Q: I follow Pat Parelli’s training methodology. While doing the exercise of desensitizing my horse to a ball, I quickly realized that her focus never followed the ball over her head. If I rolled it at her feet, or played with the ball anywhere below her eye-level, she followed it. But, when I tossed it above her head, she never followed it up, and she was always (not surprisingly, I suppose) startled when came back down within her view. Why is it that dogs and cats follow objects that go up, but horses (or maybe it’s just my horse) do not?

—via e-mail

A: First, your horse is like every other horse I have seen in this situation. Second, these observations are consistent with those of others. Horses generally don’t “look up.” This question comes up often in regards to aircraft and horses, and why in some situations aircraft don’t seem to bother horses and why in other situations they seem to be problematic, in that the horse is startled when they come into view.

A more common management situation in which this characteristic becomes apparent is when you are throwing hay down from above to a horse or group of horses waiting for it, say from a hay loft above a feeding area, or from a high vehicle, or throwing hay up over a high fence