Do horses want to compete?
Taking an honest look at horse sport from the horses' perspective
All opinions expressed here are my own.
A week ago, I was invited on a Swedish morning news program to discuss the scandals plaguing horse sport, and what we can do about them. The two other guests were Sandra Ruuda, chair of the Swedish Equestrian Federation and Björn Svensson, a well-known young horse trainer. We had a really good conversation both on and off screen about the problems facing elite horse sport. I tried to provide the horses’ perspective while listening to the perspectives of those working in the industry.
My takeaway from the discussion is that we all agree that something is fundamentally broken in the current system and that we need to act decisively to safeguard the welfare and well-being of competition horses. What we might disagree on is the nature and extent of the problem. I have consistently argued that the problem is systemic and that it essentially boils down to two things:
The current authority structure values competition results over knowledge.1
The current reward system does not take the horses’ experiences into account when evaluating performance and assigning authority.
Until we address these issues, better regulation and more aggressive enforcement of the rules - while important - will just treat the symptoms rather than the illness. My personal reflection, after speaking to many riders, is that they often find themselves caught between providing a good life for their horses and getting the competition results they need to maintain their livelihoods. This is deeply unfair to all involved. We really need to remake the system so that riders are rewarded, reputationally and financially, for making good choices for their horses. It shouldn’t just be a matter of personal ethics.
For me, there is no doubt that horse sport is for our benefit, not for the horses. They have no interest in medals and honor; their priorities lie elsewhere. Because of this, we have a big responsibility to provide them with good lives if we want to compete them. I said as much in the panel discussion, because in my world this is a thoroughly uncontroversial statement. But in the horse world, which abides by its own logic, the idea that horses may not want to compete has sparked quite some controversy. I have watched the debate around this issue unfold with fascination (and not without a sense of satisfaction - clearly, this is a conversation that is long overdue and I am glad to have been able to capture a moment).
I want to dive a bit deeper into the subject in this post, because I think there is value in approaching it from an ethological perspective.
Why is this so triggering?
In the three decades that I have been involved in the horse world, both personally and professionally, I can’t recall this being a point of contention, ever. It was understood that horses did things because we trained them to do it, not because they had any personal motivation to piaffe, passage, run, jump, or pull a cart better than another horse. There was never any delusion around horses wanting to compete for their own sake; it was a job we made them do, and as a reward, they were given time off after a competition to do the things they wanted to do, like hang out with their friends in the field or hack out in the forest.
This belief that horses want to compete seems to be a new phenomenon, and my best guess is that this is a reaction to the animal welfare/animal rights debate of the past decades. As science deepens our understanding of animal experiences, our ethical commitments to them change. Today, social discourse is questioning many of the things we do to animals, even when they happen in the name of obvious public benefits like producing food and medicine. If using animals for these utilitarian causes can be questioned, what does that mean for sport?
Many industries that use animals for human entertainment have faced regulation and banning: dog fighting is illegal in most countries, greyhound racing remains legal in only seven countries, jump racing has been banned in two Australian states and is facing increased pressure globally, many countries have banned the use of wild animals in circuses, zoos have had to change their practices around which species to keep and under what conditions…
The list is long, and if you think horse sport is not at risk of ending up on that same list, you are mistaken. In Denmark, the Danish Animal Ethics Council, which provides ethical recommendations to the Danish government, has recently announced their recommendation to legislate horse sport by for example banning double bridles and riding behind the vertical. There are similar talks in other countries as well as at the EU level. Regulation is the first step on the way to a full ban, so this is something anyone who wants to keep the competition scene alive should take seriously.
In light of this, it makes sense that many riders have started talking about how horses want to compete. The easiest way to defend the practice of using horses for human entertainment is to claim that they also find it entertaining. It’s a fast-acting ointment to soothe the ethical discomfort many feel in the wake of the recent scandals by off-loading the responsibility on the horses themselves: it’s in their own interest, after all.
