In this podcast, Dr David Marlin discusses the importance of understanding horse and rider behaviour to reduce the risk of injury and improve performance. David emphasises the need to move away from labelling horses as ‘naughty’ and instead focus on the underlying reasons for their behaviour, such as pain, confusion, and anxiety. The conversation explores how horses perceive their environment, including their acute hearing abilities, and how this can affect their reactions. David highlights the significance of recognizing conflict behaviours and their potential consequences for both horse and rider, advocating for a more empathetic and informed approach to equestrianism.
Points covered:
- Understanding horse behaviour can reduce the risk of injury.
- Pain and anxiety are common triggers for unwanted behaviours.
- Horses have a different hearing range than humans.
- Recognizing a horse’s mood can improve training outcomes.
- Training should focus on clear communication with the horse.
- Horses may react to stimuli that riders cannot perceive.
- The term ‘naughty’ is misleading in equestrian contexts.
- Improving horse-rider communication enhances performance.
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Transcription
Here is a transcription of the podcast. (Please note this is an automated transcription, so we apologise for any errors from the original podcast.)
Hi there, in this podcast I’m going to talk to you about how potentially understanding horse and rider behaviour may reduce the risk of horse and rider injury and also improve performance. So I’m going to start by asking a question and something probably you all will recognise, but why don’t horses do what we want them to do or sometimes why do they do things we don’t want them to do? Well, we often hear people say:
“Oh, he’s just being a bit naughty today.” And that’s a bit of a problem because we’re trying to move away from this type of approach of using those sorts of terms. If we look at dictionary definitions of “naughty,” it’s defined as disobedient, mischievous, generally misbehaving, particularly when applied to children. Other synonyms include mischievous, bad, rude, rebellious, selfish, childish, wild, and wicked. “Naughty” is often positioned as the opposite of well-behaved and, historically, its origin relates to meanings of evil, immoral, or wicked.
I don’t think we really want to think of our horses as being evil, immoral, or wicked. The classic example is buying your horse a new rug, putting it on, and then your horse immediately rolling. That’s not your horse being naughty. There might be a good reason for that behaviour—perhaps the horse doesn’t like the smell and wants to make it more familiar.
The real problem with terms like bad, naughty, good, happy, and sad is that these are all human constructs. A human construct is a concept or idea that we create rather than something that exists naturally. Social construct theory suggests that we create constructs to make sense of the world around us, so it probably isn’t appropriate to apply these sorts of terms to horses.
So, when horses don’t do what we want or they do things we don’t want them to do, what possible reasons are there? Well, actually, there are a lot of possibilities. Your horse could be in pain, confused, or perhaps you haven’t given clear aids for a transition from trot to canter. Your horse might be anxious or fearful of something, possibly due to past pain in a similar situation. Like us, horses can have variations in mood. They are not robots or machines; they can change how they respond on different days.
Your horse may have been startled, distracted, or even bored. In rare cases, your horse may have better judgment than you and be avoiding something dangerous. The problem we face when horses behave unexpectedly is that they often exhibit conflict behaviours—bucking, rearing, refusing, running out, shaking their head, swishing their tail, breaking gait, or going on the wrong lead. These conflict behaviours are problematic and may be due to pain, confusion, anxiety, or other factors.
We are getting better at recognising pain in horses. Trying to diagnose pain in horses is similar to paediatricians diagnosing babies: you can see what’s happening and test certain things, but you don’t get verbal feedback from the subject. Sue Dyson’s work has greatly helped in understanding behaviours linked to pain in ridden horses through the ridden horse ethogram.
Confusion can also play a role. Are you really being clear with your aids? Has your horse been trained effectively so that it understands what you are asking? Anxiety, for instance, can lead to a horse refusing a fence in show jumping. Is it anticipating pain from a previous experience, or is there current pain present? Even after pain is gone, a horse’s memory of it can still influence its reactions.
Mood variation has also been studied. A 2011 paper by Christiansen and another by Le Saint-Paule found that a horse’s social behaviour depended on factors such as housing conditions and breed. Mood was also affected by how much pasture time a horse had, its exercise regimen, and its social interactions with other horses.
We’ve seen graphic examples of how horses react when startled, such as the household cavalry horses in London being spooked by building noise, dropping their riders, and bolting. Horses are flight animals, and they react strongly to being startled.
One reason why horses may react unpredictably is their hearing. Humans can hear sounds from around 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, whereas horses have a higher upper frequency range, up to 33,000 Hz. This means horses can hear sounds that we cannot, including ultrasonic sounds produced by bats, pet scarers, and dog whistles. Additionally, a horse’s hearing is two to four times more sensitive than ours, so it can detect sounds long before we do. If a horse reacts suddenly, it may be hearing something we are unaware of.
Recent research conducted with Claire Hull at Cambridge University explored horse hearing by measuring heart rate responses to different sounds, including the sound of feed being made up, music, applause, winning, and trotting. The most significant heart rate increase was in response to trotting, likely because in the wild, a trotting horse may indicate a potential threat.
Sometimes, a horse may refuse to do something because it knows better than we do. For example, in jumping, a horse may sense that it cannot safely clear an obstacle and refuse or run out. Falls happen due to mistakes by both riders and horses, but sometimes the horse is making a well-judged decision to stop.
A survey conducted last year collected data on over 4,000 falls. The most common activities for falls were flat schooling, hacking, and show jumping schooling, which accounted for over 60-70% of falls. The primary reasons reported for falling off were the horse rapidly changing direction (40%), the horse rearing or bucking (23%), and the horse refusing or running out at a jump (12%). These are all conflict behaviours.
Over three-quarters of falls in our survey were associated with conflict behaviours. Ignoring these behaviours increases the risk of falls and injuries. Research by Paul McGreevy, Andrew McLean, Jane Williams, and Hayley Randall found that aggressive use of spurs and incorrect tack fit contributed to conflict behaviours. Another study in 2014 found that as a horse’s head position was brought behind the vertical, conflict behaviours increased. In lower-level competitions, hyperflexion resulted in lower marks, but in higher-level competitions, it was not penalised. Interestingly, horses in higher-level classes exhibited more conflict behaviours than those in lower-level classes, likely due to increased pressure and stress.
Further research by Jane Williams and myself examined conflict behaviours in elite show jumping. We found that factors such as negative responses to rider aids, high hands, red secondary colours on planks, head shaking, head tilting, and whip use were all associated with increased risks of knocking poles, refusals, or falls.
To summarise, we are moving away from labelling horses as “naughty.” Those studying equine behaviour and science believe that using this term is unhelpful as it prevents us from recognising underlying issues such as pain, anxiety, confusion, or being startled. High frequencies of conflict behaviours are linked to poor outcomes, including poor scores, eliminations, and falls. Riders who learn to recognise and address these behaviours can reduce the risk of injury and improve performance. Ignoring persistent conflict behaviours, on the other hand, increases the likelihood of injury and poor results.
This work has been conducted in collaboration with Professor Jane Williams from Hartpury University and Dr. Roberta Blake from Anglia Ruskin University, Writtle. I hope you enjoyed this discussion.
