the sensory soundness lab report
The Sensory Soundness Lab Report
I have been delving into Kerry M Thomas' herd dynamics and sensory soundness observations with lots of horses and have interesting reports to share.
If you don't know who or what I am talking about head over to my Canter Therapy Podcast and check out the very cool interviews we have done with Kerry.
The respect for the sensory processing abilities of individual horses has been one of the biggest advancements in my understanding of horses in the last few years.
This lovely horse provides a great example of a horse that is a bit slow in what Kerry terms his "interpretation ratio". This is the horse's ability to process things in their environment they need to identify as a threat or not. These are objects or things that trigger their attention for investigation. It is how fast the horse can process information compared to how fast the body is moving.
When I stood in front of this horse, as he approached me at walk, with a flag gently moving in my hand he slowed his pace and raised his head from about 8 metres away as he investigated and processed the flag. Therefore, he could just do this at walking speed. However, when we sped him up to trot he spooked away at around the same distance as he was travelling faster than he could interpret the gentle movement of the flag. Kerry calls this bumping as he couldn't process in time.
It is interesting to experiment with and to assess different horses and their various abilities.
There are many reasons why some horses can be spooky, this is one of them but it is an important one to recognise as many people can get frustrated by a horse like this.
When you understand that a horse may have a slow interpretation ratio it means you can set about nurturing their abilities by strategic experiences and exercises.
Kerry M Thomas is visiting Australia in November 2023, where he will be sharing his insights into sensory soundness. He will be presenting how you can use the insights to assess horses and improve their training.
