Horse Therapy and Equine-Assisted Learning: What Horses Can Show Us.

There are moments with horses that stay with you. Sometimes you understand immediately what happened. Sometimes a horse responds in a way that makes you stop and wonder:

What did that horse just notice?

I’ve been fascinated by that question for a very long time.

Long before I knew there was such a thing as Equine-Assisted Learning.

I think horses started teaching me when I was a teenager

I remember arriving late at the barn one day as a teenager. I was frustrated, in a hurry and just wanted to get my horse and go. Except he wouldn’t come with me.

The more frustrated I became, the less interested he seemed in following. I kept trying until eventually the rope broke and I ended up sitting in a mud puddle.

I was angry, covered in mud and definitely not thinking about it as some profound life lesson.

But I remember realizing that maybe my horse wasn’t the problem.

I had walked up to him frustrated and rushed, expecting him to simply follow me. I wasn’t paying attention to him at all or to what I was bringing into the interaction.

That moment stayed with me. And over the years, I’ve had countless moments with horses that brought me back to the same thing.

They notice us.

Our body language. Our movement. Our attention. Our tension. How clearly we communicate. Whether we’re actually present with them.

And sometimes, they seem to notice things we haven’t noticed at all.

Then I found the neuroscience behind it

This is one of the reasons I became so interested in the work of Janet L. Jones, PhD, a neuroscientist, horsewoman and author of Horse Brain, Human Brain: The Neuroscience of Horsemanship.

For me, her work put neuroscience behind something I had already been fascinated by and experiencing around horses for years.

Jones explores how differently equine and human brains perceive, focus, learn and communicate.

Horses evolved as prey animals. Their survival has depended on paying very close attention to their environment and noticing changes around them.

Humans are different. We can physically be standing beside a horse while mentally being somewhere else entirely.

Thinking about yesterday.

Worrying about tomorrow.

Wondering whether we’re doing something right.

Or, in my case as a teenager, being so frustrated about being late that I wasn’t really paying attention to my horse at all.

The more I learn about the horse brain, the more fascinating those interactions become to me.

It doesn’t take away the magic.

If anything, it makes me wonder how much horses are noticing that we don’t.

Horses don’t need our words

This becomes especially interesting during Equine-Assisted Learning (EAL).

Humans rely heavily on language. We explain ourselves. We rationalize. We can say we’re confident while our body shows hesitation. We can say we’re fine while we’re tense from head to toe.

A horse doesn’t know that story.

They have the person standing in front of them.

During an EAL session, I might ask someone to create space between themselves and a horse.

They can know exactly what they want the horse to do, but their body might be communicating something completely different.

Maybe they ask the horse to move while stepping backwards themselves. Maybe they hesitate. Maybe the horse doesn’t respond and they immediately look at me to solve it for them. Or they become frustrated and start trying harder and harder.

That’s where it becomes interesting.

Because instead of sitting somewhere talking about confidence, boundaries or communication, suddenly we can see and experience it happening.

What changed?

What did you do?

What did the horse do?

What happens if you try it differently?

That’s the part I love.

Sometimes horses notice things we don’t

And then there are moments I can’t explain as easily.

I once watched a horse become unusually interested in a woman’s stomach.

She kept returning to the same place and smelling her belly.

Again.

And again.

It was noticeable enough that I finally mentioned it.

The woman looked at me and said:

“I’m pregnant.”

That moment stayed with me.

What exactly was the horse noticing?

Scent is an important part of how horses perceive their world. Research has even shown that horses can distinguish between human body odors collected in different emotional contexts, including fear and joy.

So I don’t think we should underestimate how much information horses may be receiving from us simply because we can’t perceive it.

Did that horse know she was pregnant?

I can’t answer that.

But she noticed something.

And sometimes I’m perfectly happy to leave a little mystery around moments like that.

And then there was Sadie

One of my favorite examples happened during an Equine-Assisted Learning session with Sadie.

The woman I was working with came in with a lot of energy. She talked almost constantly. Even during exercises, slowing down and simply being quiet was difficult for her.

