Talking about Horses: Control and Freedom in the World of "Natural Horsemanship"

Abstract

This paper explores how horses are represented in the discourses of "natural horsemanship" (NH), an approach to training and handling horses that advocates see as better (kinder, more gentle) than traditional methods. In speaking about their horses, NH enthusiasts move between two registers: On one hand, they use a quasi-scientific narrative, relying on terms and ideas drawn from ethology, to explain the instinctive behavior of horses. Within this mode of narrative, the horse is "other" and must be understood through the human learning to communicate and through appropriate training. On the other hand, NH enthusiasts—like many horse owners—seek to emphasize partnership. In this type of discourse, people portray their horses as almost human. The tensions between these two ways of talking about horses reflect contradictory ideas about control versus freedom in relating to horses, especially as related to emotions expressed by caregivers (owners) about their relationships with horses.

Trust in Interspecies Sport

“…Interest in the human-horse relationship (Wipper, 2000;Game, 2001;Birke, 2008) is a growing area of study. Studies of Natural Horsemanship (NH) have explored new ways of working and communicating with horses (Birke, 2007).…”

Riders’ Perceptions of Equestrian Communication in Sports Dressage

“…During the last fifteen years, the interest in equestrian communication has been on the rise in several research traditions, not the least within the humanities and social sciences (see for instance, Brandt, 2004;Brown, 2007;Birke, 2007Birke, , 2008Birke, , 2009Birke, , 2010Argent, 2012;Maurstad, Davis & Cole, 2013;Birke & Hockenhull, 2015;Thompson & Nesci, 2016;Dashper, 2016). Many of these qualitatively oriented studies are oriented towards Human-Animal Studies (HAS), but equestrian communication has also been studied within a research area referred to as Equitation Science (ES).…”

Performing Expertise in Human–Animal Relationships: Performative Instability and the Role of Counterperformance

“…The services provided by experts are not limited to technical knowledge alone; there is an abundance of expert help available for working the human-horse relationship (Birke, 2008). One notable example of this is Natural Horsemanship (NH).…”

“…Both videos are commercially available, aimed at horse owners learning to cope with the problems they face in handling, training or riding horses. The videos were selected on the basis that the (1) While Paul Patton understands it as an ethical way of training horses and talks about 'more enlightened' trainers (2003, page 88), Lynda Birke (2007Birke ( , 2008 critiques the validity of the presuppositions about the social life of horses on which NH is based. Perhaps more notable in the context of this paper, though, are the contributions made by Birke (see also Latimer and Birke, 2009) For the analysis, the videos were partly transcribed, leaving out sections that were not relevant for this paper.…”