Toward Controlled Drawing in Horses: A Stepwise Protocol for Directional Stroke Control, Symbol Imitation, and Progressive Abstraction

This preprint describes an ongoing experimental program aimed at moving from simple tool-holding behavior to controlled, command-guided stroke production and eventually to the reproduction of schematic images (e.g., geometric shapes, letters, and simple drawings such as a tree, a horse, or a human). While many demonstrations labeled as “horse painting” consist of unconstrained brush movements, the present goal is to test whether horses can acquire (i) directional control of strokes (up/down/left/right) on command, (ii) stable reproduction of simple geometric primitives, (iii) copying of symbols by exemplar (letters and shapes), and (iv) progressive abstraction toward schematic representations. We provide a stepwise protocol, current training status after five sessions in cold outdoor conditions (paint not yet introduced), planned measures for quantifying control and generalization, and a data plan based on synchronized video and session logs. The work is explicitly framed as an experiment: success is not assumed, but the protocol is designed to generate interpretable results under realistic constraints.