I've been off line for a few weeks due to illness, but managed to get to the above event last Sunday and thought some people on here may be interested in a brief account.

The first speaker was:
Caroline Cavill BSc, MSc, PGCE on:
The Influence of Aggressive Behaviour on Social Structure in Feral Horses.
Caroline's talk was very interesting, she had sourced an established herd of 7 pony feral stallions and spent 2 hours each day (varying hours) observing them to see what if there was any correlation between aggressive behaviour and social structure. The general gist of it was, that she had found some although she quite rightly added that had she been looking for other behaviour's, such as mutal grooming, she may well have also found a correlation and that the Social Structure may have altered had this behaviour been what she had reported on. It was a really good engaging talk with not too much academic data to put one off hearing what her message was.

Lesley Skipper (author of "Inside Your Horse's Mind") on:
Treating the Horse as an Individual.
Lesley's talk was lovely, and she communicated so much tous, it was a pleasure to hear her talk and although she had one photo only and no presentation she mangaged to keep us all engaged and said some thought provoking things. And, yes, even as hopefully responsible and thoughtful owners, we can still sometimes be open to prejudices about how we view a horse or horses in general. Such as (for me) "arabs are all flighty, arab stallions are all really flighty". Lesley has definate proof that this isn't the case as she is the owner and handler for a very well socialised, perfect mannered arab stallion. Although, I suspect that this is due to how Lesley handles and trains her horses.

Dr Mark Kennedy (Senior Lecturer in Animal Welfare, Anglia Polytechnic University) on:
Ethical Horse Use.
This was such a treat. If anyone ever has the opportunity to see a lecture or talk by Dr Kennedy please please go. He is probably one of the best lecturers/speakers I have ever seen. He must be so totally suited to his job and his students must be inspired, a true teacher. The talk and presentation was fasciating and he is right "Ethics isn't just up to the individual" but should be taken on by all. It would be great to have an ethical code of conduct which suited the horse, and there was some debate about the EBF lobbying DEFRA, ILPA, RSPCA etc., to have some ethical horse issues set down. It would hold much more credibility if the research studies and point of view was put across by the qualified behaviourists & academics.

Hopefully, Francis Burton will put an article with much more information on the day on the EBF website.

The brains session at the end was really good and I think no-one really wanted to day to end...

So, Francis and EBF team if you see this many thanks for a really really good day.

hi jo I was also there. and agree with all your comments. I think lesley was really restrained knowing how she gets cross at anyone examining domination and aggression when it takes up only about 1% of a horses interaction. and yeah what would you give to be a student with mark as your lectures. so skilful. I thought a relative beginner and a well read academic would both have been satisfied by his input.

Jo, it's comments like yours which keep me going and confirm my belief that these meetings are worthwhile holding. You summed up my thoughts on the talks perfectly. I did feel the event was a success, but it's wonderful to get explicit positive feedback - thank you very much! Actually, Judith Turner is the one who does all the hard work in organizing these events. As far as I know, she doesn't visit this forum, so I'll send her a link to this page. I know she will be as heartened as I am to read what you have written.

As for info on the talks, we will be publishing abstracts in the newsletter. I don't see why they couldn't go on the website too, but I'll ask the speakers first if that's ok with them. (I know, it's about time I updated the website!)

Thanks Jo, really interesting to see your write-up and I was sorry to miss the meeting this year. Bit too far north for me - I was gutted when last year's southern meeting was cancelled (Francis, pleeeeease - it's our turn next, right??!)

Catherine

Jo,

Thanks so much for the nice comments about my talk! I must admit I did think about turning it into a Powerpoint presentation as I put together quite a lot of those for my boss, but I wasn’t confident that my laptop was up to the challenge(it’s getting a bit long in the tooth now – like me!) I totally agree with you about Mark Kennedy – a superb speaker and a lovely man to boot. I had some really good conversation with him and was extremely impressed, not only with his grasp of the issues involved but also his ability to communicate them.

I don’t know that I would describe our stallion Nivalis as ‘perfect mannered’ as he does have his moments (as they all do) but in general he is a real gent – I’ve attached some photos(one of them shows him sharing and apple with my husband Brian). His yearling son Tariel loves to play with him and as you can see from one of the pics, Nivalis is very tolerant! He has been trained using mainly +R with very little -R (only as much as strictly necessary and then very mild) and he loves the whole process of learning and being taught various things.

