Meet Alessandra Deerinck | Horse trainer & Riding instructor at Human Horse Sensing

We had the good fortune of connecting with Alessandra Deerinck and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Alessandra, is there a quote or affirmation that’s meaningful to you?
Bring form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream.

It means to make things happen in life, fit into reality and not give up.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

what sets you apart from others, what you are most proud of or excited about
I do not want to be considered special, I am proud and excited to be able to help others achieve their goals in relating with horses.

How did you get to where you are today professionally
I studied in depth horses and worked to understand a way to communicate with them that made our interaction real and free of force. I also formulated what I found in a way that any other individual who learned it could apply it to what they do without me having to be involved.

Was it easy?
As easy as life. we all overcome challenges every moment in our life and this is the beauty of being human.

What are the lessons you’ve learned along the way. What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?
this article is published on Academia and answers your question

Spontaneous meaningful communication between human being and horse.

Abstract
In light of the actual time, culture, scientific studies and my professional experience, I studied in depth the interaction between human beings and horses, and how communication naturally happens during this time, aiming to keep an objective perspective. I applied the information that came from this approach to the interaction between human and horse in many different instances, ranging from breeding to training, competing and performing in events. The experience suggested a deep innovation for the traditional modality of the relationship and the communication between human and horse, making a radical shift from an interaction based on training to giving a structure to the immediate interspecific communication that naturally happens in that time. The communication in the interaction between human and horse can be managed through purposeful movement, taking into account the content, modality, and the sense through which the information is perceived – from the ground (communicating through sight, hearing and touch) and from the saddle (communicating through touch and hearing). The interaction has the same meaning for human and horse, is kept in the social context of relationship, with concepts that are instinctual for human and equine, and does not include the use of force or of fear. The result is a system for communicating with the horse through behavior, in a dynamic dialogue with a comprehensive approach that always keeps in consideration both sides, human and equine.
Such model allows us to manage the situation in the time while it happens, modulating it and reshaping it, moment by moment.

Introduction
Traditionally, from the time when horses where mainly working animals to nowadays, that they are a pleasure we choose to add to our life, the interaction between man and horse still happens through classical stimulus-response or operant conditioning. The reason for this can be attributed to the human behavioral tendency to change and control everything. In reality, for the possibilities of an animal behavioral response, the trained actions coexist with instincts, experience, emotions, and choice of action based on momentary environmental situation, which are instances where training fails to work.
In the interactions amongst human beings and horses it is always a good idea to make a distinction between ones that happen through conditioned behavior and ones through relationship. A relationship goes beyond the circumstances of an action, and what comes out of it transfers from one situation to another, even between very different ones. Whether people can see it or not, relationship happens always, and is the core of any equestrian sport performance, or any other thing we do with horses.
When horses do not comply with human requests, they experience punishment, which is a human concept supposed to correct the behavior of an individual, but that introduces fear in the relationship. In the actual equestrian panorama, there is very little consideration for the welfare of the horse, for his physiology, for his ability to relate and learn outside of training. Even science, that is working to improve the equine welfare in the domestic environment, still tends to remain in the field of training, or the theory of the learning process for the modality of interaction between human and horse.
Many are also investigating the natural social behavior of horses in the wild to understand equine behavior, and not studying in depth the interaction between human and horse. The equation between wild and domestic equines is the opposite as the one between wolf and dog, in our age wild horses come from domestic ones, while domestic canines derive from wild ones. While the so-called friendliness genes are in both wild and domestic equines, and can be expressed by the intense ability of the animal to relate to other individuals, the relationships between wild horses are different than the ones between domestic horses, and human and horses. The equine relationship with humans is between individuals of different species. The wild horse herds are built around reproductive or survival needs, while in the domestic horse herds the individuals are grouped together by human beings for reasons different than reproduction or survival. In addition to that, the wild habitat and activities have nothing in common with the domestic environment, and the male domestic horses are prevalently geldings, which makes them behave differently than a stallion when they interact with other individuals. Regardless all of that non sense, when human and equine individuals understand each other and act cooperatively as a team, we see an infinite variety of harmonious situations, where communication works immediately and spontaneously.