At one point, I asked her to stand beside Sadie and place both hands on Sadie’s belly.

That was it. No talking, nothing she had to accomplish.

Just stand there. Breathe. Feel the horse underneath her hands.

Slowly, she became quiet.

Really quiet.

And Sadie started to relax.

Her body softened. She became sleepy.

And eventually she became so relaxed that she actually went down to the ground. I had never seen Sadie do that during one of my sessions before.

A few minutes earlier, I had been standing with someone who could barely stop talking. Now she was completely still beside a horse relaxed enough to lie down.

It was beautiful to watch.

Could I tell you exactly what happened between them?

No.

But something had shifted.

And she could feel it too.

Sometimes the horse creates the moment

That’s when the learning starts.

I don’t have to tell someone what Sadie was thinking.

I can ask:

What did you notice?

What happened when you finally became quiet?

What could you feel underneath your hands?

When did you notice Sadie beginning to relax?

What changed in yourself?

Those questions are much more interesting to me than deciding exactly what every movement from the horse “means”.

And that’s an important part of how I approach EAL. I don’t believe the horse is there to diagnose someone.

But I also don’t believe we need to explain away every unusual or beautiful interaction.

Sometimes the horse creates a moment I never could have planned.

And suddenly we have something real to work with.

That’s what makes Equine-Assisted Learning different

We can talk about boundaries… Or you can experience what it feels like to ask a 1,000-pound animal to respect your space.

We can talk about confidence… Or we can see what happens when a horse doesn’t immediately do what you ask.

We can talk about overthinking… Or I can give you an exercise without telling you exactly how to solve it.

We can talk about being present… Or you can stand quietly beside a horse and discover that truly being quiet for a few minutes is much harder than it sounds.

You’re not only talking about yourself. You’re experiencing yourself in interaction with another living being.

And that horse responds. Sometimes in ways that are easy to understand. Sometimes in ways that surprise us. And sometimes in ways that leave us with more questions than answers.

Is Equine-Assisted Learning the same as horse therapy?

People searching for horse therapy in Tracy, California will find terms like horse therapy, equine therapy, equine-assisted therapy and Equine-Assisted Learning used in many different ways.

At EquiRoots, what I offer is Equine-Assisted Learning rather than psychotherapy.

My background in Applied Psychology influences how I structure sessions, observe behavior and ask questions, but EAL is experiential.

We can work on confidence, communication, boundaries, self-awareness, problem-solving and being more present.

You don’t need any experience with horses. And you don’t need to come in knowing exactly what you want to work on. Sometimes we start with the horse and see what happens.

Maybe that’s part of the magic

I don’t think we have to choose between understanding the science and appreciating that there is something special about interacting with horses.

Actually, the more I learn about the horse brain, the more fascinating horses become to me. Janet Jones’ work helps me understand the animal standing in front of me.

Research continues to teach us more about what horses can see, smell, perceive and respond to and then I still have moments where a horse repeatedly smells the belly of a woman who tells me she’s pregnant.

Or Sadie lies down beside someone who, minutes earlier, couldn’t seem to become still.

Or I think back to teenage me sitting in that mud puddle because my horse absolutely refused to come along with my frustrated plans.

Some things I understand much better now. Others still make me wonder. And maybe that’s part of what makes working with horses so special.

They make us pay attention.

To them.

To what’s happening in the moment.

And very often, to ourselves.

Sources & Further Reading

Jones, Janet L., PhD. (2020). Horse Brain, Human Brain: The Neuroscience of Horsemanship. Trafalgar Square Books.

Jones is a neuroscientist and horsewoman whose work brings together neuroscience and horsemanship, exploring differences between equine and human perception, attention, learning and communication.

Jardat, P., Destrez, A., Damon, F., et al. (2023). “Horses discriminate human body odors between fear and joy contexts in a habituation-discrimination protocol.” Scientific Reports, 13, 3285.

The study found that horses could discriminate between human body odors collected in fear and joy contexts.