Best way to discourage bonding to spouse?

[entrancedbymyGCC]

Well, some Arabs could be good first horses and some QHs could be terrible first horses so I'm not sure exactly how that ties into the main thread here! FWIW I started a thread when I first joined the forum about horse/bird similarities and differences. Both being flight animals there are some things in common, but birds are very sound oriented where horses are very body language oriented. Kindof interesting.

All I'm saying is that an owner's expectations, behaviors and demeanor can be a determining factor in influencing an animal's behavior, actions and reactions.

With horses, it is almost everything. Birds seem considerably more active and only moderately reactive in comparison. Perhaps at some level it is my relatively limited exposure to birds, but if my horse develops a behavior problem related to handling or riding I figure either something is physically wrong or it is my fault, period. Yes, they can be moody, but they don't tend to come up with new behaviors out of thin air. Their emotional life, as such, seems to be more oriented to others of their own kind -- they don't pair bond or display sexual behavior to humans, for example, although they may display to other horses in the presence of humans, causing issues. I don't feel Scooter becoming angry at me when I've been away is anything I directly caused, although I'm still looking for ways to mitigate it. But this seems to me a fundamental difference and one that is in equal parts scary and endearing.

[patdbunny]

Very interesting indeed - the psychological interactions between humans and different types of animals. I'm much more familiar with birds than horses, so it's harder for me to "read" horses. Now that I have both birds and horses, I'd have to say they are more similar than you think. Birds cue on your body language and behaviors quite a bit, too.

I think people just aren't familiar with what to look for in a bird's reactions. Not necessarily "your fault" if a bird seems to have spontaneously come up with a kooked out new behavior, but I do very much believe they are cuing off us or a change in their surroundings.

As subtle as birds can be, sometimes you can't figure out what the cue is. For instance, my prior african grey had this thing about putting one single hole into every single shirt I wore. She never bit into a shirt that she had previously punctured. Nice shirts I didn't want her to poke, I figured I cued her to poke by my apprehensive behavior. But I'd put on unholey shirts that I didn't mind she'd holey up, and she'd still put a hole in it. I couldn't figure that out - it wasn't my apprehension, but I'm convinced I was cuing her in some way to put a hole in my shirt. She also didn't consistently put the hole in the same place, but it was always one hole.

[entrancedbymyGCC]

We might want to take this to a separate thread so as to avoid taking the original question too far off topic. I'll dig up my old thread and we can continue the discussion there!