The Horse-Human Bond, Ancient And Modern

By Joanne Verikios

One thing you may not know about me is that I studied Russian at University, coincidentally during the Cold War. My interest was sparked by purely cultural considerations and had nothing to do with politics. Think vodka and balalaika music, not collective farms and five-year plans!

I loved reading the great Russian novels and was struck by Tolstoy's opening line in Anna Karenina:

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way".

The sentence is a metaphor for many things, including the bond (or lack of it) between horses and humans. Tolstoy's own writings show that he was clearly in favour of the sensitive and empathetic treatment of animals, including horses, so I don't think he would mind if I paraphrased it to say:

"All happy horse-human partnerships are alike; each unhappy horse-human partnership is unhappy in its own way".

Leo Tolstoy and his horse Delir in 1908. It looks like a fat and healthy Delir is dozing while the author whisks away flies. (Press Photo)

I was recently fascinated to learn that there is such a thing as the Anna Karenina principle.

To quote Wikipedia: "The Anna Karenina principle was popularized by Jared Diamond in his book Guns, Germs and Steel. Diamond uses this principle to illustrate why so few wild animals have been successfully domesticated throughout history, as a deficiency in any one of a great number of factors can render a species undomesticable. Therefore all successfully domesticated species are not so because of a particular positive trait, but because of a lack of any number of possible negative traits."

Horses have proven to be good candidates for domestication and the rest, as they say, is history.

Speaking of history, there is a tendency for each new generation to claim certain beneficial outcomes as their own and the horse-human bond is no exception. It is easy to find new advocates for the humane treatment of horses and who speak and act as if it was they who invented the emphasis on bond rather than bondage. To an extent they are right, as everyone must discover something for the first time, but they are by no means pioneers!

From the dawn of civilisations, the human-horse relationship has been fundamental to domestication and the refinement of the ways in which horses have helped humankind. I would also venture to say that forging a bond between individual horses and the people with whom they interacted would have made things far easier back in the days when there really were just horses and humans, with only primitive tools (if any) and certainly no access to today's cornucopia of bridles, halters, bits, round yards and other forms of restraint or containment!

Turning to documentary evidence, the Greek general Xenophon, who is credited with the first ever manual on selecting and training riding horses, wrote during the late-5th and early-4th centuries BC:

“For what the horse does under compulsion… is done without understanding; and there is no beauty in it either, any more than if one should whip and spur a dancer.”
Use this link for instant download of "On Horsemanship" by Xenophon (eBook format with a foreword by author Joanne Verikios).

Well before Xenophon, horses feature prominently - even to the extent of being deified - in an ancient Indo-Aryan sacred text known as the Rigveda, which is thought to have been composed between 1500 and 1200 BC.

The close association - or even fusion - of horsemen and horses with godlike qualities is apparent in other traditions too. The Greek myth of the winged horse Pegasus and the hero Bellerophon is perhaps the best known, early example of a supernatural relationship between horse and human.

Around the same time as the Rigveda, a man named Kikkuli, who was hailed as "the master horse trainer of the land of Mitanni" compiled a comprehensive program for conditioning Hittite chariot horses circa 1400 BC. The methods advocated were strikingly similar to "modern" interval training techniques and included advice on the regular feeding, exercise, and care and of the horses, including the important, bond-building, contact time involved in warming down, washing, stabling and rugging.

To return to the present day and modern writings, I contributed to an "expert roundup" published on the 7th of August 2018 by Horses & Foals. This well-presented articles features advice, tips and wisdom on the human-horse bond from prominent horsemen and horsewomen from around the world.

When you read  34 Equestrian Bloggers Teach You How To Bond With Your Horse, I am sure you will be struck, as I was, about the timeless principles expressed by so many and the essential, "secret" ingredients: time spent with the horse and the human's attitude and demeanor in the presence of the horse. Enjoy!

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