But claiming that horses want to compete is self-deception. There is no evidence to suggest that horses have any innate desire to perform behaviours faster or more accurately than other horses, or are motivated to win medals and recognition. In fact, there is no evidence to support that they are particularly motivated to work for us at all. The handful of studies that have looked at horses’ motivations and preferences for training and riding paint a bleak picture: it certainly doesn’t seem like something that is high on their list of priorities.
Do horses want to compete?
Let me rephrase the question: do horses have any personal interest in travelling to an unfamiliar location in order to jump higher, run faster or piaffe with better hind-end engagement than any number of unseen other horses in order for their riders to get a ribbon and some recognition?
The answer to this question is obviously no.
But let’s explore this in more detail. First of all, horses do not have the cognitive ability to understand the concept of human competitions. Why should they? There is no ecological equivalent in their world where they travel far and wide to perform very specific sets of behaviours with considerable physical effort in order to be judged by strangers for symbolic recognition. This type of tomfoolery is unique to H. sapiens.
Some people might object to this by saying that horses compete over resources, or that stallions like to ‘show off’ in front of each other. But what we refer to as a ‘competition over resources’ is actually a life-or-death situation in a very specific context, where one individual perceives that their access to a limited but important primary resource is at stake. It is an aggressive conflict, not a friendly test of strength and skill, and for the winner the outcome is immediate access to the primary resource. This is very different to a competition. Neither a ribbon, a ranking placement or a new Volkswagen are primary resources for a horse. There are no other horses in the competition arena to be perceived as a threat, and aggressive behaviours are not usually part of the performance (I hope).
The same thing applies to stallions ‘showing off’. Ritualised aggression between male horses is a highly context-specific set of behaviours. McDonnells and Havilands (1995) ethogram describes these behaviours in detail2. While some of these behaviours might look similar to those displayed during a dressage test, the function is very different. In a dressage arena, there are no other stallions around to show off to. Additionally, many dressage horses are not stallions or geldings but mares, and in other disciplines like reining or eventing there are no behaviours reminiscent of the agonistic ethogram. The argument that competitions tap into resource guarding or ritualised stallion communication doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
So what about horses racing each other in the field, or loose jumping obstacles that have been left out in the arena? Well, the same problem applies here: the context and function of these behaviours is very different to what we see in a competition setting. Horses engaging in mutual speed play (or, differentially, social facilitation of post-inhibitory rebound due to confinement or a period of mental stress) are not competing with each other for any external reward. Neither are horses engaging in a combination of object and speed play when jumping the occasional obstacle in an arena - the motivation is not to do it better than another horse and win a medal. These are intrinsically motivated, and possibly externally facilitated, behaviours with a very different goal and function.
Human competitions simply have no natural behavioural equivalent in horses. But could they learn to compete the way they learn to do other things? There are, after all, anecdotal examples of horses who continue independently in both racing and show jumping after their riders have fallen off. What is going on here? Is it not possible that these horses have learned to understand the concept of competition and are motivated to continue even without a rider? In order to understand these situations, we need to employ Morgan’s canon.
Morgan’s canon, formulated by the 19th-century ethologist Lloyd Morgan, stipulates that we should never ascribe higher cognitive processes to an animal if a behaviour can be explained with lower cognitive processes3. It is the ethological version of Occam’s razor, and a very useful tool for researchers to think critically about animals’ mental abilities.
Let us examine the hypothesis that horses who continue running or jumping after the rider has fallen off are aware of the fact that they are competing against other horses, and make the conscious decision to keep going. For this to be true, these horses would need to be able to do a number of things that require higher cognitive abilities:
Understand and value the benefits of an abstract outcome that is thoroughly alien to their nature, such as winning a ribbon or a sum of money.
Understand that they are competing against other representatives of their species which are not visible to them (in the case of showjumpers).
Have theory of mind to understand that these other (invisible) horses also want to win and are in competition with them.
I am not saying this is impossible, but I am saying it is highly improbable given what we know about non-human cognition. Additionally, if horses had these advanced cognitive abilities there is no reason why they wouldn’t also understand that once the rider has fallen off they are disqualified, and so stop running or jumping. After all, if we ascribe higher mental abilities to horses we need to do so consistently.
