Very interesting, thanks! I believe horses can care about their human if they are treated with kindness and caring, and it is mutually beneficial for humans to be kind to each other as well as to all animals. My ‘one in a million’ mare came to me at age three and was part of my life until she was forty. She taught me a lot and enriched my life as we learned to communicate with each other as much as possible in non-verbal but meaningful ways.
I've seen my relationship with my horse changed when I started to respond to every nosing behaviour he offered. Just offering my hand for him to sniff, playing slowly with his mouth or even just interrupting what I was doing to acknowledge that he was reaching out.
Now, he's communicating sooo much more and is much more chilled at the same time. I even got groomed back a few times when I was scratching an itchy spot. Of course we have to figure out how to make this work in a horse-to-human way. I'm really sad to see that it's been studied how these behaviours disappear in relationship to time spent in training.
That's so nice that your horse is opening up more and becoming more expressive of his emotions around you! It is a challenge of course to strike the right balance between allowing them to communicate in a way that's natural and normal for them, and ensuring we as fragile humans are safe. Often, a good compromise is to redirect their communication and/or teach them alternative ways to communicate (for example "scratching" the air instead of us when we engage in mutual grooming with them). Unfortunately, a lot of traditional horse training encourages punishing their communication instead. I wonder what long-term effects that has on the horse-human bond.
Do you think there is a difference - from the horse experience - between moments when they are scratched by humans and they express their enjoyment (curled lips, funny faces etc) and mutual grooming with the human? Does the reciprocity of the latter "mean" something more?
About my horse, he's mostly surprisingly gentle in these kinds of interactions. When he gets "too horsey" I complain out loud and move away for a few seconds before resuming the interaction. I feel like it's helping him understand that I prefer soft interactions instead of a really good scratch!
I have no well argued opinion on your last point, but I can't see how getting punished for communication attempt may improve a horse's overall happiness. When they're communicating positive feelings and get punished for it, it's a sad thing... But when they're punished for expressing pain, fear or discomfort just because it doesn't fit the human... Then I imagine they'd only be walking on the path of rebellion or learned helplessness
That's a good question whether the reciprocity of the behaviour is important. I would guess so, simply because the mutuality of the social interactions is what actually reinforces the bond between two individuals (even in humans - for it to be a relationship BOTH individuals need to engage in the relationship-building activity, right? The same applies to horses: you never see one horse scratching another without the other either scratching back or signalling "please stop").
Interestingly, a recent study found that a decrease in affiliative behaviours also led to a decrease in oxytocin (a hormone involved in social bonding) levels in horses, however, there are many factors that could affect this so I'd say we would need many more studies before we can say anything with any degree of certainty. Positive emotions and the behaviours associated with them is a fairly new research area in ethology. Traditionally, it's been more important (and easier) to study negative emotions such as fear or aggression.
I followed a webinar on affiliate behaviours recently, I was fascinated to discover how little this has been studied so far. But I feel that these first observations give us, horse carers, already a few easily applicable thought starter.
I have just discovered this blog, but already looking forward to your next posts! Thanks :-)
Thank you for the article- was such an interesting read. Your statement on horses ways of communicating affection is often punished really hit home. My guy often rubs and scratches his face on me. When he has a fly and I’m near him, he leans into my to get the fly. I’ve had so many people tell me he’s being “rude” or “pushy.” This article helped reaffirm my beliefs it’s him saying he trusts me and finds comfort in me. Thank you!
My horses call to me and run around if I leave the property. They always greet me with enthusiasm and come at a trot or canter from anywhere on the property. The call to me in the house, if I cough or sneeze. If I call to them, they answer. They want my attention. I love that!
I have always wondered why sport horses or horses who are regularly abused by their owners greet them with neighing nevertheless. Even if on their arrival owners give their horses some treats, surely the horse must know that after this little carrot an hour or so of torture will follow?
