I could list very many sources that inspired my horsemanship that had nothing to do with horses, but at the same time said bucket loads about working with horses.
When horses apply pressure to each other they are generally focused on directing movement and not on changing emotions. When a horse uses pressure to chase another horse away from the hay they are not concerned about the ill feelings it might create in the other horse.
When you observe the negative opinions outnumbering the positive ones you can be pretty confident the overall trend is that the emotions are more negative than positive. The question then becomes how long can this persist before you almost never see positive emotions when a horse is under work?
It’s not always obvious which is better because sometimes gear that seems to be a better alternative does in fact impose more limitations on a horse’s choices than gear that might seem a harsher choice at first.
