I'll wait while some of you grab your dictionaries.
I've had this discussion on a couple different chat boards, and you see all kinds of opinions. Anthropomorphism is the practice of portraying human characteristics onto non-human objects or beings. It's used a lot in creative writing to create more insightful, detailed and interesting comparisons, but most pet owners do it to, without even knowing it. Most of the time, it's completely harmless, HOWEVER, especially when it comes to horses, it can be a HUGE block in proper training.
Example. Horse A is a young, halter-broke two year old. Trainer Dan proceeds to begin saddle training, only to find Horse A is rather dominant and not too keen on being told what to do. Those of us who have been around relatively untrained horses know that many young stock start out this way. They need to be taught that accepting leadership is actually a good thing (my mare is like this; she's not too keen on new commands at first, but she picks them up quickly) and will usually become very accustomed and happy to being given & follow direction.
If Trainer Dan isn't familiar with horse behavior and thinking, (let's assume he isn't. Plenty of horse owners aren't, to some degree) then he quite firmly assumes that Horse A is a stubborn, nasty jerk, and proceeds to throw the nastiness right back. Horses, especially young ones, need a lot of patience and firm handling. I've only met one horse who I felt was genuinely mean-spirited; the rest just needed to be given a good reason to follow a human's lead. Most are perfectly willing, given the opportunity to learn and a kind hand and knowledgeable hand to teach them. It's unfortunate, but many horse trainers/handlers/owners assume negative qualities or give horses traits that just don't exist in the horse world. Horses have a reason for everything they do. They aren't like humans where they just decide to be witchy because they can. There is always a reason, always. I remind myself of that every time either Stella or Ernie act like boneheads. There's got to be a reason, and it's my job, being the higher-functioning being, to figure out if I'm causing it, or if I can fix it.
My mare, Stella, is a fantastic example of all of the above. She's going to be my prodigy child, I can tell already. She's smart as a whip, a little cheeky, very reactive and sensitive to direction and gets bored fast. I spend only a few days on each lesson before moving onto to something more challenging, and I'm always having to up the difficulty level to keep her interested. She's a little stubborn, but so am I, so I know how to deal with it. She's also a classic red head; you can literally see the gears turning as she comes up with more and more ways to test and push buttons. She's going to be a fun one to work with, because as willing as she is to be taught, she also has a way of asserting herself and what SHE thinks of what we're doing.
Now, read the paragraph above. Almost everything in that paragraph is me portraying Stella as I, being a human being, understand her. That's the anthropomorphism we all are so used to being in and around, every single day we work with our animals.
Now, is it really so bad? Yes and no. Like I said before, it's pretty harmless when used properly, by people who understand the mechanics of the horse's brain, and how they work. (As a side note, please understand I am no wonder trainer. I simply love my horses enough to make sure that I give them the best opportunity I can to live long, happy and useful lives. To me, this means having a very good working knowledge of how horses have evolved to think, and how I can best use that to train them to be willing athletic partners.)
This way of thinking only becomes dangerous when it's used in the wrong hands. For example, the horse has survived as an hors d'oevre on legs by following the rule "run now, ask questions later". Even when trained for our uses, you can't completely get rid of this instinctual behavior. So when your dead-broke trail horse spooks at a squirrel running across his path, or your upper level dressage horse sees an equine-eating monster by the arena door, (s)he isn't just being "dumb" or "goofy", he's simply acting on what thousands of years of evolution have taught him/her.
Thoughts are welcome on the subject. It's always interesting to hear others experiences.
For your viewing pleasure, while these pictures are old (from last spring, I believe), this is where Ernie and I used to be at. Pardon the fuzziness.
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