In This Chapter
The way your horse behaves is
closely related to how he feels. Horses can’t talk, so the only way they can
let you know how they’re feeling is through their behavior. When horses are
feeling physically well, they often behave well too. Of course perfect health
doesn’t give you a perfectly well-behaved horse, but you can be sure that if
your horse is feeling sick, he’s going to communicate that to you somehow. And
those feelings may be cloaked in bad behavior.
In this chapter, we take a look
at normal horse behavior and how it manifests itself in a horse’s daily life.
We also investigate horse misbehaviors and how they can communicate the
way a horse is feeling on the inside.
Horse Behavior 101
In order to use behavior
observation to understand how your horse is feeling, you must know the
difference between typical equine behavior, which we discuss in the following sections,
and bad behavior with a message of poor health, which we discuss later in this
chapter.
Seeing the world from a horse’s perspective
If you want to keep your horse
happy and healthy, you have to know what life is like from her perspective —
and you have to understand her basic needs. Not just her needs from a physical
perspective, but from a psychological viewpoint as well.
Remember
Keep the following points in mind when you’re handling your horse, determining how to provide her with daily care and housing. Knowing what’s best for her mind leads you to what’s best for her body.
- Horses are prey. Horses evolved over the millennia as prey animals, dinner on the hoof for all kinds of large predators. Consequently, horses tend to be nervous creatures who are programmed to always be on the lookout for danger. Be patient and understanding with your horse when she acts scared of something that seems silly to you.
- Horses are social creatures. An integral aspect to the horse’s survival as a species has been its evolution as a herd animal. There’s safety in numbers, and horses feel safest and the least stressed when they live and work around members of their own kind. (Watch a group of horses in a field and you see how much they genuinely enjoy each other’s company. Horses in a herd express strong bonds by grooming each other with their teeth, taking turns tail-swishing flies from each other’s faces, and playing silly horses games like tag and “let’s bite each other.”) Those horses who are kept alone are living an unnatural life and simply don’t do as well. Try to stable your horse near at least one other horse so that she has someone to keep her company.
- Horses recognize hierarchy. Part of living in a social structure is recognizing the hierarchy that inevitably forms when creatures of the same species live closely together. Horses follow a precise pecking order, with a leader at the top of the heap who lords over the group. The individual personalities of various herd members, along with factors such as age and physical ability, determine which horses take on which roles within the herd.
Every horse looks for a leader (whether human or equine) to guide her. In the absence of one, she either takes over the role herself or becomes stressed out. Horses do what humans ask them to do because they see humans as their leaders. You have to earn this role — another reason the proper training of young horses is so important. (See Chapter Caring for the Newborn on training baby horses for more on humans as herd leaders. If you’re looking for more help on developing the leadership skills to handle your horse, see Horses For Dummies, 2nd Edition, written by coauthor Audrey with Janice Posnikoff, DVM, and published by Wiley.)
- Horses need stimulation. In the wild, horses spend their days interacting with one another, picking through different kinds of plants to see which ones they want to eat, and traveling through unfamiliar territory. They get bored living alone in stalls with little to eat, no one to visit with, and nothing to do. Feed your horse frequent small meals, and take her out to exercise daily.
Tuning in to equine communication
Horses are social creatures. And
like all social creatures, they have a refined way of communicating with one
another. While humans use verbal language to get messages across, horses use
facial expressions and body language to say what they mean.
Typical facial expressions
Just by looking at your horse’s
face, you should be able to judge whether she’s relaxed, alert, frightened, or
aggressive. After you understand what the different equine expressions mean and
what’s behind them, you’re in a position to know your horse’s state of mind —
and body.
Here’s a list of the most common
equine facial expressions and what they mean (see Figure 3-1 for illustrations
of these expressions):
- Relaxation: Happy, healthy horses are often relaxed, especially when eating, being groomed, or even when being ridden. You know that your horse is relaxed when her ears aren’t pointed too far forward, and in fact are often pointing backward. She has a calm look in her eye, and her head is at medium height.
- Alertness: Healthy horses abound in this expression, which indicates that they’re content and curious about their surroundings. If your horse is alert, her ears are pricked forward, and her eyes are focused on whatever has piqued her interest. She holds her head at medium height.
