4. You may not plan to do it. But people will turn to you in an emergency. They’ll forgive you if you don’t know everything. They won’t forgive you if you don’t know anything
A horse will move away from ‘aggravation’—whether that’s tactile pressure against the skin, traction on a lead rope, or the nipping behavior of the ‘lead horse’. You cannot teach a horse to follow by pulling on his head. However, horses lean into pressure. If a horse leans against another, the other horse will lean back into him rather than moving away.
Horse has 2 panoramic fields of view. He can look at several things at once—on different sides of his body. Handlers need to be aware of what horse is looking at. It is not necessarily the same thing the handler is looking at.
Dramatic or frequent changes of a person’s scent (i.e. cologne, aftershave, and perfume) can be very unnerving to some horses—particularly stallions whose olfactory senses are critical to reproductive behavior.
Left side handling tradition originated when all persons were made to be right handed. (Left handed people were thought to be children of the devil) The weapon for a right handed person would be carried on the left hip thus making it physically very difficult to throw the left leg over a horse.
