Your mare just walked calmly past that frightening yellow flower pot. Your gelding just placed one foot up on the trailer platform. And so you reward your horse’s behavior and bravery with soft, soothing, encouraging words.

Or do you? As it turns out, soothing, verbal praise might not convey a message of reward to horses. According to a group of international behavior researchers, it seems that horses don’t naturally understand the difference between our soft tones and our snippy ones.

"Based on our study, most horses did not appear to inherently distinguish between harsh vocal cues and soothing vocal cues," said Camie R. Heleski, PhD, a researcher at Michigan State University (MSU), at the 2012 International Society for Equitation Science conference. "Or if they did, it did not influence their performance of learning and performing a frightening task."

Heleski and a team of international researchers from MSU, the University of Delaware, the University of Göettingen (Germany), and the University of Milan (Italy) tested 95 horses of various breeds and ages at different locations in the United States and Europe. Researchers taught horses to cross a plastic tarp placed on the arena floor. To half the study horses the researchers said, "Good horse," in a soothing voice when they took a step toward the tarp. For the other half, the researchers loudly said, "Quit it!" when the horses took a step in the right direction