Thoughts on medieval horsetraining after handling two feral ponies (December 2020)

Interaction between my horse and the two ponies

 

After last week's post on my first reflections on medieval horsetraining (based on the method elaborated by Jordanus Rufus in 1250) as I started to train my two ponies, here is a text on the same subject written in December 2020. 

Since November, I have progressed a little with the taming of my two feral ponies, which enabled me to ask myself further questions about Jordanus Rufus’s training method, found in his veterinary treatise, the De medicina equorum (c. 1250). Those questions concern the use of a tame horse to make the handling of the foal easier, the potential use of food to facilitate the training and the implications of taming a wild animal. 

When I got them, the ponies had to go through a quarantine period. When that ended, I was able to introduce my other, older (16 years old) horse to them, to put in practice Rufus’s advice that, while the foal is still wild, he must be kept in the company of a tame horse. Rufus’s justification of that is that animals of the same species rejoice in the company of one another. Concretely, it is a way of alleviating the trauma of having taken the foal from his natural habitat by using the reassurance provided by another horse: equines are herd animals and thrive on interaction with one another. Rufus understood that and used it in his training method. In my case, the procedure was a bit flawed by the fact that I was dealing with two wild ponies rather than just one, so they already had one another to rely upon. However, the presence of my horse did make them calmer when I was with them. When Diamant saw my horse coming towards me, he followed his example. I now regularly interact with my horse in front of the ponies and I believe it is helping them to become more trusting of me. 

They are also becoming more comfortable in my presence because I am the one bringing them food every day (hay and hard feed). They associated me with this and now readily come to me in order to get it. This led me to wonder if food is used in Rufus’s training method. The text is not very clear on that matter: food is not explicitly used as a means for training but there is, in the middle of the training method, a long passage on what kind of fodder a foal, and then a grown horse, must eat. Was the person taming the horse the same one feeding him? Though the ponies will now come to me for food, they run away as soon as they see another human: their trust is built with an individual rather than humans as a group. Since the ideal warhorse was one that was faithful to one man only, it is possible that feeding them was implicitly used to encourage the foal to bond with just one human. Medieval authors knew that food was one way to a horse’s heart: Albertus Magnus wrote that they loved their masters but also the stable-hands who take care of them.[1] Moreover, Rufus’s use of honey to make the horse accept the bit shows that he had some knowledge of the mechanism of pleasure and of conditioning. 

The passage in the method on how to feed and keep the horse, which comes just after the capture of the foal, raises several questions. Does it describe how the unbroken foal must be kept? Or is it advice that can be applied to any kind of horse? Probably both. However, though Rufus says that the horse (or foal) must be led to the water every morning, he does not state how he has been taught to lead. Leading a horse is not a straightforward matter: to be led, he must give in to the pressure applied by the leadrope on the halter and on his head. Yet a horse’s natural response to pressure is to resist and pull back and he has to be trained not to do that. The only indication found in the method is the use of the tame horse when the foal is first led to the stable: he probably follows the horse, thus learning to associate being led with going forwards. Frustratingly, there is also no indication on the way the hobbles are actually put on him and if they must be taken off when he is led to the water. Those details were probably too obvious to be put in writing. On the subject of the water to which the foal is meant to be led, it is possible that, while he doesn’t know how to be lead and has to be hobbled, the water is brought to him in buckets: the accounts of the royal stables of Charles VI,[2] for instance, state that leather buckets were bought for the horses, showing that this was also a way of watering the horses. 

During my personal handling of the ponies, though I worked a lot with them in the first days by touching and haltering them, I was unable to go on doing so consistently and later on found myself interacting with them almost only to give them food. This showed to me that though it made them start to trust me, food alone is not enough to tame them: they will come to me but do not want me to touch them. It highlights the wisdom of Rufus’s advice to touch and handle the foal every day, as well as that of the conclusion of the training method: if not worked regularly, the horse will forget what he has artificially learnt. It is obvious that because I have not handled them as much as I should have, the ponies have taken a few steps backwards in terms of tameness: they could be touched in the first days but can no longer be. However, I have never noticed this with my other horse. Even when he was not in work for months on end, he did not forget any cues or aid. This is probably due to his age and the years of training he has had, as opposed to the ponies who only had a few days. Moreover, though I have no precise knowledge of what the initial handling of my horse was, I assume that, being in the context of a racing stud, he was handled, or at least in contact with humans, from a very young age, if not from birth. How much does that influence the horse’s behaviour later on? 

