways that allow solutions.
- We reduce the human mistakes we often make while working with them.