A view on the actual situation of the relationship between human and horse
Our present culture has triggered a heightened awareness for the welfare of the horse. Everywhere, people are being held more accountable for how they interact with their horses in obtaining the performance they seek.
For the same reason many experts approach equestrian topics in a very deep manner, using technical language and scientific formats. While this type of information could give to the public good instruments to better their relationship and performance with horses, sometimes it can be difficult to connect the dots of the various lines of thought, leading to confusion and partial benefits.
Looking at the situation of the equestrian world from the different angles of being a horsemanship clinician, trainer and professional rider and having a degree in Veterinary Medicine I often observe two constant facts that deeply affect the outcome of the relationship between human and horse. Firstly, people very seldom keep in account that the horse is not a machine, and has an active control on his own body in the interaction with human beings. Secondly, in their interaction with horses, people make requests and want answers, but when the answer does not come as they wish, they assume they need to force or punish the animal. Their reasoning is thinking that the horse willfully disregarded them, instead of analyzing how they formulated their request and if it was received and understood. Both of these instances lead to a mechanistic approach to the interaction between human and horse.
Another topic that many like to talk about is biomechanics, especially in the actual situation where a big effort is being done about ending the practice of certain abusive performances, training techniques and tack devices. Biomechanics could be of great benefit, but only when accompanied by some elements of neurophysiology and behavioral sciences, necessary to have the complete picture of the horse as a sentient animal.
In any living organism the individual’s brain integrates the incoming information, providing a complete representation of the surrounding world, and giving him the ability to optimally interact with the environment. Animals that are able to move, including humans, adjust their orientation according to their own perceptive needs, movements, and to what influences them from the surroundings. In particular, the vestibular system triggers reflex (involuntary) pathways that activate compensatory movements to adjust the body position. At the same time, it activates pathways that send information providing conscious perceptions of gravity and movement. A considerable number of cognitive processes depend on the integration of multisensory information. The attention to the action and the use of various senses at once, enhance the information coming through each sense, and the benefits for the organism of which they are a part. To this day, no research has shown that another individual can efficiently control our body against our will. So, why do humans think they can do so with the horse, without its willful participation?
Another “in vogue” concept that is not well explained is the one of “soft feel” referred to a horse. It sounds very appealing, but can have very many different meanings, and it needs to be explained in detail to be a useful element between human and horses. Many actually confuse soft feel and collection. A horse can be “soft” in our hands because he is trying to evade pressure, and pain coming from the tack and the human handling it. What the horse is doing, by bending his neck, is learning how to avoid obeying our requests. Every horse and rider receive benefits from good dressage practice. When rider and horse move “in sync” collection shows as the ability of a horse to willfully perform movement through its whole body, which is also the natural way it should happen. He raises the base of the neck, relaxes the back muscles and performs with more flexion of the hocks. A bent neck, without the rest of the body that goes with it, makes it very difficult for horses to get in self-carriage, and eventually collection.
Horses are like any other living organism capable of locomotion, and as mentioned above, to best perform, and be at ease they need to perceive the environment first hand, and when ridden, to work in agreement with their rider.
The sense organs that perceive the environment are localized on the head of an individual, except for the sense of touch that is spread all over the body surface. Any individual perceives stimuli from the environment through the sense receptors, and between human and horse this includes our requests to the horse and his responses. Just considering this fact, without any further explanation, makes it apparent why, to give the best performance, the horse should always be allowed to own the orientation of his head. Any riding performance results from the human and horse interaction, during which new information is continuously developed, is relevant for continuing the interaction, and goes to both human and equine. Learning how to be aware of what happens on both sides, and developing the teamwork can put us in the leading position without effort, instead of using force, trapping the horse with tack, wanting the horse to act “as it has buttons” or punishing the horse for not complying.

When we feel our horse is not listening, it is easy to be carried away and think he is taking advantage of us and we need to let him know how we feel. If we think about the fact that the point is to have the horse freely learn an action, we should overcome our emotional feelings. Punishing a horse is reacting to his unwanted action and can easily be a reinforcement of his behavior. It can actually teach the horse to do what we do not want him to do. Some people resort to mentally forcing the horse by making something uncomfortable for him, so he will perform what they want. I wonder why they do not see that they are creating a conflict of interest, instead of building teamwork. Making a horse feel uncomfortable, during the time he is interacting with us, will never make him feel like willfully doing more of it. Keeping in consideration the equine input in the relationship between human and horse is also an important matter. In fact, it is traditionally still a mostly ignored subject, or even willfully excluded, making our relationship with the horse a monologue.

