✨ "All social species seek connections. People and horses are no different. Safety and comfort are the core elements to build strong social bonds regardless of species. “ – Mary Ann Simonds✨ "The best tool we have is be the best human you can be. You don't have to know everything. You just have to be clear on yourself and be pure and be silent, and then help your horse be the best horse it can be." – Mary Ann SimondsMary Ann Simonds has spent more than four decades sitting at the intersection of wildlife biology, consciousness studies, and horsemanship — and almost none of it has looked the way science was supposed to look. She grew up in California riding hunter/jumpers, earned her BS from the University of Wyoming in Wildlife Conservation and Management and a minor in Range Management studying wild horse ecology and whole systems approaches. She was appointed to the National Advisory Board for Wild Horses and Burros in the early 1990s after years of field research on wild horse behavioral ecology. She has worked for oil and gas companies as a reclamation specialist, pioneered ecotourism partnerships with ranchers in Wyoming and Oregon, taught interspecies communication at Nippon Veterinary and Life Sciences University in Tokyo, earned a graduate degree in Inter-disciplinary Consciousness Studies and has spent years working quietly behind the scenes in the sport horse welfare world near her home in Wellington, Florida.Her new book, A Horse by Nature, published by Trafalgar Square, draws on all of it — wild horse social behavior, domestic horse psychology, welfare ethics, and practical communication tools — organized in red, blue, and green tips so riders can go straight to what they need most. It is, as Rupert and Mary Ann agree at the end of this conversation, Part One of what will be a longer series.This is a conversation about what happens when rigorous science and genuine animal communication occupy the same person — and what that has to teach anyone who lives and works with horses.FREE Helios Harmony Intro Course: https://longridehome.com/onoutpoutWhat You'll Learn in This Episode00:05:30 – How Mary Ann first recognized, at age 11, that a trainer couldn't hear what a horse with a headache was saying — and why that question drove her entire career00:13:00 – What double degrees in range management and wildlife biology taught her about the gap between academic science and what animals are actually doing00:39:00 – The dietary overlap study she conducted as an undergraduate — and how it became the data cited to justify mass BLM removal of wild horses decades later00:44:00 – How BLM's gate-cut removal policy destroyed wild horse social structures and caused reproductive rates to skyrocket00:47:00 – Why a Nevada rancher admitted he hated the wild stallion eating his alfalfa — and what that revealed about the real psychology behind mustang persecution00:56:00 – How she converted ranchers into ecotourism operators years before the concept had a name — and why she calls herself a solution finder, not an activist01:04:00 – The discovery that studying nature with a quiet mind produced completely different wildlife sightings than looking at it with scientific intent01:20:00 – Why she went to graduate school to study human consciousness after watching a BLM official throw a briefcase at a rancher in a public meeting01:38:00 – How she taught interspecies communication at Nippon Animal Science University in Tokyo, and why Japanese vet students grasped it almost instantly01:44:00 – Why a horse's first two years determine everything, and how not knowing a horse's early history is one of the most common mistakes buyers make01:49:00 – What A Horse by Nature offers: how to teach a horse to be a functional horse, the OFFER technique, and why eye contact, nose bump, and buddy scratch transform the relationship01:51:00 – The red, blue, and green tip system — and why safety and comfort, not food, are a horse's primary motivation for bonding with a humanMemorable Moments from the Episode00:12:00 – Mary Ann describes sleeping with rattlesnakes as an 18-year-old after refusing to leave the field — and what it taught her about looking with nature rather than at it00:43:00 – She discovers her own undergraduate data, filed under her maiden name Canny, was the study used to justify mass wild horse removals — and the range manager confirms it was never statistically significant00:49:00 – An Oregon rancher comes to her door late at night to confess he killed a band of horses because they looked too pathetic to live — and her response: "So if you look like that, should I shoot you too?"01:33:00 – A Wyoming cowboy's horse jumps into the back of his pickup truck with his dog, unprompted and untrained — and that moment becomes the seed of her interspecies communication research01:42:00 – Rupert describes aloud, for the first time, all the prayers and invisible preparation he does before every training session — after an audience member tells him he didn't ask the horse permissionGuest Contact & LinksA Horse by Nature by Mary Ann Simonds (Trafalgar Square Publishing) https://amzn.to/4glHTCpMary Ann Simonds website and contact: www.maryAnnsimonds.comAbout Mary Ann SimondsMary Ann Simonds is a wildlife biologist, behaviorist, and consciousness researcher who has spent more than four decades studying the relationship between horses, nature, and human awareness. She holds double degrees in range management and wildlife biology from the University of Wyoming and a graduate degree in consciousness studies. Her fieldwork spans wild mustang populations in the American West, dolphin behavior research, ecotourism development, and interspecies communication programs at veterinary universities in Japan. She has served on the National Advisory Board for Wild Horses and Burros, worked as a reclamation specialist for oil and gas companies, and spent years advocating for welfare reform in the sport horse industry near her home in Wellington, Florida. Her new book, A Horse by Nature, is published by Trafalgar Square.🐎 Want to go deeper? 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