Thoughts On Banning Jumps Racing

(Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

Horses are not great at logical reasoning.  No horse has yet graduated from a bona fide University, a feat that even Kermit The Frog has achieved.

But horses do have:

1. Excellent spatial memory, and
2. Excellent sensorial memory

There are important evolutionary reasons for why the horse has developed these traits, but I won't go into detail on these reasons here (again, you are welcome to contact me for more information). 

The important thing to know is that the horse is able to recollect how it felt at some particular moment and where it happened.  So, for example, if a horse gets injured while being loaded into a starting gate, it will be much more difficult to load the horse in the future because the horse has associated the painful injury with the gate.

The third and final reward phase for the horse at the end of a race is when the pressure from the jockey is released.  This occurs at the moment the horse passes the winning post or just a fraction of a second afterwards.

So in the horse's mind, that pressure/release reward is associated with the winning post, since this is the object that they see just before the reward is bestowed.  This creates a desire in the horse to reach that object or place more quickly, in order to receive the reward more quickly.

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