If we observe what happens when one of the ways of perception is obstructed, we will understand how the sense organs are a key element in the interaction, between individuals and also in relation to the environment. Between human and horse this is a very evident matter, in fact humans have discovered how to make horses execute by using tack, but also by manipulating the equine field of vision, applying painful constrictive devices, using drugs to influence behavior, or even the horse’s metabolism. Sometime human beings even lie about the benefits we provide to horses, that are not for the wellbeing of the horse, instead they are a way for the human being to feel good about himself. An example is when a horse shows discomfort and people immediately administer drugs to avoid the horse perceiving pain, and feel good about having done so. The mechanism behind pain is a way for the animal to not perform an action that can be damaging to their own body. When pain is not so strong to cause an extreme situation, people should call for a Veterinarian and not be so prompt in “helping” with drugs, and should definitely not do so to make horses not be lame because they want to ride them.

The picture I described so far clearly shows the lack of meaningful communication in the relationship between human and horse. It is possible to develop the horse’s interest for being with us, it just takes some thought and is one of the beauties of relating with other individuals. Connecting the dots is not difficult, but requires awareness, leadership skills and patience, while shortcuts bring quick but partial and volatile results.
Communication is the instance when an animal individual transmits information to another causing some kind of change in the recipient. Interspecific communication is an existing, naturally occurring instance. We have experimented with being able to communicate in a meaningful manner with a horse spontaneously, instead of having to train them to respond to us. In order to develop an effective system, we have applied what we found to real life situations and obtained results showing that spontaneous communication can add to the wellbeing of people and equines and can be developed by further studies. From our experience, as we already mentioned, we have found that it is possible to relate between human and equine species based on a dynamic dialogue through behavior, that gives a way to always manage the relationship without the stiff boundaries imposed by training and without excluding the equine active input to the action.
Communication with a sentient individual happens regardless of our control. The key element to being able to immediately connect with the horse is to consciously switch the vector of our communication, from language to movement, and modulate every part of it meaningfully in a spontaneous manner for both sides. This very strong point became apparent to me when I began focusing on the physics of behavior, and communication, shifting from training a horse for an action to deepening the details about the content of my communication. This is done in terms of space and time, through movement, and perception. In the interaction with a horse or any other individual if we receive the response that we were seeking our communication was appropriate, if we get a different response, we should take responsibility for our action and reformulate the request. One of the biggest problems in the relationship between human and horse is with the communication modality and content. The main detailed modality of communication for the human species is the spoken language, but it is not so for the other animal species. In addition to the modality there is also the problem with communication content. Most often it has no immediate meaning for the animal outside of the reward given, that can even disrupt the learning experience because it distracts the individual from the meaning of the action happening. A very simple and common example of action that can have different interpretation between a human being and a horse is when man offers food to a horse as a reward. The action can truly be perceived by the horse as an act of submission because the human is surrendering food. In the eyes of a horse, doing so can put an individual in a submissive position, which is the opposite of how human beings aim to be considered by the horse. This fact definitely demonstrates the importance of a clear communication,

