Expert Q & A

Do You Know What That Horse Thinks?

By Adam Marcus

Getting inside a horse’s mind is the key to better veterinary care, said Antonia J.Z. Henderson, PhD, a research and equine psychologist in Fort Langley, B.C., Canada. Modern Equine Vet spoke with Dr. Henderson about the state of science in equine cognition and how veterinarians can apply the latest principles in their practice.

MEV: How can equine veterinarians incorporate positive reinforcement techniques into their routine medical procedures to improve compliance and reduce stress for their patients?

Dr. Henderson: Most veterinarian procedures could run more smoothly and safely if all equine clients had some positive reinforcement (PR) training—where responses that are desired, such as remaining calm, standing still or placing a foot on a block for a radiograph, are immediately rewarded, making them more likely to occur in the future. However, these responses need to be trained over time through shaping—rewarding closer and closer approximations of the target behavior—such as standing still for 1 second, then 2 seconds, then 3, and so on—and thus, don’t always lend themselves to practitioner visits, which are (hopefully) infrequent and often under time constraints.

What equine veterinarians can do is demonstrate how calm behavior might be trained with PR and then encourage their clients to practice in between visits. There is a wealth of information on equine PR training. Shawna Karrasch is an engaging and accessible resource—with podcasts, videos, articles and courses—and her knowledge is grounded in sound psychological science.

Horses, like humans and dogs, and even goldfish, also learn by association, or classical conditioning, so it behooves equine practitioners to make sure that their arrival is associated with good things. Play Santa Claus by plying on the treats from arrival and throughout procedures, and equine clients will soon learn that veterinarians rock. Owners are often concerned that horses become nippy and aggressive when fed treats by hand, but this is only true if they are rewarded for doing so. Practitioners can ensure the first lesson is that treats only happen when the horse moves their head away from—even if that requires a small push rather than toward Santa.

MEV: What are the most common misconceptions horse owners have about equine cognition, and how can veterinarians help educate them for better welfare and training outcomes?

Dr. Henderson: The misconceptions that work out badly for horses is our tendency to either underestimate or overestimate their cognitive abilities.

We underestimate them when we measure our horse’s cognitive intelligence by how closely it matches our own. Horses, as a prey species, have developed cognitive abilities crucial to their survival that are much less relevant to us, and often dismissed as stupidity (e.g., neophobia—or fear of new spaces and situations, a hair-trigger flight response and greater sensitivity to olfactory and auditory cues well outside of our range. It turns out that horses often do know something we don’t know!)

We overestimate their cognitive abilities when we believe that our horses know what we want, should want the same things and are being spiteful when they don’t comply. We fail to consider that horses do not comply for numerous and varied physiological and psychological reasons that have nothing to do with malevolence; they are physically or psychologically incapable of performing the behavior, they are in pain, depressed or lonely, they don’t understand the question because the rider’s aids are conflicting and inconsistent, they are distracted by other stressors in the environment, and so on. It is on our watch to see the world from a horse’s perspective, to dig deeper, and to try to figure out what they are trying to tell us.

MEV: How does environmental enrichment affect a horse’s cognitive abilities and overall welfare, and what practical steps can owners take to enhance their horse’s living conditions? For example, recent studies seem to show that horses given even 1 or 2 hours a day to socialize are better behaved and even appear to be more “optimistic.”

Dr. Henderson: The ubiquitous industry norm of individual housing, with no tactile contact with conspecifics, has an enormous deleterious impact on equine welfare, which then necessarily compromises psychological state, cognition, learning ability, performance and almost every other aspect of the horse-to-human interface. Horses living in an enriched environment (which is not “enriched” but merely natural, i.e., allowing horses to live with other horses with free access to movement and forage) have been found to be calmer, less fearful, less reactive to novel objects, less touchy, are more responsive and interactive with humans, are more optimistic, have greater curiosity and are more adaptable, accurate and speedier in learning tasks than horses living in traditional stabling.

Also, the purported advantages of individual housing, that it keeps horses safe and less “herd-bound” (as if horses are not supposed to be bound to their herd), are not born out in the research. Contrary to popular wisdom, individually housed horses sustain more injuries in their lower limbs, show higher incidence of lameness and sustain greater incidents of tendon, joint and health problems than do group-housed horses. Furthermore, group-housed horses are less likely to suffer separation anxiety when temporarily removed from their friends and are better able to handle the short-term confinement and isolation of horse shows.