Good question! From what we know, horses lack the cognitive capacity to draw long-term conclusions, which means immediate consequences are more important than what happens 10 minutes or one hour down the line. So if the appearance of a person is reliably followed by a desired short-term consequence such as food or the opportunity to go outside, they will associate the arrival of a person with something good. With that said, horses are good at learning chains of events and can form general positive or negative associations with people, so if you reliably treat a horse badly every time you interact with it it will likely start to find your presence aversive.
why should they exactly love and why exactly their owners ?
They like me, some of them, sometimes and i like them, most of them, sometimes. I talk with animals, of course there is some kind of exchange, I guess not rational, but definitely emotional.
And I talk with people as well, or write with them, and you know what? You are not writing about horses emotions, you are struggeling with your emotions. Hey, these are emotions, you can't calculate them, you can't measure them, you even can't have them. They are just happening. Or not.
I'm not a horse owner, not a horse expert, not an animal owner at all. But I take pictures of the horses I'm talking with, portraits, very individual and than I realized, that horse pictures from horse owners, horse experts are very different, they show the horse as a good, as a product.
And how do emotions happen, or not ? The first - hm - step is always some attention from one beeing for another and maybe there is attention from the other beeing as well and so a relation, a tension might develop. It's nothing, one side has or does.
Yes indeed, relationships develop over consecutive interactions and can be seen as the product of those interactions. In their 2008 (so a bit dated) review of the horse-human relationship, Hausberger et al. consider a relationship as expectations partners have on future interactions based on past experiences. So there's definitely an emotional component to relationships, and like you say, a mutual exchange or tension between two individuals. If you think about it, horses wouldn't necessarily have the strongest relationships with their owners because many are cared for by someone other than the owner. This is reflected in studies, which have not found any consistent pattern in whether horses appreciate their "owners" more than other people.
Horse world is very confusing now. There is an enormous swing in thought as to how people, and especially horse trainers, relate to horses. A trainer at the Olympics gave a recalcitrant horse a spank on the butt to move it away from the fence, and horse world is outraged. The sort of behavior that wouldn’t give anyone a second thought 10 years ago, is now considered morally reprehensible.
I am curious to see where this will go. Will people being “nicer” to horses improve our relationships with them? Or will horses come to see us as weak-willed pushovers who only exist to cater to their whims?
Yes, there's definitely a change happening in the horse world, and I feel that it became supercharged after the last Olympics - both the incident you're referencing, but also the general low-key number of other unsavoury incidents (Kilkenny's nose bleed, for example, that didn't lead to an immediate elimination and Jet Set being euthanised after an injury on course) that really didn't frame horse sport in a good light. But I don't think this change is a problem. Today we know much more about how horses perceive the things we do to them and their mental and emotional capacities compared to even 10 years ago, so it makes sense that we also need to update our best practices to reflect these new insights. It will definitely change our relationships/interactions with horses, but I believe that will be for the better!
I have read that mutual grooming happens mostly after a stress situation, and between friends. I believe that food sharing is not a part of social bonding. Proximity is. Can you point me to the relevant study? Thank you.
Thank you, glad you found it interesting! Yes, in general in ethology, we use proximity as a way to infer "friendship": the more time two individuals spend close to each other, the more likely they are to like each other. But proximity is a broad term and can emcompass a lot of different behaviours, including mutual grooming, nuzzling, and grazing close to each other or eating from the same hay pile/hay crate (i.e. sharing food) as well. And vice versa: two horses that don't like each other will not spend a lot of time near each other, and will therefore not engage in mutual grooming or sharing food to the same extent, either. But these relationships are quite complex, and sometimes you can see more aggressive encounters between horses that are close friends simply because they spend more time near each other and therefore are more likely to engage in resource conflicts with each other (whereas horses that don't like each other have no reason to interact with each other, regardless of whether that's in a friendly or agonistic way). As for mutual grooming, it can happen after a stressful situation as a sort of comfort behaviour, but I wouldn't say that's the most common context.
Very interesting, thanks! I believe horses can care about their human if they are treated with kindness and caring, and it is mutually beneficial for humans to be kind to each other as well as to all animals. My ‘one in a million’ mare came to me at age three and was part of my life until she was forty. She taught me a lot and enriched my life as we learned to communicate with each other as much as possible in non-verbal but meaningful ways.
