Hi Wanda >>>But just reading Robyn's comment now about how a horse might grow up, I agree, there are no stinking flies in Vernon...none... So Kria would have had no reason to learn about fly spray.
I am sure there are many holes in Kria's training, and other horses that come from anywhere. How do we know what they need to know until we come up against it - if you live in the desert you probably don't have a horse that knows much about crossing water. If you have an Arabian they may genetically avoid standing water (it is said that the Bedouins really discouraged horses from walking into standing water because water was such a precious resource) and yet be willing to cross a moving stream. Icelandics often are hesitant about walking through puddles but will go through rivers - there are boggy regions in Icelandic that horses can get stuck in. I have met some horses, in all breeds, who had kind of phobias about different things. Fly spray being one of them. Funny sound, weird smell in lots of cases, who knows. Why do some people have phobias, even when logically it makes no sense, at least to others? It is interesting that humans seem to expect a higher standard of consistent behaviour in animals than we do in ourselves. Imagine if you were sitting in a restaurant and someone comes up and starts taking things off your plate. Would you like it? Probably not, but we expect dogs to willingly give up a juicy bone or whatever it is that we want them to. I do a lot of work dogs who have various labels on them, under socialized, over socialized, dominant, alpha etc, as a way to explain their behaviour. Some of the dogs that I am told were under socialized actually were well socialized by any standards but how they coped with what they were dealt was different from one dog to another. I have also met dogs that were seriously under socialized (kept in an apartment or garage for 6 months to a year) and they were totally fine with dogs and people. I had a Belgian Shepherd who seemed as though she must have been beaten as a puppies - I got her at a year - but I know how she was raised and she was not beaten nor physically abused. However the situation she was living in, a kennel house after 4 months of being kitchen raised, was more than she could cope with emotionally. She overcame a tremendous amount of her fear - maybe 85% but there was still 15% that could show up. I have met some horses that had been handled in quite a rough way, from my perspective anyway, and they were really nervous and reactive and other horses from the same place handled in a similar way that were fine. We all know large families where some of the children turn out quite differently than the others, so why should it not be so in other species? We all have nervous systems. In some horses how you approach a problem also makes a difference. A horse may have had something done one way at one farm and go somewhere else and have a different experience with the same activity. IE we don't tie most of our horses for trimming/shoeing but hold them instead; if they go somewhere that ties them they have to get used to that. Change the context and you change the experience - a new place, different person, slightly different style... Robyn Icelandic Horse Farm Robyn Hood & Phil Pretty Vernon BC Canada www.icefarm.com
