Peter, my gelding, was born prematurely and his mother never really took to him. Thus, he bonded most closely with human beings.

His conditioning reinforcing, which non-horsepeople and a lot of horsepeople can never believe, is human affection. Specifically, my affection. He will do any number of spooky, terrible things (walk past a garbage can or mailbox or barking dog, jump a water-filled ditch, climb into the trailer, wear a plastic tarp as a cape) if he knows I will pet his ears or give him a hug. The main stopping block in his training wasn’t convincing him to stop bucking or running away — it was convincing him to stop coming to me every fifteen minutes for a hug.

The love-based training has resulted in a horse who will stand stock still in the pasture and let me use him as the goal in a soccer game; allows me and a friend to play ‘tennis’ (catch) with him as the net; will simply cock an ear while I go ‘bowling’ (again with a soft ball) between his hooves; plants his feet and sighs when I throw a plastic tarp or a sheet over his entire head and body; jumps anything if I just stand still and point at it … freezes and wait for me to reassure him instead of simply bolting when he gets spooked.

He learns tasks by watching, and will do them seemingly to entertain me with no other reward. He will attempt to ‘put away’ jumps, typically just knocking the rails out of the jump cups, after we ride. He knows how to turn on water spigots. He can open his own stall door, take himself out to the pasture, and close the gate behind himself if he wants to graze.

It’s baffling to me why people think horses are stupid. Maybe men just can’t understand anything they can’t control.

Oh, it certainly does. My little guy learned to come when he was called in the space of about 10 minutes. I used his breakfast, doled out in wee bites, and a clicker.

Another breakfast, I taught him to sit up and “beg”. Next, I think I’ll teach him to run around in a circle like chasing his tail.

He also loves to play fetch. Training him to do that wasn’t as structured as the other things. He just really loved it when I flicked his little toys so they jumped for him to catch, and cottoned on quick that if they were right by my hand I was way more likely to flick them. The flying toy was his reinforcement when he got it “right”. He’s the second fetching cat I’ve had, by the way, and the other one learned the same way.

He’s a bright little guy, gets into lots of trouble (like Maypearl) if I don’t keep him busy, but he’s definitely not some aberrant genius supercat.

“I think the difficulty for humans trying operant conditioning on cats is that cats don’t seem to have guaranteed reinforcers like dogs, horses, and humans.”

Nonsense. Different cats want different things, but once you get to know a cat it’s easy to predict what they’ll work for. They’re exactly as trainable as any other social, intelligent animal. Youtube “clicker cat” or some variation on that.

Human intelligence is not only highly overrated, it’s also far less unique than we’re accustomed to supposing.