Although there is ample research indicating the wealth of positive benefits and virtually no downside to herd living (even for high-performance top breeding stallions! Yes, I said stallions!), if owners, trainers and managers are still reluctant to turn horses out together, horses will still benefit from the opportunity for tactile contact between compatible neighbors. For example, where traditional stalls were modified to create “social stalls’ to enabling stallions (yes, stallions) to interact and groom one another, Zollinger and colleagues (2023) found that horses sustained only minor and insignificant injuries and reaped enormous welfare benefits.

Also, the practice of feeding forage that is high in quality and necessarily low in quantity leaves horses vulnerable to EGUS [equine gastric ulcer syndrome]and exacerbates their compromised isolated life. The claim that horses will become obese if fed ad libitum has been based more on traditional horse “wisdom” than science. A study of 56 high-performance horses in training still maintained an optimal body condition score when fed a free forage diet. For horses that are less active, there are many high-fiber, low-sugar forages that require longer chewing time and are less likely to contribute to obesity. Horses who have lived with rationed forage will initially consume a large quantity of hay when given the opportunity. However, most horses will self-regulate once they learn that food is always available, particularly if the forage is stalkier and less delicious.

We need to foster a sea change in how we house and manage horses—sport horses in particular—as the ubiquitous industry norm of individual housing with limited foraging and movement opportunities is a system that works very well for humans and not at all for horses. Romane Phelipon et al. (2024) demonstrated that elite equine high-performance athletes, when provided with free access to forage, social interaction with conspecifics and turn-out time (coined by Lauren Fraser as the three Fs of Friends, Forage and Freedom), can live enhanced, enriched, safe and healthy lives, still win Olympic medals, and score higher on all welfare indicators when compared with singly housed sport horses. A plethora of research supports the notion that solitary confinement is as egregious for horses as it is for people, and we have recently come to believe that for people it is a punishment too appalling to be borne. The good news is that relatively modest environmental and management changes and letting go of some traditional beliefs about what keeps horses safe and happy can make a monumental difference to horses’ physiological and psychological well-being.

MEV: Are there specific handling techniques or interventions veterinarians can use to help horses with past traumatic experiences overcome learned helplessness or fear behaviors?

Dr. Henderson: Unlike most of the behaviors we train horses to perform that require numerous repetitions to learn, fear responses can be learned in a single trial, and once learned can never be eliminated. Fear responses can emerge randomly and unpredictably in what learning theorists call spontaneous recovery. For this reason, it is wise to avoid eliciting fear responses at all costs; veterinarians might sometimes need to abandon a procedure before fear responses escalate until a later visit where more homework with the owner can ensure a seamless intervention.

Bringing owners on board to work with horses in between visits is critical to rewriting the horse’s story about scary events. Fear responses can be suppressed by building new neural networks through a new reinforcement history. Take for example the horse who is dangerously needle shy. This may have arisen from a trauma or more probably because the horse learned that evasive behaviors got rid of the syringe and more dramatic evasions got rid of it even more efficiently. Owners could work with their horse with a clicker (to mark exactly the behavior they want—in this case calmness) to first simply approach the horse and touch the shoulder; when the horse is non-reactive, remove the hand, click and reward. Next, the owner could take a slight pinch of skin and when the horse is relaxed, release, click and reward. In each step the owner builds the criteria (a slightly harder pinch, a longer pinch, a pinch and touch with a needleless syringe, pressure with the syringe, poking with the syringe, and so on) and always clicking and immediately rewarding when the horse is relaxed. If things look like they might go south, simply back up the sequence to where the horse was calm and build again. The horse is rewarded through positive reinforcement (with the click and reward) and through negative reinforcement (or pressure and release, because the horse learns that they can make the unpleasant syringe go away by standing quietly). When the vet comes, they can go through the same sequence and safely inject the horse because the horse has learned that the discomfort of an injection is short lived and worth the return on investment of a tasty treat jackpot. Equine practitioner Gemma Pearson has created several short videos entitled “Don’t break your vet” that illustrate how owners and veterinarians can turn dangerous behaviors around. Miracles can happen in less than 6 minutes with good timing and good treats.

