Horse Facial Expressions - Angry/Sad

Описание: Once I had a pony who used to stop doing whatever she was doing - lunging, backing, pivoting, whatever skill I had asked her to perform - the second that I smiled. It was hilarious, occasionally frustrating, but mostly heartwarming. Often I smiled simply because she was so great but she learned that the slightest smile meant she could come in, giving me big puppydog eyes, and I would love on her and she would get a break. She could see the first inkling of a smile going full bore at a canter in a round pen.

All I did to train that pony was spend a lot of time with her, letting her know that I thought she was the best thing in the world. Spending all that time together built a language where we could read each other's faces. I've since trained a lot of horses where I forgot to develop that exchange of communication. I didn't want the horses I was working with to see my face because I didn't want to them to see how sad I was that I had to "train" them. What I want to share with the world is the ability to read horses' faces because I want the people who love their horses to do the "training." If you and your horse can talk to each other, you won't need to hire me :)

This video is not intended to anthropomorphize the horse. As you will see, the horse's facial expression is, in fact, applied to the human's face, not the human's imposed on the horse. I am interested in studying commonalities in facial expressions among all species and species that have evolved together in particular.

Humans were dependent on horses for hundreds of years. It's likely that humans selected for horses whose reactions they could understand. Being able to predict and understand a horse's reactions would come from the ability to see correlations between the horse's body language and the horse's actions.

I'm often asked how I can read horses so well. I feel that anyone can read horses simply by learning to see the whole face. It is difficult for humans to focus on the horse's whole face because it is so large. We tend to try to move away from the face at the same time as trying to look at it. This tendency is derived from the hidden fear we have of finding out how very real a horse is.

I hope that this video will help viewers to have a better relationship with their horses. For me, seeing the human face and the horse face side by side really helped to validate my beliefs about the depth and complexity of horses' emotions. It also gave me confidence in knowing that what I was seeing was real. Even someone who can't read horses in person can see through this video how similar their faces are to human faces and the video inspires them to look at horses again with an open heart. I believe that horses have complex emotions and, as is the case with any language immersion program, that spending time with horses will enable us to communicate with them on an emotional level via the exchange of body language and facial expressions.

What is my horse saying to me?
What is my horse thinking?
What does my horse want?
Why is more horse doing that?
Why is my horse acting that way?