Don't spray deodorant up your horse's nose

A recent disciplinary case shows why misinterpreting horse behaviour is a major welfare concern

A handler has been disciplined for spraying deodorant in and around his horse’s nostrils at a Danish Warmblood Mare Show earlier this month. According to Eurodressage, it was done to make the horse appear more expressive, presumably because that’s what the judges value and reward.

But any “expressiveness” the horse shows in response to a noseful of deodorant are stress-related behaviours due to pain from irritated mucous membranes, discomfort from trigeminal nerve activation, disorientation because they lose important olfactory information, and possibly fear from the hissing sound and water entering the airways.

Most people will agree that this is inherently abusive and unethical, and so did the Danish Warmblood Society which suspended the handler for a month.

But the incident has wider implications. It’s a perfect microcosm of what happens when people misinterpret horse behaviour - and the fact is, we often do.

Below, I have compiled a short, non-exhaustive list of behaviours that are often misunderstood, misinterpreted, and mislabeled, and provide the ethological explanations for them:

1. A horse that doesn’t respond to aids from a new rider is “testing”.

   Horses lack the higher mental abilities, as well as the social motivation, to “test” humans. When horses don’t respond to a new rider’s aids, one of two things is likely happening: 1. The new rider gives the aids in a slightly different way (pressure, timing, direction, location) to the previous rider, and because the horse hasn’t yet generalized the meaning of different aids he doesn’t know what the correct response is. 2. The horse is experiencing conflicting motivations or hightened stress levels which overshadow the aids of the rider (often, a new rider also means a new home, new herd mates, etc).

2. A horse that doesn’t move forward is “lazy” or “stubborn”.

   Laziness and stubbornness are not behaviours, they are labels we put on behaviours that give no information about the actual mechanisms at play. When a horse doesn’t respond to leg aids, for example, it can be because he has never properly learned what they mean, or because he has been desensitized to them through constant nagging, or because he has some physical issue which prevents him from moving forward at the desired speed.

3. A food-aggressive horse is being “dominant”.

   Dominance is one of the most misunderstood concepts in animal behaviour. In ethology, it refers to the relationship between two individuals with regards to a specific resource in a specific context. It’s neither a character trait nor a behaviour, it’s just a description of which individual in a dyad accesses a resource first. Horses have complex dominance relationships within their social groups. More importantly, horses don’t see humans as part of their social group, and therefore dominance relationships don’t apply to horse-human dyads at all. Food aggression is simply resource guarding: the horse is afraid of losing an important resource. A horse that shows food aggression is, or has been, hungry, and is trying to survive.

4. You can’t force a horse to run/jump.

   This is a common and heartbreaking myth, because it shows how much we want to believe that our horses are willing partners that enjoy competiting. Unfortunately, it isn’t true. There are many mechanisms through which we can “force” a horse to exert himself physically and perform inherently dangerous and unnatural behaviours. One, which I wrote about extensively in my last post, is punishment-based training. Another one is habit, where behaviours repeated often enough become automated. A third one is social facilitation, for example a horse running because other horses are running.

5. Mares are “bossy” and “moody”.

   I wrote about this sexist old myth in a previous post. There is no statistical evidence to suggest that mares are less trainable or perform worse than geldings or stallions. Behaviours that are labeled as moodiness or bitchiness are normal behaviours associated with hormonal fluctuations, and sometimes signs of pain and discomfort. Dismissing them as character vices instead of signs of pain has huge welfare implications.

6. A horse that rushes at fences is “forward” and “likes” jumping.

   Horses don’t generally run unless they’re afraid, have post-inhibitory rebound of movement, or are playing. Jumping obstacles with a rider is not part of a horse’s play repertoire. If it were movement rebound, the horse would only do it on certain occasions. It’s therefore most likely a flight behaviour: a horse that rushes at fences is trying to run away from a painful or frightening situation. This can, for example, be fear of the jump itself (if the horse has repeatedly been punished with the whip for refusing or evading) or pain from a sharp bit (this may seem counter-intuitive, because we’d expect the horse to stop if the bit is painful, not run against it, but the flight response is an instinctual rather than deliberate behaviour).

These are examples that I used to belive once myself, or that I encounter frequently in my work. I’m sure there are many more. Can you think of any? Please feel free to share them in the comments and I might do a follow-up post!