- Anxiety: Because they’re prey animals by nature, horses are often fearful, waiting and wondering where the next predator will come from. A horse who’s scared points her ears toward her source of fear. She holds her head high and the whites of the eye are showing. You can sometimes actually see the muscles in the neck tense up. In cases of severe pain, horses may show this same expression, although their concern isn’t focused on an outside source — instead, it seems to be generated from within. Horses who are afraid of the vet or of your approach with medication show the same expression.
Warning!
- Aggression: If your horse lays her ears back flat against her head, her nostrils take on an oblong shape, and her teeth are bared, look out. She’s in aggression mode. Some horses are basically ill-tempered and don’t like anyone, or only like certain people and other horses. Others behave with aggression only if they’re in pain or afraid (see the later section “A bad attitude” for more details). Whatever the reason, take heed if your horse shows you an aggressive face. Horses are dangerous when they’re in an aggressive mood. Gauge what’s making the horse aggressive if you can (some horses get this way when they’re eating, for example), and talk to a professional trainer about how to fix the problem. It’s not okay for your horse to behave aggressively toward you.
Remember
Spend time with your horse and get to know her expressions when she’s feeling well. You’ll be better able to gauge when she’s showing you something other than health and well-being.
Figure 3-1: Horses use four
distinct facial expressions to help get their message across.
Common body language
Facial expressions are only one
way that horses get their message across to each other and to their human
companions. Body language is an important tool in communication, and something
every horse relies on.
- Biting: Horses like to bite each other. Sometimes they do it in play; other times they do it out of aggression. Sometimes they bite humans for the same reason, which is, of course, unacceptable.
When horses are in pain or very unhappy, they may bite. The bite may be directed toward another horse or toward a human handler.
- Kicking: When horses kick, they do it to play, to be aggressive, or in self-defense. Kicks can be directed at each other or at humans. Sick horses or horses being handled by a veterinarian are more likely to kick, usually out of self-defense because they don’t understand that humans are trying to help them.
- Pawing: Horses paw the ground with a front hoof when they’re anxious, excited, or bored. They also do it if they’re in pain. Colicky horses sometimes paw at the ground as an expression of their discomfort. (See Chapter Tackling Common Ailments for more about colic.)
- Pacing: Horses who are bored or anxious may pace back and forth across their stall or pasture. This reaction is common when horses are separated from other herd members. It can also be a sign of abdominal pain. If your horse is pawing and showing other signs of colic, call your veterinarian. (See Chapter Staying Prepared with Equine First Aid for other signs of colic.)
- Pushing: Horses use their bodies to send messages to other horses, and one of these maneuvers is pushing. Horses use “shoulder blocks” to shove other horses out of the way. A dominant horse shoves a more subordinate horse away from food, or uses her body to move the horse in a certain direction. Horses who haven’t been properly trained may also use their bodies to push or crowd humans. A sick horse may use this maneuver to keep a veterinarian or other handler away.
- Vocalizing: Horses use a wide assortment of vocalizations to communicate with each other. Some horses also use these vocalizations to communicate with their favorite humans. Whinnying (a high-pitched call similar to a neigh), neighing (the loud call that most people associate with horses), nickering (a low throaty sound like a chuckle), and squealing (a short, shrill sound) are all common equine vocalizations. Depending on the situation, they may be a way of expressing excitement or anxiety. Horses who are sick rarely vocalize.
Taking note of daily equine activity
If you live with your horses, you
have the opportunity to observe their daily routines. If a horse is in a
pasture with grass and other horses, she spends her time in the following ways:
- Eating: Horses graze up to 18 hours a day, if food is available. Horses who are forced to live in small quarters with limited amounts of food spend much of their time just standing around staring off into space. Some of them become neurotic and develop stable vices, such as cribbing and weaving (which we cover later in this chapter). A sick horse often won’t eat at all.
- Sleeping: A horse who feels safe in her environment may lie down and get about 15 minutes of REM sleep per day. She also spends a few hours a day dozing on her feet.
- Interacting: A horse spends a small amount of time grooming another horse, arguing, or playing.
We cover the basics of sleeping
in the following section, and we explain everything you need to know about
feeding your horse in Part II.
Sleeping habits
Yes, horses do sleep standing up.
But not always. To get good REM sleep — a necessity for all mammals — they
usually need to lie down. When horses lie down to sleep, they often recline in
a sternal recumbent position, which means that their legs are tucked underneath
them and their chins are resting on the ground. During this REM period of
sleep, their breathing is shallow and their period of rest is much deeper. (See
Figure 3-2 for a horse in the recumbent position.)