The fact that those ponies had a wild upbringing certainly makes their taming more difficult, as would have been the case with Rufus’s foal. However, a distinction must be made between their literal wildness, that is their feral youth, and wildness of character, though the two can overlap. Diamant is wild because he was feral. Topaze is wild because she was feral, but also because it is part of her temperament. She is more aggressive and fearless than the other pony, will fight when cornered and could, when pushed too far, become dangerous. Diamant never shows any sign of aggression, whether towards humans or towards other horses – which Topaze does, even towards Diamant. This behaviour could be associated with a highly developed survival instinct and shows itself either in the presence of food or of a potential danger (such as a human). Was the wildness of temperament what medieval horsemen looked for in destriers and why they let them be literally wild? The epitome of the wild horse is Bucephalus, which, in the medieval psyche, is both the ideal, loyal warhorse and an anthropophagous monster.[3] The horse must be wild enough to be untameable except by one person, but then, for that person, tame enough to become the most faithful of companions. 

There is nowadays a fascination with wild (whether literally or behaviourally) horses, as seen in the equestrian popular culture and the countless books and films depicting the taming of an untameable horse. One of the first variations on this theme dates back from the Antiquity, with Bucephalus, and was later appropriated by the medieval literature. Another example of a medieval wild horse is Bayard, the destrier of Renaud de Montauban.[4] Like Bucephalus, he possesses a degree of monstrosity: some versions of the Chanson des Quatre Fils Aymon depict him as the son of a dragon and he possesses has magical abilities. He is faithful to his master and, when definitively separated from him at the end of the novel, reverts to a wild state, refusing to be touched by any other human. Wild horses are a challenge. There are more difficult than the others but taming them is associated with the idea of becoming worthy of their trust. This attitude towards horse-training fits the portrayal of the ideal destrier who must still be wild, to be more efficient on the battlefield and to have a more exclusive relationship with his rider. 

The advice that Rufus gives to never become angry towards the foal, lest he should acquire some vice as a result makes a lot of sense in the case of a behaviourally wild horse. Along with her aggressive behaviour, Topaze has a good memory and will appear to hold a grudge, making her more delicate to handle. Diamant, on the other hand, presents no such difficulties, though he had a more traumatic time: he was castrated a couple of weeks ago, which involved manhandling, pain, sedation and was quite a shock to him. However, by the next day he had forgotten all about it. As the days pass, the individuality and different temperaments of the two ponies become more marked. Rufus does not mention the individuality of each horse, but it is implied in his method, when he gives a timeframe but then states that it must be adapted as the handler sees fit. 

When interacting with the ponies, I have noticed that they almost always present their left side to me. Scientific research highlights that horses prefer to face something from the left in times of stress or to evaluate it.[5] This preference given to the left side has been commonly observed and scientifically explained. Mentions of it can be found in Rufus’s method. When he described how the freshly broken-in horse must be ridden at a trot in fallow-fields, he explains that the horse will turn more easily on the left and that the right rein must be held shorter to remedy that. This could have been explained by the fact that, like humans, horses can be either right or left-handed. However, since Rufus states that the left-side is systematically preferred by horses, this observation can be linked to the way horses generally deal with new elements and situations and would be quite logical at the beginning of the horse’s training. This laterality has only been proven in recent years. Yet that does not stop Rufus’s empirical statement from having been justified and proves the extent of this medieval horseman’s knowledge of horses. 

[1] Albertus Magnus, De Animalibus libri XXVI nach Cölner Urshrift, éd. Herman Stadler, Munster, 1920, p. 1378 

[2] Comptes de l’Ecurie du roi Charles VI (Vol.1). Le registre KK 34 des archives nationales (1381-1387) publié par G.-M. Leproux dans Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (pub.), Recueil des Historiens de la France. Documents financiers et administratifs (Tome IX), Paris, 1996 

[3] Alexandre de Paris, Le Roman d’Alexandre, éd. E.C. Amstrong, trad. L. Harf-Lancner, Paris, 1994 

[4] Les Quatre fils Aymon, ou Renaud de Montauban, éd. et trad. Micheline de Combarieu du Grès et Jean Subrenat, Paris, 1983 

[5] Farmer, Kate & Krüger, Konstanze & Byrne, Richard. (2009). Visual laterality in the domestic horse (Equus caballus) interacting with humans. Animal cognition. 13. 229-38. 10.1007/s10071-009-0260-x.