That's beautiful. Wow, 37 years together, that's a long time! What an amazing relationship you must have built over the years.
I've seen my relationship with my horse changed when I started to respond to every nosing behaviour he offered. Just offering my hand for him to sniff, playing slowly with his mouth or even just interrupting what I was doing to acknowledge that he was reaching out.
Now, he's communicating sooo much more and is much more chilled at the same time. I even got groomed back a few times when I was scratching an itchy spot. Of course we have to figure out how to make this work in a horse-to-human way. I'm really sad to see that it's been studied how these behaviours disappear in relationship to time spent in training.
That's so nice that your horse is opening up more and becoming more expressive of his emotions around you! It is a challenge of course to strike the right balance between allowing them to communicate in a way that's natural and normal for them, and ensuring we as fragile humans are safe. Often, a good compromise is to redirect their communication and/or teach them alternative ways to communicate (for example "scratching" the air instead of us when we engage in mutual grooming with them). Unfortunately, a lot of traditional horse training encourages punishing their communication instead. I wonder what long-term effects that has on the horse-human bond.
Do you think there is a difference - from the horse experience - between moments when they are scratched by humans and they express their enjoyment (curled lips, funny faces etc) and mutual grooming with the human? Does the reciprocity of the latter "mean" something more?
About my horse, he's mostly surprisingly gentle in these kinds of interactions. When he gets "too horsey" I complain out loud and move away for a few seconds before resuming the interaction. I feel like it's helping him understand that I prefer soft interactions instead of a really good scratch!
I have no well argued opinion on your last point, but I can't see how getting punished for communication attempt may improve a horse's overall happiness. When they're communicating positive feelings and get punished for it, it's a sad thing... But when they're punished for expressing pain, fear or discomfort just because it doesn't fit the human... Then I imagine they'd only be walking on the path of rebellion or learned helplessness
That's a good question whether the reciprocity of the behaviour is important. I would guess so, simply because the mutuality of the social interactions is what actually reinforces the bond between two individuals (even in humans - for it to be a relationship BOTH individuals need to engage in the relationship-building activity, right? The same applies to horses: you never see one horse scratching another without the other either scratching back or signalling "please stop").
Interestingly, a recent study found that a decrease in affiliative behaviours also led to a decrease in oxytocin (a hormone involved in social bonding) levels in horses, however, there are many factors that could affect this so I'd say we would need many more studies before we can say anything with any degree of certainty. Positive emotions and the behaviours associated with them is a fairly new research area in ethology. Traditionally, it's been more important (and easier) to study negative emotions such as fear or aggression.
Thank you for the response!
I followed a webinar on affiliate behaviours recently, I was fascinated to discover how little this has been studied so far. But I feel that these first observations give us, horse carers, already a few easily applicable thought starter.
I have just discovered this blog, but already looking forward to your next posts! Thanks :-)
Glad you like it! :)
Thank you for elaborating!
Of course! Thank you for reading and engaging in the discussion, I really enjoy that!
Thank you for the article- was such an interesting read. Your statement on horses ways of communicating affection is often punished really hit home. My guy often rubs and scratches his face on me. When he has a fly and I’m near him, he leans into my to get the fly. I’ve had so many people tell me he’s being “rude” or “pushy.” This article helped reaffirm my beliefs it’s him saying he trusts me and finds comfort in me. Thank you!
My horses call to me and run around if I leave the property. They always greet me with enthusiasm and come at a trot or canter from anywhere on the property. The call to me in the house, if I cough or sneeze. If I call to them, they answer. They want my attention. I love that!
I have always wondered why sport horses or horses who are regularly abused by their owners greet them with neighing nevertheless. Even if on their arrival owners give their horses some treats, surely the horse must know that after this little carrot an hour or so of torture will follow?
