Coloured Australian Pony Stud

I am often puzzled that NHS focuses so much on us being a predator to the horseas prey and then seamlessly transitions to us being simply a more dominant preyhorse in a herd of two, with little explanation or insight into how the horse is supposed to tell the difference.  Even the best NHS and related trainers rely on terms like willingness, respect, attitude, dominance, submission etc, all loaded terms that have at their basis the idea that the horse should want to please us or that its life is at its most fulfilling complying with our demands, which would make it unique amongst all other species, humans included.  Dogs are perhaps an exception...  

What is it about our interactions with horses, that there seems to be an actual need to believe that our training systems are a relationship of two partners with the same individual agency, equally exercising their free will rather than seeing them in terms of the operation of either negative reinforcement (mostly) or occasionally positive reinforcement to motivate a behavioural response that is desired by us.  (Maybe its just easier to just call it love than “behavioural response”…;))