Joan – you’re perfectly right, I do get annoyed when people insist that dominance hierarchies are the organizing principles behind equine society – this is a subject that I’ve covered in some depth in my forthcoming book (being printed right now), ‘Let Horses Be Horses’ because I feel the potential for misuse of this concept is immense, especially in Natural Horsemanship training methods based on the concept of the ‘alpha horse’. You will search the scientific literature in vain for the latter, and two of the longest running studies of feral horses, those of Joel Berger (5 years in the Granite Range of Nevada) and Telane Greyling (11 years to date, among the feral horses of the Namib Desert) have not only failed to find anything resembling the ‘alpha horse’, they have also found that dominance hierarchies, even where they can be identified (which is not very often), appear to have little significance in the lives of these feral horses. Marthe Kiley-Worthington’s long term studies of her own horses, and my own 12 year study of our equine group, also fail to find any significance in hierarchies even where they are identifiable (I explain why in the book). One interesting thing, which also emerges from these studies, is that the idea of horses having a specific herd ‘leader’ is also a non-starter – again, this is explained in the book!

As I said above, Nivalis is a real gent, but any attempt to ‘dominate’ him using some of the ideas put forward by advocates of the ‘alpha horse’ concept (i.e. that the human should become the equivalent of the ‘alpha horse’) could result in disaster – I wonder if this is why so many of the advocates of this concept seem to stress how dangerous stallions are? The whole point of our relationship with Nivalis is that he has strong emotional bonds with both me and my husband (but especially with Brian); he co-operates with us because we make his work as pleasant as possible for him (with lots of rewards!), because it engages his mind, and because he likes and trusts us. He is also relaxed because he spends most of his time with his family (our mare Tiff and their son Tariel). Why provoke a potential confrontation with a horse like that by trying to be ‘dominant’? I know that many of the advocates of the dominance approach say that dominance does not necessarily involve aggression, and this is quite true, but if they insist that the kind of dominance they are referring to is the equivalent of social dominance, then aggression is going to be involved whether they want it to to be or not. That is how dominance hierarchies are normally identified by animal behaviour scientists – through aggressive interactions! And, as Caroline demonstrated in her paper at the Symposium, trying to identify a dominance hierarchy without reference to aggression and in the absence of significant competition for resources (as in the wild) is extraordinarily difficult!

I suppose the point I’m making is that there is so much muddled thinking on this whole subject; so often people writing about equine social structure start off by assuming what really needs to be proved, i.e. that a dominance hierarchy is the defining component of equine society. There is so much that needs to be explained about this subject, but I’d better stop banging on about that or I’ll be here all day! So sorry for going on a bit – I just think that now so much of what is being taught by some practitioners of Natural Horsemanship (however you define that) hinges on this issue that it’s time it was clarified properly.

Anyway, it’s all in my book!

Hi Lesley

Thank you for posting photo's of your horses they are truly gorgeous!! Although I'm sure you already knew that!

I agree wholeheartedly with your post.

Although not being a trainer of horses, other than my own, horses, dogs, sheep, hens yes you can clicker train a hen, I've done it. Although you do have to be VERY subltle and my little dog bounding in tends to upset the apple cart sometimes. But it is a really really good way of training yourself to get your timing and teaching yourself behaviour chains and linking everything together before letting yourself loose on one's horses who are much more forgiving than the hens, the hens tend to just peck off!!

I feel that there does seem to be a trend at the moment with the academics and trainers of deciding who is and isn't using +R & -R correctly in training and telling all of us how others are doing it wrong. Really I'm interested in how the trainers are training not what they feel about the other trainers if that makes sense! There is just so much critisim of others, shouting from the rooftops one's own philosophy surely is much more +R than shouting how much you don't like other methods? Maybe I'm being too idealistic and niave, I guess we have to test whats wrong to find out it is wrong!.

Anyway, sorry for my (off topic) post and I can't wait to read your book I'm sure there will be loads of it that I just go "doh, why hasn't that occured to me before" and really help me with my ongoing learning process.

Jo