Horses are born with instincts and learn from reality
Behavior is the most complete expression of any live individual, is performed in response to internal or external stimuli, and perceived by others through their senses during the dynamic and always evolving process of relationship. Instinct is a behavior that is displayed since birth in the same manner, without the need of a learning experience. This also means that the animal understands completely the action, and purposefully performs it in his life. Any animal is born with a set of instincts, from the first instant of life perceives through the senses the surrounding reality, and starts building his experience. The information acquired through the sense organs is elaborated in the brain through the learning process, of which the results will be displayed in the individual’s future behavior filtered by his personality. Training is a preset human way of teaching, aimed to direct and control the learning of another individual’s actions. Human beings have studied instinctual behaviors of other animal species and this knowledge can be of great value. Since our spoken language does not provide for a spontaneous communication with other species, purposefully eliciting instinctual behaviors can be used to establishing a relationship, like the one between human and horse. Horses, and most of the animals, have an instinctual way to respond to movement of other entities in the space that they can perceive with the senses. When a foal is born, two things will keep him alive: moving away from anything that approaches him, and following his mother anywhere, to eat, and be protected. For the rest of their life, horses have a basic instinctual response to movement, by going away from approaching things, and moving in the direction of going away things that interest them. Physically speaking, in terms of space, the interest has a meaning by its substance, which needs to be of interest to the horse in relation to the action to be performed. In terms of time, the interest has to be driving the individual through the whole interaction, not just by being introduced as a reward at the end. The reward can actually be a disruption from the driving meaning of the entire action.
The human and equine species have in common the very strong trait of being both social, but with a very different lifestyle. One builds structures to shelter himself from the surrounding, and tries to change and control anything, while the other is always aware of what surrounds him, and can survive if there is water, food and enough individuals to form a herd to be safe. Equine genetics are such that they are able to readapt to natural conditions even after living in captivity for centuries, like the nowadays wild horses which came from domesticated horses that got freed for different reasons. In fact, through genetics it is possible to trace back the wild equine populations to the domestic breeds they originated from. Truth is that human beings have genetically modified the original species, and created the different equine breeds to fulfill the needs and wants of the human species. Looking at the domestic horses, we can see that they reflect the human ethnic culture and intended activities from the areas where they originally were bred. One more time, it is the extreme equine adaptive ability that makes them able to survive all that human beings inflict on them.

Horses relating to other individuals
Every horse, wild or domestic, is born with the propensity to live in a group because such situation is an advantage for their life. Living in a group requires to engage in social behavior which is a meaningful interaction between individuals. An individual has full control on his behavior that can be seen by others. In animals that live in a group very often others can decide to act similarly if the behavior is adequate for the situation, or is pleasant for the observer.
In a horse herd, relationships have a social character, emotional components, and ranking between individuals is based on situational awareness and territory. The leadership is not a fixed ranking status, but a role based on social relationships, and environmental situations that change over time. The horse that leads is not always the same individual, and earns such consideration because of his behavior, that mainly consists in bringing others to food, water and safety. The same happens in regard to social matters with individuals of the same species or of another species. Horses interact basing their action on the momentary behavior of the other individual and responding to it accordingly. Regardless all of this evidence of the equine ability to relate to others, human beings are still trying to achieve leadership with words, human conventions and force. Emotions and social relationships are something regarded as a questionable component or even feared, because people tend to just rely on training to interact with equines, excluding the equine input to the situation instead of learning about how to properly communicate and relate to horses.

When we relate to horses by allowing them freedom of choice and of movement two main situations tied to instinctual behavior can be present: the horse voluntarily takes part in the action, because he understands the situation, benefits from it and is interested, or the horse gets away from the action we are suggesting because it has no interest for him or he does not trust us to physically approach him. The way we build interest for a certain action is by making it meaningful and even enjoyable, because the horse understands what is happening, shares the purpose, or simply likes being with us.

Being able to move and put more distance between us and other entities can spatially represent freedom. In terms of time, freedom can be seen as the ability to modify our behavior by choice, at different times. Because freedom is such an essential equine trait, interacting with horses, while they are free to choose their response, is an important situation to explore. After all, freedom of choice in the interaction with others is part of any live individual behavior. When we interact with a horse that is free to choose his response, the action we will get as his response is how the horse really feels about the request we made. The horse that learns by being trained in a situation of free choice is much more likely to display the behavior in other instances where we would ask for it. Knowing how to interact with our horse in a situation of freedom of movement and choice, allows us to establish a true relationship that can at the same time give us a “well trained” horse and support human and equine in the time spent together.

