Equine behaviourist Rosa Verwijs:
Although we know a lot about the signs that a horse is in distress, they are easy to miss. We need to learn to listen to his subtle signs, before he has to tell us more loudly.
WOULDN’T WE JUST love to be able to have a conversation with our horses? Perhaps to ask them why they behaved in a certain way or simply to know what they are thinking. Sadly, we can’t openly chat to them (unless you have telepathic abilities — see box, p62), so how can we work out what they are trying to tell us?
“One of the horse’s best ways of communicating with us is body language,” says Rosa Verwijs, an equine behaviourist and lecturer at Writtle University College. “However, it’s not always very obvious. For a start, some of the body language they use is very subtle and often missed by humans. Also, we know a lot about whether horses are showing signs of pain, stress, anxiety and anger, but what we don’t know is how they show if they are happy and enjoying what they are doing. It’s the absence of those negative behaviours that we perceive as happiness, but is it really happiness?”
Another complication is that horses by nature are often stoic, not showing their feelings.
“In the wild, horses don’t want to draw attention to themselves in case they attract predators, so they won’t make a lot of noise communicating with one another, and they won’t
“We must stop believing that negative behaviour is the horse being naughty — it’s the horse telling us they aren’t happy”
overtly show if they are injured or poorly as that will also attract predators.”
We can also train horses to look calm and collected even when they are not.
“Take police horses as an example — they are taught to stand stock still and not move when a big rioting crowd comes towards them,” explains Rosa. “They might look like they are holding it together, but when you monitor their heart rate, it is going through the roof. A stressed or anxious horse will often breathe harder and faster, sweat up and pass more frequent droppings.”
Read the signs
When a horse is uncomfortable, they will start to show subtle signs, and in the horse world, these subtle signs are enough to get a reaction from other horses. However, we humans often miss them.
“The horse could be trying to tell us his back hurts, or his saddle is pinching him, or he has a sore neck, so he tries to communicate this through his subtle signs,” says Rosa. “These include tail swishing, shaking his body, a triangular eye, tense muzzle, open mouth and blinking.”
We can also work out how our horses are feeling using the Horse Grimace Scale, which helps to identify subtle changes in the horse’s face (see box, below right). As well as the facial expressions used in this scale, there are ‘calming signals’, which communicate stress while also releasing stress.
“These include looking away, having lateral ears, yawning, stretching down, licking lips or eating,” says Rosa. “When a horse looks away, either with his eyes or whole head and neck, it is a calming cue. He uses a signal like this when he feels pressured and wants the person to calm down because he is no threat to them.”
If we don’t listen to his subtle signals, the horse then starts to communicate a bit more ‘loudly’. “This is when you get bucking, biting, kicking, bolting, rearing and napping,” says Rosa. “The horse doesn’t know how else to communicate with us.”
Mentally shutting down
Sadly, in a lot of cases, we see negative behaviour as the horse being naughty, and instead of working out what is causing it, we punish the behaviour. In the end he gives up and does what we ask because it is better than being punished. He now has to continue working through the discomfort or confusion, and the only way to deal with that is it to shut down.
“If a horse’s general demeanour is sad and miserable or non-responsive, it could mean that they are in a state of shutdown, which can also be termed as learned helplessness,” says Rosa. “They usually present with a lowered head, no interest in their surroundings and it looks like they have given up. We see this a lot in horses who are termed ‘bomb proof’, are really quiet, don’t bat an eye lid, and do whatever you say, but are also dead to the leg and the mouth. They have mentally shut down.”
Having some knowledge of body language is so important to the horse.
“We must stop believing that negative behaviour is the horse being naughty — it’s the horse telling us they aren’t happy,” continues Rosa. “Although it doesn’t always mean that there is pain involved, you should always rule out pain first. Other reasons could be that they are depressed, or don’t quite understand what we are asking.
“Life should be enjoyable for horses too. They don’t have any choice in what we ask them to do so let’s make it enjoyable for them and try and get to the bottom of their problems. We don’t want our horses living in fear and only doing what we ask because they don’t have another choice.”
Calling to you
As well as body language, horses also use vocalisations to communicate.
“Horses often vocalise when they are on their own and are trying to locate other horses,” says Rosa. “They might whicker at each other, such as a mare will to her foal, but they aren’t hugely vocal animals.
“Some horses will whicker at their owner because they are anticipating what they are going to offer them in the way of care and food. It is like a greeting. Squealing is social excitement and a nicker is used to attract other horses. You might also hear a whinny — the horse has learnt what your car sounds like and might whinny to you when they hear your car because they are trying to work out where you are.
“Horses also snort — a short snort can be a sign of fear or excitement, and a nose blow is when they are clearing their nose.”
Horses also use smell much more than we do to identify one another and their surroundings.
“Horses will blow into each other’s noses to get more information about one another,” adds Rosa.