{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,26]],"date-time":"2026-08-26T09:55:34Z","timestamp":1787738134478,"version":"build-2784847793"},"reference-count":49,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"10","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,5,14]],"date-time":"2025-05-14T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1747180800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100000764","name":"King's College London","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["Approval received from internal OA funding support"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["Approval received from internal OA funding support"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100000764","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Animals"],"abstract":"<jats:p>In many types of embodied skills instruction, the learnables\u2014that is, the local and jointly negotiated foci of instruction\u2014emerge from a combination between a pre-existing lesson plan and the spontaneous interaction between teacher and student. Through the analytical lens of Conversation Analysis, this paper investigates the interspecies instruction setting of horse-riding lessons and shows how here, it is not only the human teachers and learners that determine the emergence of new learnables but also the horses. Horses\u2019 actions can initiate new courses of action in a lesson, and horses can thus become interactional partners in the instructional project. Horse-led learnables can be initiated in at least three ways: through horses\u2019 displays of mental or physical states that pre-date the instruction sequence; through actions that respond to local contingencies of the instruction sequence; and through actions that respond specifically to the rider\u2019s actions. In the last case, their responses become diagnostic of the rider\u2019s mistakes. In all three cases, the human participants take their cue from the horse and base new learnables on horses\u2019 actions. Human-led learnables can be adjusted, changed, replaced, or abandoned completely in response to horses. The study broadens the emerging field of interspecies pragmatics to include instructional interactions involving the triad of human\u2013human\u2013horse triad.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/ani15101418","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,5,14]],"date-time":"2025-05-14T08:44:58Z","timestamp":1747212298000},"page":"1418","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["The Role of Horses as Instructional and Diagnostic Partners in Riding Lessons"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"15","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3814-5198","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Beatrice","family":"Szczepek Reed","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Education, Communication and Society, King\u2019s College London, London SE1 9NH, UK"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4837-1623","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Susanne","family":"Lundesj\u00f6 Kvart","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,5,14]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"15","DOI":"10.1016\/j.pragma.2023.11.013","article-title":"Towards interspecies pragmatics: Language use and embodied interaction in human-animal activities, encounters, and narratives","volume":"220","author":"Peltola","year":"2024","journal-title":"J. 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