Here is where Morgan’s canon comes in. For us to accept that these horses are indeed guided by higher cognitive processes we need to first check whether there are any lower cognitive processes that would adequatly explain these behaviours. In race horses, it’s most likely a case of social contagion; prey species, where flight is the primary defense strategy against predators, have evolved a strong motivation to run when others are running, because this usually means the others have spotted some kind of danger. Meanwhile a lone horse in an arena is probably repeating the behaviour out of habit: they have learned that once they are in this situation they keep galloping and jumping until informed by the rider to do otherwise. It is possible that there is an element of fear involved as well, which drives the continued running. Given the fact that these behaviours can be adequately explained through other mechanisms, we can’t use them as proof that horses have the cogintive capacity to want to win.
So to sum up, there is no evidence to suggest that horses have any interest in competing with each other for medals and honor. It is not part of their natural behavioural repertoire and their cognitive abilities do not support the level of abstract thinking required for them to learn the concept.
That’s all very well and good for a working hypothesis, but how can we go about testing this empirically?
Horses are not particularly motivated to work for us
One thought experiment I like to use is this one: if we were to let a horse loose in a competition arena, without tack or rider, would they perform the same behaviours? And by behaviours, I don’t mean just ‘would they jump’, I mean would they jump fast? Would they cut corners and choose the shortest path between obstacles? Would they run flat out across country and take all jumps in their stride until they reached the finish line? Would they do an extended trot down the diagonal, striving to make it the most expressive it has ever been? As far as I know no one has tested this, but my money is on ‘no’. I don’t think they would.
While this is a useful little thought experiment, the premise itself is common in animal behaviour research. There are various ways in which things like motivation, preference and choice can be tested experimentally to determine what individual animals would choose in different situations. Sometimes, the animals are provided with two options, sometimes with multiple options, and sometimes there is a ‘cost’ involved for preferred choices to see how much work they are prepared to put in for it. Sometimes the animal has a direct opportunity for a choice, sometimes the choice is made indirectly through an operant conditioning protocol.
There are, as far as I am aware, no studies that have explored horses’ motivation to compete, and only very few that have looked at their motivation to be exercised and ridden. But these nevertheless provide an interesting insight into how horses feel about the things we do to them:
Lee et al. (2011)4 gave horses a preference between exercising on a treadmill and being stabled. Most chose to be stabled. When given the choice between being stabled and released into a paddock, on the other hand, most chose the paddock.
Von Borstel and Keil (2012)5 wanted to see if horses preferred shorter or longer riding bouts, but struggled to get their horses to participate at all because most would just seek out the gate. They conclude that the “results of the pilot study suggest that horses prefer exiting the riding arena rather than being ridden at all”. A more recent study by Burke and Whishaw (2020)6 found a similar pattern where ridden horses, when left to their own devices, would return to stand by the gate.
Górecka-Bruzda et al. (2013)7 compared the motivation to access a food reward by jumping a small obstacle between leisure and sport horses of warmblood type. While they did find that the sport horses were less likely to avoid jumping than the leisure horses, they found that “more than half of the horses that participated in the experimental protocol failed or were unwilling to jump the fence when it was raised to a height of only 50 (sic!) cm”, which included some of the sport horses.
These studies, while few, do provide a rather bleak insight into how horses might feel about being worked. The current evidence supports my hypothesis - most horses do not seem to be particularly motivated to be ridden, let alone compete. Particularly Górecka-Bruzda et al. (2013) casts some serious doubt on the claim that elite showjumpers ‘want’ to jump, given the fact that a majority of horses in their study opted out of jumping a 50 cm obstacle.
All this does not mean horses can’t enjoy some or all parts of a competition, because wanting to compete and enjoying the experience of competing are not the same thing. It certainly would be possible, in my opinion, to create a competition format that horses enjoy, at least to some extent. But given the many welfare issues in horse sport - coercive and restrictive equipment, poor toplines, the prevalence of blue tongues, ulcers, cumultive microtrauma, whip use, rollkur, social isolation, long transport journeys, limited turnout, conflict and pain-related behaviours and even fatalities and injuries - I really don’t think we can, in good conscience, assume that sport horses as a group enjoy their work.
