Horse Knowledge

In the spirit of An Immense World and Soul of an Octopus, an award-winning neuroscientist and veteran horse trainer illuminates the mysteries of equine cognition and behavior, told through the moving story of her own extraordinary bond with a horsenamed True North. The bond between horses and...

Can you imagine the wisdom for which the most powerful person/God became so possessive that he threatened his teacher from sharing the wisdom with anybody, saying that he would cut his head? Yes, this pearl of wisdom from the Upanishads, known as Madhu Vidya, was so precious that Indra, the king of gods, threatened his perceptor Dadhichi, "Never teach it to anyone." But it was so profound and useful that it had to be shared with the world. Enter Ashwini Kumars, the divine physicians. They engineered the replacement of the head of Dadhichi by that of a horse, and it was taught by him through...

This book examines what it means to bring horses into therapeutic contexts without reducing them to instruments, metaphors, or extensions of human needs. At its core is the insistence that the horse is a subject, an autonomous being whose agency and integrity must be respected. The text unfolds as both critique and proposal: it questions the assumptions and practices that have long shaped equine-assisted work, while offering a different way of seeing, observing, and relating. Early chapters establish the ethical stance that underlies the whole project. Horses are not there to heal or to ...