The process of relating with the horse sums up the equation between knowing instinctual social behavior common to human and equine, being aware of the freedom of choice individuals have, and knowing how the learning process naturally happens.
From the experience with this kind of relationship, we have isolated some elements that we can monitor, and modulate by movement, that are naturally common between human and horse because of their social meaning connected to instinctual behavior. The five parameters are: 1 Coexistence (Sharing comfortably the surrounding space and mutual presence); 2 Trust (An individual shows to trust another by letting him approach the personal space); 3 Respect (Being able to occupy the space of the other individual by asking him to move out of it ); 4 Willingness (Being able to ask another individual to move from being behind him); 5 Attention (Being able to direct another individual’s attention). This structured interaction allows to build a dynamic interspecific social relationship, that can be modulated in real time, where we give our actions a form that horses understand and want to participate, instead of being forced, because they are scared or inconvenienced. As a result, horses showed to have experienced a pleasant interaction, and to seek time with humans, even when it involved the practice of an equestrian discipline.
This way of interacting with horses is structured, very simple to learn, but has a very important element that we sought in order to give support to the spontaneous interaction between human and horse, so it can be used with purpose even when we ride. We make sure to always have a continuity of the communication, between the action happening from the ground and from the saddle.
The process of learning and building memory is specific to the perceptive receptors that brought the input to the brain. When we train a horse, an action learned by perception through sight requires more training to be performed when we ride.
In structuring our system for purposeful spontaneous communication, we always kept in consideration our position relative to the head of the horse, where the sense receptors are located. While the perceptive channel we use to reach the horse can be necessarily different, the social concepts of communication are the same. Coexistence, trust, respect, willingness and attention are still of immediate meaning. It is an effective communication, not based on previous training and not a trial and error experiment, like many have done when they use those same concepts to try to give horsemanship some noble and polite appeal. We do not want to exclude training as a useful tool, we just want to not limit our interaction to having to rely on just training alone.

The five senses as gateways to communicating with the horse
If we want to effectively communicate with an individual, we should consider how our communication is perceived and integrated in his organism from his side of the relationship.
Just like us human beings, horses have five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. Different stimuli from the surrounding environment reach animal individuals through specific receptors in the sense organs all located on the individual’s head, with the exception of touch receptors, which are distributed through the rest of the animal body. Based on what is perceived, and with the filter of species and the personality, everyone performs behavior, expressing thoughts and relating to others, who will perceive and will respond alike. Some sensory input, for example the stimuli causing instinctive behaviors, are more immediate in eliciting responses while other behavioral responses need to be learned by experience, and use more complex neural paths. This is true for human beings and horses, but with the very important difference implied in the fact that we belong to different animal species.

Knowing how to approach a horse, staying in social contexts, familiar for horses and for human beings, like reciprocal presence and position, movement and primary needs, can really be the key for us in communicating spontaneously and meaningfully with them. Working with horses without holding them confined, allows, requires and teaches how to modulate the communication with movement through the senses. This is a spontaneous kind of communication, which eliminates the need for horses to have to learn how to respond to cues, widening the possibilities for communication, and enhancing the wellbeing of the domestic horse.
There are some important differences, between how human beings and horses use the senses, and in addition to this difference we need to consider that we have a different perspective if we interact with them on the ground or from the saddle. The senses through which we can reach the horse on the ground are sight, hearing, and touch when we are physically close enough. When we are in the saddle the horse feels us by the way of touch, can hear us but cannot see us because of our position in relation to his eyes. The five social parameters (coexistence, trust, respect, willingness to cooperate and attention) that are at the base of the communication we are using are the same, it is just the way we modulate the movement that changes. If we are reaching the horse by sight, we move in the area a horse can see, if we are on his back, we apply pressure through a contact, but never go in a painful pressure and never lengthen the duration of the contact if the horse does not respond. Pain and insisting in the contact could make a horse enter in the conflictual mode of interaction rather than the cooperation we are seeking. Repeating our communication, but in a slightly different way according to the ongoing situation is what can efficiently get our meaning across to the horse.

At this time, we are not going to cover the subject of the use of the senses we are proposing in a comprehensive manner, we will just mention some useful elements on how to best get our information to horses in a spontaneous and direct way.

Sight
The horse has a wider field of vision than the human, due to the position of the eyes on the individual’s head, and has the ability to efficiently employ a monocular mode, and a binocular mode. Horses will primarily use body language and the sense of sight, to communicate in a detailed manner with other individuals, while man uses sound and the sense of hearing, to get information across to others.
The sense of sight is paramount, when working with a horse on the ground, furthermore if a horse is looking at something, he is also paying attention to it. When we ride, we should use the sense of touch to communicate with the horse, but always be aware of what our horse is seeing.

