I am a big fan of the Dog Whisperer Show on the National Geographic Channel. Cesar Millan has worked closely with dogs for many years and studied the behaviour of dogs, particularly in packs. One of his key phrases is pack leader and this should be the owner not the dog! His formula of exercise, discipline and affection are successfully repeated over and over again with a range of problems. It is amazing to see how quickly most dogs respond to his methods. He is also very good at breaking the bad news to people that their dog’s problem is often created by their behaviour, and does this in such a way that they listen to and accept his advice.

I have seen occasional TV programmes and read a book about The Horse Whisperer about his approach to breaking in horses. His methods are based on a close study of the behaviour of horses in the wild. I have not seen his methods applied to some of the common horse vices.

I would be interested to see how well Caesar’s methods or ideas could be applied to horses as they are also pack animals. Horse owners recognises that there is a pecking order in every group of horses and this is evident when watching horses out in a field, particularly at feeding time. While many owners do spoil horses to some degree, this is not usually to the same extent as some dog owners. Horses also usually get regular exercise so that leaves discipline as the potential cause of many problems. Certainly horses do develop bad habits and vices over time.

I go through spells of having difficulty catching my horse, usually in the summer when grass is much more interesting than exercise. As I follow him around the field, I can’t ignore he fact that he has the upper hand and is the pack leader. There is certainly no-one else to blame as I’ve owned and looked after him since he was a 3 months old foal! I have often wondered what advice I would receive from the animal behaviourists on how best to correct this plus how I helped to created this problem.