Bridging The Gap
Our disciplines belong to the world humans created; the horse's operating system comes from the world nature prepared them for.
A Thought-Leadership Position Paper by Kerry M. Thomas
There are two worlds present every time we interact with a horse.
There is the world nature prepared the horse for, and there is the world we have created for the horse to live within. One produced the natural design of the horse; the other produced racing, dressage, eventing, show jumping, breeding programs, training systems, barns, arenas and virtually every other structure through which we experience horses today.
Neither world needs to be the enemy of the other. The challenge, and I believe increasingly the responsibility before us, is learning how to bridge the gap between them.
The horse standing in the starting gate is still a horse. The horse entering the dressage arena is still a horse. So too is the eventer leaving the start box, the jumper entering the ring, the young horse entering training, the broodmare carrying the next generation, or the pleasure horse walking down a trail.
The discipline changes. The operating system does not.
Nature did not prepare the horse specifically for any of the disciplines we created. Nature prepared the horse to navigate an ever-changing environment through an extraordinary relationship between emotion, sensory processing, movement, communication and the natural herd dynamic. Long before we decided what a horse should become, nature had already determined what a horse needed to be.
For me, this is where horsemanship must begin. Not with what we want the horse to do, but with an understanding of who the horse is that we are asking to do it.
Before the Athlete, There Is the Horse
Throughout my career, I have been fascinated by the individual horse underneath physical expression. I have always wanted to know why two horses with seemingly similar physical ability can experience the same circumstances so differently; why one horse finds opportunity where another finds conflict; why physical talent flourishes under certain conditions and becomes inaccessible under others.
We are very good at measuring what horses do. We measure speed, distance, stride, movement, jumping ability, scores, heart rate, fitness, pedigree, conformation and results. These things matter, and the continued evolution of technology gives us an increasingly sophisticated view of the physical horse.
But none of those measurements, by themselves, answer the question that has guided so much of my work: Who is the horse doing it?
Every physical performance has an operating system underneath it. Herd Dynamic is the emotional engine, reflecting the depth of emotional capacity available to the individual horse. Within that system, Group Herd Dynamic helps organize and regulate emotional resources while underwriting environmental awareness and sensory processing, while Individual Herd Dynamic deploys emotional energy through purpose, Self-Awareness and directed action. Sensory Soundness™ influences how efficiently information moves through perception, interpretation and response. Psychological Stress Tolerances, Interpretive Ratio, Environmental Fluency, Emotional Energy Distribution, Athletic Intelligence and Competitive Duration can all influence how successfully the horse underneath the athlete gains access to the physical talent available to it.
These are not separate horses living inside the same body. The emotional horse, the sensory horse and the physical horse are one animal.
And this is where our disciplines can sometimes unintentionally obscure the individual.
We see the racehorse and study racing. We see the eventer and study eventing. We see the dressage horse and study dressage. Naturally, we become increasingly skilled at understanding the requirements of the discipline, but knowing what the discipline requires is not the same as knowing how the individual horse experiences those requirements.
The discipline tells us what we want the horse to do. The operating system tells us how the horse may experience doing it. That difference is enormous.
The Horse Inside the Performance
Two horses can perform the same task, over the same physical distance, within the same environment and under the same rules, yet experience entirely different psychological journeys.
Consider two Thoroughbreds running the same 2,000-meter race. One may secure position, settle into rhythm, conserve emotional resources and make a single purposeful run. Another may spend much of that same race negotiating traffic, environmental change, positional pressure and repeated competitive interactions. Physically, both horses traveled approximately the same distance. Psychologically, they may have run very different races.
This is one reason I developed the concept of Competitive Duration. Physical Distance tells us how far the horse travels. Environmental Demands tell us what the horse must process. Emotional Expenditure tells us what the horse must spend. Competitive Duration helps us understand how long the horse can remain efficiently engaged while managing those demands.
The same principle travels well beyond racing.
An event horse may move from the relative containment of dressage into the rapidly changing sensory environment of cross-country. A show jumper may have the physical ability to negotiate every fence while experiencing very different emotional demands as course pressure builds. A dressage horse may execute the required movements while spending far more emotional resources maintaining that performance than the score reveals.
Even outside competition, two horses can walk into the same arena, down the same trail, onto the same trailer or through the same training exercise and experience entirely different environments.
The physical task may be shared. The interpreted sensory experience is individual.
Horse vs. Self
This distinction led naturally to the development of WHO IS THE HORSE? — The Competitor's Edge.
Before I evaluate the performance, I want to understand the operating system producing it. Once I have a clearer picture of who the horse is, another question becomes possible:
How effectively does this horse's operating system allow it to access, optimize, sustain and express the physical athlete it has been given?
I think of this as Horse vs. Self.
For some horses, the operating system amplifies physical talent. Sensory processing is efficient, emotional resources are distributed effectively, environmental information is interpreted with clarity, and psychological purpose remains available as demands increase. These horses can sometimes appear to possess more physical ability than they actually do because their operating systems are so efficient at optimizing what they have.
Other horses possess tremendous physical talent capable of compensating for inefficiencies underneath it. They can be successful—sometimes extraordinarily successful—while spending emotional resources at a rate that is not immediately visible in the result.
And still others may possess physical talent we never fully see because the environment, training program, equipment, communication or competitive circumstances repeatedly interfere with the operating system's ability to access it.
This is why I believe performance should never be measured by achievement alone.
It must also be measured by the emotional cost required to achieve it.
A result tells us what happened. Understanding the horse helps tell us what it cost.
When the Horse Meets Our World
Once we begin looking at performance this way, the environment becomes much more than the backdrop against which performance occurs. It becomes part of the performance itself.
