Reference – Dr Sid Gustafson is an equine behavior educator, novelist, and practicing veterinarian representing the health and welfare of animals. Know more about him on  (http://sidgustafson.blogspot.ca/)

Horses keep an eye on people, a very keen and knowing eye. In Equine Behavior we are going to learn how to keep an eye on horses. Together, we shall come to see the world as horses see the world, and with that we will improve our ability to develop willing partnerships with horses. By appreciating horses’ long evolved nature as social grazers of the plains and group survivalists, we can more readily and consistently keep horses happy, healthy, and willing to learn. In a sense, we will learn how to become part of their herd.

We begin our equine behavior education journey unknowing what awaits us, much as horses began their journey through time 60 million years ago. Three million years ago the footsteps of man were fossilized next to the hoofprints of horses in what is now Kenya, suggesting that humans have been contemplating horses for some time. But it was not until perhaps ten to twenty thousand years ago that man began the dance of domestication with horse, the horse who became Equus caballus.

There is archeological evidence that man formed a close relationship with horses by 5500 years ago in Botai, Khazakstan where the horsefolk kept and milked horses, probably rode them, this after millenia of hunting horses for food. Both trained and wild horses co-existed in this realm south of Russia and west of China. Trained horses soon spread throughout the world, civilization of man the result. By the early 20th century the predecessor to man’s newest animal partner, the tarpan, had gone extinct. No truly wild horses remain, excepting perhaps the Przewalski, which has a different number of chromosomes than the horse, and is not thought to be horse’s progenitor. To the best of our knowledge, all horses today are descended from tamed and selectively bred horses. The progenitor of the horse, the tarpan Equus ferus, went missing from our planet in 1918. One gauge of domestication is the extinction of the progenitor, and mankind has managed that. The horse of today is with us to stay, it seems, and can live with humans, or without them.

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