Hearing
The sounds that horses can articulate are very simple, but they can definitely control the intensity, and rhythm of sounds, when they “talk” with their keen or other individuals. The words we say when working with horses, can actually help us modulate the action we are performing, like music does for dancers. The intensity, and rhythm of a sound matter more than the meaning of the words we use, because the horse understands spontaneously the intensity and rhythm of the sounds we make, but not the meaning of spoken language.
The equine ear can passively catch sounds, and has a very pronounced ability to move, which helps horses in localizing the source of a sound. In addition to this, the position of the horse’s ears can express their state of mind, giving them the ability to express their personality and mood relative to a certain situation.
When communicating with a horse, that is able to freely express himself by movement, it is essential to pay attention to the appearance of the horse’s ear in detail.

Touch
In horsemanship, the sense of touch becomes the primary channel of communication when we ride, given that the horse cannot see us because of our physical position. In other situations, horses use the sense of touch to explore things that look safe enough to touch, action that they carry out after having blown on the object to explore it. Timid horses stretch their necks to feel something with the tip of their nose. This part of the horse’s head is very capable of collecting detailed information; it also helps in the selection of food.
Through touch, a horse perceives, in a very detailed way, things that are as subtle as the weight of a fly on their skin. Because the horse can be that aware when we rely on touch to communicate with them, we need to very finely gage our pressure cues, without causing painful perception coming from us to the horse.

Smell and Taste
Horses always use the senses of smell and taste, when they are far or close to the source of the information, but most of the time human beings do not keep in mind the information they can convey to a horse through it.
Horses have a great deal of signals that work through the senses of smell and taste that human beings cannot employ in the communication with them.
We feel that these last two senses require from us more consideration than what normally is given.

Keywords: human, horse, interspecies relationship, social relationship, spontaneous communication, cooperative interaction, sense perception, movement, instincts, learning process,

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? San Diego sums up all of the best we could experience.
Beach at Fiesta Island
Mountains at Double Peak Park where we can see 360 degrees around the whole county from the top of a mountain
Desert at Warner Springs
Sky seen from a glider plane

eat, drink, visit, hang out
each of the place I mentioned of San Diego has many different great spots to eat, drink, visit and hangout.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
A horse inspired me to learn how to connect with any other horse. His name was Maslogarth. I wrote an article about him on Elite Equestrian

EE:Human to Horse
Maslogarth, a champion who won hearts.