Good question! From what we know, horses lack the cognitive capacity to draw long-term conclusions, which means immediate consequences are more important than what happens 10 minutes or one hour down the line. So if the appearance of a person is reliably followed by a desired short-term consequence such as food or the opportunity to go outside, they will associate the arrival of a person with something good. With that said, horses are good at learning chains of events and can form general positive or negative associations with people, so if you reliably treat a horse badly every time you interact with it it will likely start to find your presence aversive.
I became a member !
https://substack.com/inbox/post/104034282
why should they exactly love and why exactly their owners ?
They like me, some of them, sometimes and i like them, most of them, sometimes. I talk with animals, of course there is some kind of exchange, I guess not rational, but definitely emotional.
And I talk with people as well, or write with them, and you know what? You are not writing about horses emotions, you are struggeling with your emotions. Hey, these are emotions, you can't calculate them, you can't measure them, you even can't have them. They are just happening. Or not.
I'm not a horse owner, not a horse expert, not an animal owner at all. But I take pictures of the horses I'm talking with, portraits, very individual and than I realized, that horse pictures from horse owners, horse experts are very different, they show the horse as a good, as a product.
And how do emotions happen, or not ? The first - hm - step is always some attention from one beeing for another and maybe there is attention from the other beeing as well and so a relation, a tension might develop. It's nothing, one side has or does.
Yes indeed, relationships develop over consecutive interactions and can be seen as the product of those interactions. In their 2008 (so a bit dated) review of the horse-human relationship, Hausberger et al. consider a relationship as expectations partners have on future interactions based on past experiences. So there's definitely an emotional component to relationships, and like you say, a mutual exchange or tension between two individuals. If you think about it, horses wouldn't necessarily have the strongest relationships with their owners because many are cared for by someone other than the owner. This is reflected in studies, which have not found any consistent pattern in whether horses appreciate their "owners" more than other people.
Horse world is very confusing now. There is an enormous swing in thought as to how people, and especially horse trainers, relate to horses. A trainer at the Olympics gave a recalcitrant horse a spank on the butt to move it away from the fence, and horse world is outraged. The sort of behavior that wouldn’t give anyone a second thought 10 years ago, is now considered morally reprehensible.
I am curious to see where this will go. Will people being “nicer” to horses improve our relationships with them? Or will horses come to see us as weak-willed pushovers who only exist to cater to their whims?
Yes, there's definitely a change happening in the horse world, and I feel that it became supercharged after the last Olympics - both the incident you're referencing, but also the general low-key number of other unsavoury incidents (Kilkenny's nose bleed, for example, that didn't lead to an immediate elimination and Jet Set being euthanised after an injury on course) that really didn't frame horse sport in a good light. But I don't think this change is a problem. Today we know much more about how horses perceive the things we do to them and their mental and emotional capacities compared to even 10 years ago, so it makes sense that we also need to update our best practices to reflect these new insights. It will definitely change our relationships/interactions with horses, but I believe that will be for the better!
Very interesting Renate! Well thought-out.
I have read that mutual grooming happens mostly after a stress situation, and between friends. I believe that food sharing is not a part of social bonding. Proximity is. Can you point me to the relevant study? Thank you.
Thank you, glad you found it interesting! Yes, in general in ethology, we use proximity as a way to infer "friendship": the more time two individuals spend close to each other, the more likely they are to like each other. But proximity is a broad term and can emcompass a lot of different behaviours, including mutual grooming, nuzzling, and grazing close to each other or eating from the same hay pile/hay crate (i.e. sharing food) as well. And vice versa: two horses that don't like each other will not spend a lot of time near each other, and will therefore not engage in mutual grooming or sharing food to the same extent, either. But these relationships are quite complex, and sometimes you can see more aggressive encounters between horses that are close friends simply because they spend more time near each other and therefore are more likely to engage in resource conflicts with each other (whereas horses that don't like each other have no reason to interact with each other, regardless of whether that's in a friendly or agonistic way). As for mutual grooming, it can happen after a stressful situation as a sort of comfort behaviour, but I wouldn't say that's the most common context.