So Here at In the Company of Horses, we host many workshops.  It’s great, and…

Many horses come here.  This field we “Play in” is Sterling’s field.  Mostly the horses who come here are a mix of mares and geldings so I don’t ‘use’ Sterling so much in workshops.

But before and after, he enjoys the interactions!

Everyone is considered equally.  The tall redhead with long white legs and the short red horse with flaxen mane and tail.

Another way he gets to interact with others is by smelling what the visitors leave behind! It is surprising to me that a pile of poo and a hoof print are equally as interesting to him.

As a stallion it looks as though, who has been here, is of high importance. Sometimes, he’ll even mark the hoof print with his own poo. This is not something I have ever seen any of my girls or the gelding do. Here is an interesting article on the horse’s sense of smell. One of the things it says is that the horse’s olfactory system is perhaps many thousands of times more sensitive than our own!

We smell like our environments inside and out, we have a creek on our property that our horses are always in and so is the dog.  They all smell like the water.  So, what do your horses smell like?  Since horses are sensitive enough to smell nuances, I got to wondering if my horse could tell if a horse who was upset left behind any special scent, like one that is in season and I went searching and found this interesting info.

• Horses have the same five senses that we do: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.
• Horses have a sixth sense: they’re highly attuned to sensing body language, or any changes in details around them.
• It’s scientifically accepted that the ability to smell pheromones occurs only within the same species.
• Horses sense rather than smell our fear through our body language and behavior — a finely-tuned ability of prey animals.

We can certainly pay more attention to our senses to be more horselike and we likely want to consider how we smell to our horses. Considering the use of strong scents on our horses coats, manes and tails. Are they for us or for them?  It isn’t really any surprise that they want to roll in dirt right away.