Competition creates Environmental Demands. Pace, position, traffic, footing, obstacles, auditory and visual changes, rider influence, spatial compression, herd movement, duration and competitive pressure all present information the horse must process while simultaneously being asked to perform.
The variables change with the discipline, but the underlying question remains remarkably consistent: What does this horse require the environment to become in order to optimize its physical talent?
For one racehorse, space may allow rhythm and psychological purpose to develop. Another may become more purposeful when given a target. Another may thrive inside herd pressure. For an event horse, the relationship between rider support, terrain, sensory transition and Competitive Duration may be central. For another horse, environmental complexity itself may be less important than the emotional cost of repeatedly reorganizing within it.
This is where understanding becomes application.
The goal is not to remove every challenge from the horse's world, nor is it to design an environment in which the horse is never required to adapt. Adaptation is part of life, development and athletic growth.
The goal is to understand the horse doing the adapting.
When the human program becomes better aligned with the operating system of the horse actually living inside it, we create greater opportunity for physical talent and psychological capacity to work together rather than requiring one to compensate for the other.
Before Performance Comes Possibility
This way of seeing the horse also changes how I think about breeding.
We have become very skilled at studying pedigree, conformation, physical aptitude and performance history. All are valuable pieces of the breeding equation. But the foal we create will inherit more than a collection of physical possibilities. We are creating another operating system.
Behavioral Compatibility Analysis™ grew from my belief that breeding decisions should include consideration of who the mare and stallion are behaviorally, how their emotional and sensory characteristics may complement or challenge one another, and what those combinations may mean for the horse we hope to produce.
I often come back to a deceptively simple distinction:
Are we breeding horses that are athletic, or are we breeding horses who are athletes?
Physical talent creates possibility. The psychological makeup and sensory soundness of the horse plays an enormous role in determining how much of that possibility becomes accessible and, just as importantly, sustainable.
Horse welfare, in this sense, begins much earlier than the training environment.
It begins with the decisions we make before the horse is born.
The Horse Before the Discipline
There is another place where I believe we need to move upstream, and that is education.
If young people first learn to see horses through the lens of what horses can do for us, we have already placed the discipline ahead of the horse. If instead we help them become curious about how horses communicate, how they experience space, how they process information, how they form relationships and why behavior exists, we give them something far more enduring than a collection of techniques. We teach them to see.
The same opportunity exists for all of us, regardless of age or experience.
I have spent the better part of my life deeply immersed in the mysterious and fascinating world between the ears of the horse. My journey has rarely been about what could be seen on a sheet of paper or captured within an analytic data point. I have been far more interested in what lives underneath those things, the invisible processes of emotion, perception, communication and interpretation that eventually become the behavior and physical expression we can see. It has been a lifelong journey through the mind of the horse, with Mother Nature as my guide.
And if there is one thing that journey continues to remind me, it is that familiarity with horses should never be confused with understanding them. We can spend a lifetime teaching horses how to navigate the world we created and never stop to ask how that world feels from their side of the relationship. But intention belongs to us. Experience belongs to the horse.
This, for me, is where welfare, performance and horsemanship meet.
Welfare cannot truly belong to the horse if it is defined only through our interpretation of what the horse should need. Performance cannot be fully understood if we study only physical outcome. And horsemanship cannot simply be about teaching the horse to function within our world without also asking whether the world we have created allows the horse to function as nature intended.
That does not mean abandoning the disciplines we love.
It means understanding the horse deeply enough to practice them better.
Bridging the Gap
Every horse lives, in a sense, between two worlds.
There is the world nature prepared them for and the world we have created for them.
Our arenas, racetracks, breeding programs, competition schedules, training methods and performance goals belong to the second. The operating system we bring into those environments was shaped in the first.
I do not believe the future of horsemanship is found in choosing one world over the other. Nor do I believe the answer is asking the horse to surrender one in order to survive the other.
The answer is found in the bridge.
The horse provides that bridge. Education and understanding are the way across.
The better we understand the natural design of the horse, the better equipped we become to create training environments, competitive circumstances, breeding decisions and human relationships that allow the horse to navigate our world without requiring the horse underneath it to disappear.
This is why WHO IS THE HORSE? is more than a question I ask when evaluating performance. It is an invitation to change the direction from which we look.
Take your view from the hoof.
Whether we are trying to win a Grade 1 race, breed the next generation, navigate a cross-country course, improve a dressage test, solve a behavioral difficulty or simply build a better relationship with the horse standing beside us, our first responsibility remains remarkably unchanged.
Understand the horse before asking the horse to understand our world. Because the discipline is not the bridge. The horse is. And understanding is the way across.
Before we ask what kind of athlete, partner or performer we have in front of us, perhaps we should begin where nature did.
Who Is The Horse?
About Kerry M. Thomas
Kerry M. Thomas is an accredited equine ethologist, author and international educator, and the founder of Herd Dynamic Profiling™ and Sensory Soundness™. For more than three decades, his work has explored the behavioral, emotional and sensory operating system of the horse and its influence upon performance, breeding, welfare and the horse-human relationship. Through WHO IS THE HORSE?, The Competitor's Edge, Behavioral Compatibility Analysis™, Sensory Mapping™ and his broader educational work, Kerry's mission remains centered on bridging the gap between the Natural Herd Dynamic and the domesticated world.
Continue the Journey
If this paper leaves you with one question, let it be the question that has guided Kerry's work for more then 3 decades:
Who is the Horse?
We invite you to continue exploring the emotional, sensory and behavioral horse beneath performance and what becomes possible when understanding leads the way.
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