The rest of the horse’s sleep
time is actually spent lightly dozing. Using something called a “stay
apparatus,” the horse can remain on her feet while sleeping. The stay apparatus
is an adaptation of the horse’s musculoskeletal system, and it allows the
animal’s limbs to lock in position. Very little muscle function is required to
remain standing. (Chapter Introducing
the Anatomy of a Horse has full details on a horse’s musculoskeletal
system.)
Figure 3-2: In REM sleep, horses
are in a sternal recumbent position (lying down with legs tucked under). (Bob Langrish)
Regular exercise
Mother Nature built the horse for
nearly constant movement. If you watch horses grazing in a pasture, you see
that with just about every bite of grass, horses take a step. In a short amount
of time, the horses move quite a few feet from where they were originally
nibbling.
For horses to stay healthy,
regular movement is mandatory. Your horse releases energy when she moves around
the pasture, even if it’s slowly. Prevent a horse from moving and you have a
horse with pent-up energy. You also have the potential for leg issues because
joints, tendons, and ligaments aren’t moving as they should. Gut motility is
also dependent on movement, so horses who move more are less prone to colic.
Remember
For the horse who must live in small quarters without the freedom to move around and graze, daily exercise is of vital importance. Confined equines need to be taken out of their stalls and allowed as much time as possible to move around freely. They also need to be ridden. Confined horses are much more likely to become colicky than horses who are allowed ample turnout. The amount of turnout time that a horse needs varies from one individual horse to another. If horses don’t have the opportunity to release energy, they often express their anxiousness through misbehavior or neurotic vices. Flip to Chapter Exercising for Health for more info about different types of equine exercise.
Sick horses are often depressed
and lethargic and may not want to exercise or interact. Some horses become
anxious when they’re in pain, however, and may be more hyper than usual.
Detecting and Fixing Behavior Problems
Horses bring incredible joy to
the people around them, but they can also cause problems. Like young toddlers
who can’t speak, sometimes horses can express themselves only by “acting out.”
The result is that horses can present a whole variety of behavior problems,
each with its own cause.
Finding out what’s causing your
horse’s behavior problem is the first step in fixing it. In many cases, horses
misbehave because they don’t feel well, either mentally or physically.
Understanding why horses misbehave
Imagine having a job that
requires you to work no matter how badly you feel. Even if you have a headache,
a backache, or the flu, you have to go into work and put in time doing physical
work, regardless of your comfort level. At some point, you’d rebel and start
protesting your situation.
Now imagine living in a tiny
apartment all day with your only stimulation and exercise coming once a day, or
less, when you’re allowed to leave the apartment and do something besides look
at four walls. Before too long, you’d develop a bad attitude about life, and
maybe even became neurotic.
Both of these situations reflect
the reality of life for many horses. Because they can’t protest uncomfortable
situations verbally the way humans can, horses take to expressing their
emotions in more demonstrative (and possibly destructive) ways. Your task as an
equine caretaker is to figure out what’s going with your horse’s body or mental
state and rectify it the best you can, on your own, or with a trainer or
veterinarian.
Checking out common misbehaviors
A bad attitude
A sour attitude is the most
common expression of unhappiness in a horse who’s suffering either physically
or mentally. Here’s a list of some things horses typically do to express their
pain or anxiety:
- Aggression: If your horse becomes nasty toward you, whether it’s when you’re feeding him, when you’re tacking him up, when you’re leading him, or when you’re riding him, suspect some kind of physical discomfort. Coauthor Audrey once met a horse who started lunging aggressively at her young owner shortly after being moved to a new training stable. When the horse was removed from the facility and brought somewhere else, the behavior stopped. The new trainer determined that the horse wasn’t being fed enough at the old facility and was literally starving all the time. This made her incredibly aggressive over her food.
Horses can also become aggressive if you tack them up with ill-fitting saddles or ride them when they have a sore back. Horses who are uncomfortable when being ridden produce specific misbehaviors (like the ones we mention here), or may just have an aggressive expression.
- Bucking: Some horses buck because they’re lazy and don’t want to be ridden. Others buck because they have excess energy or just poor training. Still others buck because they’re experiencing pain somewhere in their body, and being ridden hurts. The pain is often in the back, legs, or neck.
