My First Meeting with Feral Living Horses

The first time I met horses that were not domesticated or tame, and did not live in a zoo, was on a course in the Netherlands in 2013. I had for a while been following Francesco de Gorgio and José Schoorl (now de Gorgio-Schoorl) at Learning Animals and now, I wanted to meet them and see if they shared similar ideas about horses and nature that I had. And they did, but I was never comfortable with being their student, as nothing of what they talked about was new to me, and I was not looking for teachers or mentors (or gurus), but likeminded people to have interesting discussions with and exchange ideas with, perhaps to go on adventures with. This is part of my problem with myself and the world. I am not your typical student. I often want more, and I often need to hold back on what I already know to not be disturbing other people’s learning. So, instead of making myself and others uncomfortable, it made sense that I started my own education and research center – our own MiMer Centre.

But meeting Francesco and José brought a very good thing to me! They introduced me to the idea of studying feral living horses. By taking me and the rest of their study group at the time, to meet a mall group of Konik horses living in a small nature reserve in the Netherlands. We did not go to the big nature reserve, the Oostvaardersplassen, but to a much smaller one, where only about 20 Koniks lived.

And Francesco did a small novel object test to show us that feral living horses behave differently from most of our domestic horses. That feral living horses are much more curious and that they use their senses differently. And they apparently did.

I was not so sure about this division, or the reason for their behaviors. As the horses at my place, though they were not feral, they lived out together in one big herd, in a varied landscape, approximately as many as in this herd, but even on a bit bigger land (around 15 hectares at the time). And I saw the same kind of behaviors in my own horses that I saw in this feral-living group. It led me to go home and do some novel object tests with my own horses. And later on, I went to Mongolia (my second trip there) to do a small novel object study on both Przewalski horses (Takhis) and on their own Mongolian horse.

Francesco´s and José’s idea was that most domestic living horses are too stressed to be able to explore and learn properly. And I agree with them, this is a huge problem. They had noticed how domestic horses often would explore whatever they brought into their pastures, in a quite nervous and aggressive way, they would break things, pawing and gnawing at it, they would not be relaxed enough to calmly explore things with their senses, and they would not do it together in a socially cohesive way. And I have seen the same in stressed horses, that they use more force than needed, that they do not seem to retain any information from what they are doing, and they do not really seem to pay attention to other beings, apart from behaving competitively.

From this I have developed my own way of assessing stress levels in horses with more informal and impromptu novel object tests.

I took Francesco's and Josés full course that they at the time called "The Cogntive Horse". They even came to my farm in Sweden and gave one of the modules and also offered an introductory course to those interested in other ways of being with and thinking about horses. Though I did not stay with them and though I did not learn much about horses per se from them and their training, they and their course was a vital step in my own education. Becauase I learned that I can do and say the things I believe in. I don't have to follow anoyne else. And this set me on a path to keep on exploring horses in other ways, doing other kinds of science, believing in myself and to this day, I keep on promoting both other ways of knowing as well as new perspectives to look at horses from. 

In 2013 I then consequently started MiMer Centre, and the rest is, like you usually say, history!

Text and Pictures are copyright protected © Katarina Felicia Lundgren, MiMer Centre, 2025