At BestHorsePractices, we connect equine research with everyday interactions and share the discoveries of good research with Regular Joe’s.
Fred Holcomb
Follow Fred is a regular feature. It features a young man with his feet firmly in both BHP camps: horsemanship and science.
Holcomb, a student at Davidson College, has excelled at English and Western riding, including a lengthy stint at the Alvord Ranch with Martin Black and seminar work with Black and Dr. Steve Peters. Read more about Holcomb.
At Davidson, Holcomb pursues a psychology degree with a minor in neuroscience. His senior thesis, including a summer research project on a Wyoming ranch, focuses on equine cognition.
Read more about Follow Fred.
In this installment, Holcomb elaborates on the preparation necessary for the actual field work, completed at the HF Bar guest ranch this summer. Check out the HF Bar.
By Fred Holcomb
Davidson College
I had three main goals in planning my independent research.
- First, that it had the internal consistency and experimental control necessary for relevant behavioral research. As an undergraduate and hopeful future graduate level researcher, I needed to begin my research career with appropriate scientific control in my study.
- Second, that my research work to introduce the objectivity of scientific exploration to the world of horse training.
A hallmark of good science is a lack of bias in data collection or 
interpretation. Good scientists create controlled manipulations and allow the resulting data to speak for itself. My hope was to allow the horses to speak for themselves by replacing opinion with hard data on the benefits or limitations of different handling practices.
- Third, I wanted to make my research applicable to anyone involved in horse work, not simply a pool of horse-interested behaviorists. I had to make sure my procedures and measures mirrored those that the average rider might encounter or implement.
By doing that, I hoped to make my research approachable to non-academics and I hoped to validate OR create doubt about training philosophies that riders are implementing.
Creating a study procedure that achieved all three of these initiatives was the challenge that I had to overcome in trying to create a set of data that was relevant to both academics and non-academics.
Fred Holcomb works with a colt.
Keep your eye on young Mr. Holcomb. I have known Fred for a few years now. He is on an inexhaustable quest for knowledge and knows well how science can inform best practices with horses.
He is inquisitive and always striving to learn at a deeper level. I fully expect Fred to be answering key equine questions with research. He also works as a wrangler and is a noteworthy horseman.
Horses and their owners will surely benefit from his future efforts.