11/14/2025
Empathy: An Important Word That Can Turn Human Discomfort Into Horse Problems
Empathy is the capacity to recognise, understand, and respond to the emotional states of others. It has multiple dimensions that include cognitive empathy, which is the ability to interpret another’s feelings or intentions, and affective empathy, which is the emotional resonance you experience in response. There is also empathic concern which is the motivation to act. So empathy is not just feeling sorry for a horse.
It is a blend of perception, interpretation, emotional regulation, and behaviour.
Which brings us to the real issue in the horse world...
➡️When Empathy Backfires for Horses
Humans can empathise with horses, but only up to the limit of their own imagination, their own emotional comfort, and their own understanding of how horses actually perceive the world. Horses do not think like us. They do not interpret pressure, learning, novelty, or social cues like us. Which means our empathy is a translation exercise and sometimes our translations are as inaccurate as a Google maps 10 years ago...
A distressed horse can stir up a wave of discomfort in a person that is harder to settle than the horse itself. So the human often shifts to soothing themselves and not the horse. This is where empathy loses the plot.
The horse might show stress while learning something new because it is confused or needs the task to be simplified or presented with more clarity and skill. The solution is usually better training, not a spiritual intermission.
But if the person feels uncomfortable watching the horse be confused, they may stop altogether. They may avoid the situation next time. They may proclaim that the horse does not like groundwork, or finds training sticks traumatic, or cannot be caught, or fears the mounting block, or hates being ridden. They make these declarations from the throne of empathy, as if being empathetic means never checking whether the horse can learn something new with good guidance.
They justify their avoidance by claiming they are being sensitive to the horse’s needs. Meanwhile the horse remains stuck with a problem it could have easily learned to navigate if only the person had sought knowledge, stayed consistent, or asked for help.
➡️What Real Empathy Requires
Practising empathy with horses is not about emotional purity. It is not about announcing your feelings and calling it care. It requires knowledge of equine behaviour and learning. It requires skill and the ability to regulate your own emotional discomfort so you do not project it onto the horse. It requires accepting that your feelings are not diagnostic tools.
Empathy becomes useful when combined with observation, strategy, and willingness to improve. Without these, empathy can collapse into avoidance and self soothing, while the horse quietly struggles with something it could have mastered.
If we want empathy to lift horses rather than trap them, then we can never stop learning. We need to pair empathy with competence, because the horse does not benefit from our discomfort. The horse benefits from our clarity.
➡️And what is clarity?
Clarity is the ability to present information to a horse in a way that is consistent, comprehensible, and free of mixed cues. It means your signals are clean, your timing makes sense, and your intentions are easy for the horse to interpret. Clarity is the opposite of emotional projection. It is the opposite of hesitation or avoidance. It is the steady, understandable guidance that allows a horse to feel secure enough to learn.
This is Collectable Advice entry 78/365 of my challenge focusing on words used in the horse world. Hit SAVE or Hit SHARE and spread the word - literally ❤😆
IMAGE📸: My good friend Isabelle and OTTB Dash. This is a heads up to all the OTTB and STB fans to Join our Racehorse Reboot 8 Week Challenge Event from the 3 January - 28 February 2026. Everyone already enrolled is welcome. If you haven't enrolled, do so now and follow our advice to support and prepare your Off-the-Tracker to be ready commencing re-training in January💪❤ More info below.