On opening day, at the S.Siro racetrack in Milan, Italy, an extra ordinary race was, named Premio Maslogarth, titled to a racehorse that recently died at the age of thirty. Maslogarth was a racehorse famous not for his winnings, but for his great mind. Naming the race after him was the last act that the Società Milanese Corse Cavalli, carried out to recognize this horse and his owner. In fact, after Maslogarth stopped racing, they gave Maslogarth free lifetime room and board. Stories like this are quite rare in the racing world!
A big dark bay colt, born in 1984, by Hogarth and Maslowskaja, he raced from 2 to 11 years old, and won the heart of everyone who met him, mine included. Many jockeys rode Maslogarth in the 70 races he ran, some were famous, some just beginning their career. His owner Angelo Garbati, well in his sixties, wore once again the jockey silks, and won one last race with Maslogarth. I too, had the pleasure to win and place with this horse, but my best luck was to learn about horsemanship from this very special racehorse.
I am not “born with horses”, but my biggest childhood dream was to be able to talk with them like I do with a friend. The thrill of a race is for me as exciting as watching a foal being born, or teaching a horse to keep eyes and ears on me.
My parents let me ride for a few years, but later decided that it was too dangerous. Having no money, to be able to follow my passion I resorted to spend the early hours riding racehorses, before going to school. I was not able to afford my own horse, like other amateur riders, and didn’t have the time to become a professional jockey while I was studying to become a veterinarian. The paycheck for my work at the track was the chance to compete in some races opened to amateurs, which gave me the thrill and the strong emotions that appeal so much to young kids. I am also very thankful to my parents for insisting that I finished the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Milano.
The time I spent at the racetrack taught me lifelong lessons. Aside from Maslogarth and Angelo, I met some great horsemen, like Enrico Camici, the jockey of Ribot and many other famous horses, who taught me how to ride racehorses. I was also very fortunate to meet Alain Kerbiriou, a French trainer who showed me some standards for the racehorse’s mind that were very unusual and have stayed with me for the rest of my life. His horses were so well minded that they could live with a bunny as a stall companion, like Caburrum with whom I won my first race. The bunny use to sleep next to him and the horse would not get up until the bunny moved in a safe position. When I met Maslogarth I applied those standards to our horsemanship. He arrived at the track as a yearling from the Fall Sales of 1985. His owner, Angelo Garbati, was a retired horseman who liked to keep a horse or two just to occupy his days. Angelo had spent a lifetime working at the track, with many different trainers and in some of the famous Italian old time stables like the Razza Dormello Olgiata. He broke and rode in training generations of Italian racehorses, between them even Hogarth, who sired Maslogarth. When we met, Angelo was in his sixties and I started helping him by riding his horses during the morning workout.
Maslogarth was pretty big as a yearling, but very gentle, so he ended up becoming everybody’s favorite. After the daily workout I used to turn him loose while giving him a bath or simply walking him to dry, and he would stay with me shoulder to shoulder like a friend. I also rode him bareback with a bridle, or just a halter and rope around the racetrack stables. He learned to drink from a hose pointed at his muzzle, and to fetch carrots and treats that I threw from being on his back. All of this was happening around other horses that behaved in a much different fashion, more like the stereotypical racehorse does.
Because of Maslogarth’s attitude, one day Angelo was asked to use him for filming a commercial for the track. I was the one that rode him bareback, on the racetrack for a short canter at dusk, and will never forget that early morning experience. After that day Maslogarth helped the track on several other occasions and later became the track’s mascot.
In 1996 I moved permanently to the U.S., and one year, during a visit to my family I learned from a mutual friend that Maslogarth still lived in the same stall and was still with Angelo. The horse was 26 years old and still a big, dark bay, nice minded stallion. When I went to see him and Angelo, after nearly 15 years, he still remembered me, and our days together. That day I lived some unforgettable moments, feeling again twenty-something years old. I rode Maslogarth like I used to do in the old days, bareback and bridle less. During my visit Angelo told me the story of the years that we spent apart. It is a story of acts of kindness, smiles and many young riders that learned how to ride a racehorse on the track for the first time. There were school children that brought him carrots during visits with their teachers, petting him everywhere and walking between his legs, while he patiently waited like an experienced master. And that is what he was!
When I was young, I was very proud of my way of riding and used to attribute my success with the horses to my skills, but I was not able to explain in detail to anyone how I was able to communicate so clearly with a horse. I knew it was not a matter of trick training but rather it was spontaneous and beautiful. The best explanation I could give was that I loved them and they loved me back, which was certainly true, but of no help to anyone else other than me.
What I learned from Maslogarth and the other racehorses is the base of how I communicate with horses.
HH Sensing is an approach to horsemanship where human being and horse communicate spontaneously, not through conditioned cues. In this kind of dialogue that HH Sensing aims to establish, each individual can be a leader and a follower. A horse can execute without being submissive and the leader can be a leader of leaders. That is what I learned from Maslogarth and the racehorses.
One more thing I had learned was that, if properly cared for, even racehorses could be trusted to be ridden like Maslogarth, bareback and bridle less. I always secretly hoped that one day I would have my very own special racehorse, and this happened with Downtown Rosalie, the mare I now share most of my time with. (Youtube: Dancing with the Racehorse, Downtown Rosalie having fun at Equine Affaire and many others)
I competed in flat races between 1980 and 1992, until a very serious accident ended my racing career. It happened because I rode an unknown horse, with bad habits and training issues, of which I was not aware before the race. I broke my back and risked to be paralyzed. Sadly this is something that didn’t just happen to me. Very little thought is still given to the soundness of the racehorse’s mind, and jockeys sometimes risk their lives to ride because it is common belief, even between many professionals, that racehorses can be wild and out of control. History teaches us that the true champions were rarely horses with an unsound mind. Most of the greatest horse breeders care to select the breeding of their best horses keeping in mind everything and not just their racing performance. The rest of the work is horsemanship, a very important issue!

Website: www.hhsensing.com

Linkedin: Alessandra Deerinck

Facebook: Deerinck Alessandra

Youtube: Alessandra Deerinck

Other: Human Horse Sensing Horsemanship book published on Amazon in English and by Edizioni Equitare in Italy