Someone in Europe recently asked me “It seems that you are very busy and these horse brain science clinics in the United States fill up quickly. Are there really that many science geeks out there? I would have thought that would be a small esoteric group of academics”
If you are wondering who our audience is for these clinics, It is everyone who owns, works with or has interaction with a horse.It is everyone with a learning mindset.
And yes, even geeks
The science needs to be accessible and belong to everyone.
This is for the interested and lay public who wants to learn what brain science provides. Science explains things, explores and helps form questions, it is not someone’s dogma or opinion. Science provides the “WHY”. Why does this happen with my horse?
Science is not just for scientists, although I would argue that we are all more or less scientists. But science belongs to all of us. It informs, fascinates and most importantly, it can be applied and put to use.
I love when students are awestruck by holding the brain of a horse. Science should be experiential and “hands on”.
What the audience gathers and learns isnt just a bunch of facts and scientific terms and jargon.
What the audience learns from these clinics is how to best communicate, understand, connect with their horses not based on someones method, the internet, and traditional thought but based on current knowledge of how their nervous system actually works. This is applicable and you can take this new perspective and understanding out to your interactions, learning situations, teaching, management, and all aspects of being with your horse.
Every perception, thought, action, reaction, all learning, motor movement happens in the brain. Every skill that you and your horse have is actually a pattern of signals in your neural circuitry. Why wouldn’t anyone with a horse not want to know this?
It is an exciting time and I have aligned myself with other Credentialed professionals/scientists like Sarah Schlote (Equuscience) and Zefanja Vermeulen (Understanding the horse from the inside out through whole horse dissections for the general horse owning public).
We know that a more enlightened, critical (in the good sense), knowledgeable public is going to improve the welfare of horses, and to some extent that is a part of all of our missions.
The science belongs to all of us.