There are a few research projects underway that aim to explore positive emotions and positive welfare indicators in ridden horses. These will provide additional evidence for how horses perceive the things we do with them, particularly in a sport setting. I hope they will prove me wrong - no one would be happier than me if it turns out there are more happy horses out there than I thought! - but I fear they will prove me right.
Must horses want to compete for it to be ethical?
No, at least not in my opinion. I am sure some of my colleagues will disagree with me on this, but I think it can be perfectly fine to do things with horses that they neither want to do or particularly enjoy doing, provided it doesn’t cause them harm and their overall lives are good. Because it’s not strictly true that horse sport is just about human entertainment. It’s an industry on which many people’s livelihoods depend, and I think that could be a valid argument for continuing to use horses in sport.
That’s not to say sport won’t have to change, but so does every industry. Which job looks exactly the same today as it did 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago? Progress is a natural thing. I know the horse world can get caught up in wanting to maintain the status quo, that things need to look exactly the same today as they have forever. But if sport can embrace the possibilities of new research and re-imagine what competitions can look like by for example including the horses’ experiences in the scoring system, something good might come of this difficult time. One thing I have suggested before - that I understand is currently being looked at - is to include pain and conflict behaviours in the dressage score and penalise riders whose horses display validated signs of physical and mental discomfort. That would be an important step forward.
One final thought: given all this, I think it is a mistake for riders to argue that horses want to compete, or even enjoy competing. The current evidence does not support such a claim, and if we set the bar for what a defensible sport is at ‘the horses want to do it’, or even ‘the horses like to do it’, we risk setting it out of our own reach. Right now, the important thing is to make sure sport changes its practices and regulations to protect horses from suffering. That is a realistic goal, and one that I think can be achieved within a year or two if there is a genuine will for change within the industry.
This post is free for anyone to read. It takes time and effort for me to write these posts, so if you liked it or found it interesting, please consider commenting, sharing it with a friend, or sharing it on social media as a thank you! And if you want to get notified when I post next, please consider subscribing. That’s also free!
A timely reminder of this is a recent interview with Olympic medalist Isabell Werth in the Hamburger Abendblatt podcast, where she claims that her horse Wendy’s aggression in the riding arena is due to her new-found “confidence” and “arrogance”. This shows a really quite remarkable lack of understanding of equine behaviour.
McDonnell S.M. and Haviland J.C.S. 1995. Agonistic ethogram of the equid bachelor band. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 43 (3), 147-188.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016815919400550X
Full transparency: I have some issues with the orthodox version of Morgan’s canon. I think it does not adequately reflect our current understanding of the evolutionary foundations of mental traits in animals. I’ve been thinking about what an updated version of it might be, but have no answers for now.
Lee J., Floyd T., Erb H. and Houpt K. 2011. Preference and demand for exercise in stabled horses. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 130 (3-4), 91-100.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159111000025
Von Borstel U.K. and Keil J. 2012. Horses’ behavior and heart rate in a preference test for shorter and longer riding bouts. Journal of Veterinay Behaviour 7 (6), 362-374
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S155878781200038X
Burke C.J. and Whishaw I.Q. 2020. Sniff, look and loop: excursions as the unit of “exploration” in the horse (Equus ferus caballis) when free or under saddle in an equestrian arena. Behavioural Processes 173, 104065
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376635719304814
Górecka-Bruzda A., Jastrzębska E., Muszyńska A., Jędrzejewska E., Jaworski Z., Jezierski T. and Murphy J. 2013. To jump or not to jump? Strategies employed by leisure and sport horses. Journal of Veterinary Behavior 8 (4), 253-260
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1558787812001931
I know this took a lot of time and research, but it’s very well done and I enjoyed reading it thoroughly.
Really well written, Thank You for providing well thought-through posts!