- Evading capture: If your horse turns tail and runs when you try to catch him, he may be unhappy about what happens to him after you take him out of his pasture or paddock. He may experience pain when being ridden, and evading capture is his way of protesting. The pain may be in the back, legs, or neck.
- Rearing: In most cases, rearing is a bad habit that develops when a horse is poorly trained or has learned that this behavior can intimidate the rider. But sometimes horses rear because they’re in pain, either due to a poorly fitted saddle or to problems in their mouths due to poor dental care.
- Refusing to move: Horses can refuse to move if they’re in pain — although some do it simply because they’re lazy and poorly trained. Coauthor Audrey once knew a horse whose feet were so sore from a bad trim that he refused to move when a rider got on his back. He knew that he was going to be uncomfortable after the trotting and cantering started, and he wouldn’t budge as a result. A horse who won’t move may feel pain in his legs, hooves, back, neck, or another area of the body.
- Spooking: All horses spook. It’s a fact of life. But some horses spook a lot more than others, at different times of their lives. Spooking may indicate pain in the back. Coauthor Audrey’s horse Milagro, who’s normally a very calm boy, started spooking a lot all of a sudden. She had him seen by a veterinarian, who referred him to an equine physical therapist. The physical therapist said that he had a lot of tension — and probably pain — in his back muscles as a result of a fall he’d had in the round pen. After a series of therapeutic massages, his calm personality returned.
Neurotic Nellies
On the scale of neurosis, horses
can develop the following stable vices. A tendency to form one of these
unpleasant habits is sometimes hereditary or just inherent in a particular
horse’s nature when the animal is under stress:
- Bolting feed: Horses who bolt their feed eat too quickly. They do this when they’re overly hungry, anxious about another horse taking their food away, or simply anxious in general. When a horse bolts his feed, he doesn’t chew it thoroughly. This may result in an esophageal or intestinal blockage.
- Cribbing: A bizarre but all-too-common habit, cribbing seems to be the equine version of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The cribbing horse grabs a fence post or barn door between his teeth, arches his neck, tenses up his neck and facial muscles, retracts his larynx, and sucks air into his stomach. This air sucking creates an endorphin release that becomes addictive. Cribbing is a sign of extreme boredom, and it can also damage the horse’s front teeth.
- Pacing: Pacing horses walk endlessly around in their stalls. Most horses who pace live in box stalls, although some horses in paddocks pace, too, especially if they’re anxious. This can eventually cause damage to the horse’s legs.
- Weaving: When a horse weaves, he stands in one place and shifts weight from one foot to the other in a rhythmic motion, back and forth, his head swaying from side to side. Weaving is a sign of extreme boredom or anxiety. This habit can be hard on the horse’s front legs.
- Wind sucking: This vice is similar to cribbing. The horse takes hold of a horizontal surface between his teeth, flexes his neck, and gulps air in as he emits a grunting sound. Or, he may suck air into his windpipe without taking hold of something with his teeth. Horses who learn to wind suck seem to be very bored and probably don’t have enough roughage to eat throughout the day. A lack of roughage can lead to colic, as well as wind sucking.
Handling a naughty horse
Remember
You must handle horses with bad behaviors carefully. Your first priority is to keep yourself safe. Your horse may seriously injure you, even without meaning to, regardless of what’s causing the behavior. Stay on guard when you’re around a badly behaving horse, and consider getting help from a professional trainer.
If your horse exhibits a bad
attitude on a regular basis — especially if the behavior has suddenly developed
— have him checked out by an equine veterinarian. If he gets a clean bill of
health, he may have a training issue, which requires assistance from a
professional horse trainer. Even better, find a board-certified veterinary
behaviorist to help you with your horse’s problem. You can find one of these
experts by contacting the Animal Behavior Society. (See the appendix for
contact information.)
Horses with neurotic behaviors are a lot tougher to deal with. Their behaviors may not be dangerous to you (except for the fact that it drives you nuts to watch), but they’re harmful to the horse. Your best bet is to provide your horse with the most natural environment possible to help relieve the boredom and frustration that undoubtedly led to the vice in the first place. In the cases of weaving, bolting feed, and pacing, a natural environment can do wonders. Unfortunately, neurotic behaviors such as cribbing and wind sucking are a lot harder to cure after they’ve taken hold. In fact, in most horses, they’re impossible to fix.
by Audrey Pavia with Kate Gentry-Running,DVM,CVA
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