Learned helplessness occurs when animals, including us, face unpredictable and uncontrollable stressors, and learn that no behavior or strategy can impact their dire consequences; they disengage and simply give up trying. Since horses are evolutionarily hard-wired to be stoic (it doesn’t pay to show your infirmities when you could be the next predator’s dinner) their suffering is often not obvious even to conscientious owners. Learned helplessness can occur through bad management (e.g., horses living in social isolation finally withdraw and disengage from humans, other horses, and their surrounding environment), bad training (e.g. where a rider imposes conflicting aids such that no response alleviates pressure) or both. Since the passive attitude and flat affect characteristic of learned helplessness was often what is desirable in many equine disciplines (think bomb-proof school horse, the “quiet” show hunter or the peanut-rolling Western pleasure horse) this state may not only be overlooked but actively pursued. Learned helplessness can be ameliorated (although not always and not immediately) when conditions improve and a horse rediscovers that events are predictable and their behavioral choices offer them a modicum of control over outcomes.

MEV: What are the ethical implications of modern training and management practices considering what we now understand about equine cognition and emotional states?

Dr. Henderson: Much of the focus questioning equestrian sport’s social license to operate has zeroed in on the competition arena (bits, noseband pressures, head positions, whip use, etc.) because this is what the public sees. Certainly, enormous changes need to occur here to ensure that the horse always comes first. The horse, unlike other athletes on the podium, is not a voluntary participant. But we need to go further. We need to bring learning science into horse training. Although there are great coaches who train horses fairly, effectively and compassionately without a shred of learning science knowledge, bringing learning theory fundamentals into requirements for all trainer certifications would go a long way towards improving equine welfare. Without learning science, we are much more likely to view horses’ both undesirable and desirable behaviors as something intrinsic to the horse’s personality, character and willingness (or lack thereof) to please their owner and so can feel justified in punishing them when they do not comply. With learning science, we understand that horses, like people, do what works and cease doing what doesn’t work. Although learning theorists make the science a great deal more complicated, the basic message of operant conditioning really is that simple.

Equally critically, we need to address how we house and manage sport horses. Our practices have become so normalized and our horses’ anguish so invisible that owners and industry professionals often do not see, or cannot allow themselves to see, their horses’ suffering. In one study, caretakers reported that 5% of the horses in their care exhibited stereotypies such as cribbing, weaving, stall-walking, etc., but on-site researchers recorded 37% of horses with stereotypical behavior.

Not only do our current practices have a negative impact on a horse’s cognitive abilities and their training progress but it deprives them of what researchers have termed an ethological need. (i.e., the animal is highly motivated to perform the behavior, the behavior is self-rewarding, preventing the behavior results in a rebound—performed for longer duration and more intensely after prevention, and suppressing the behavior results in chronic stress). Researchers have identified that social contact and mutual grooming, play, free movement and free access to roughage constitute fundamental basic or ethological needs in horses; when not met, it results in severe negative welfare consequences.

Training and management practices have come to be not because they are the best practices but because they are the most common practices. We have a wealth of equine and equitation science informing us of what horses need to not only survive but to thrive. Equine veterinarians, who have the respect of their clients and are thus well positioned to nudge the welfare needle, can be a valuable bridge to bringing this science back to the stable. MeV

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Looking for more information about this topic, check out these studies:

Equine Welfare in Clinical Practice: How and why to incorporate equine behavior and welfare assessments into clinical practice (2024). W. Koch (Ed.) ( Elsevier).

McLean, A. (2022). Can a stabled horse be a truly happy horse. World Horse Welfare Education Webinar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9b6KF4_Z3c

Mclean AN, McGreevy PD. Horse-training techniques that may defy the principles of learning theory and compromise welfare. J Vet Behav: Clinical Applications and Research. 2010;5(4):187-195.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1558787810000626?via%3Dihub

O’Connell, E., Dyson, S., McLean, A., & McGreevy, P. (2025). No more evasions: Redefining conflict behaviour in human-horse interactions. Animals. 2025;15(3):399. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani15030399

Phelipon R, Hennes N, Ruet A, et al. Forage, freedom of movement, and social interactions remain essential fundamentals for the welfare of high-level sport horses. Front Vet Sci. 2024;11:1504116.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-science/articles/10.3389/fvets.2024.1504116/full

Popescu S, Lazar EA, Borda C, et al. Welfare quality of breeding horses under different housing conditions. Animals. 2019;3(3):81. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/9/3/81

Sanmartín Sánchez L, Blanco-Penedo I, Perea Muñoz JM. Welfare assessment at a Spanish army equine breeding centre. Italian J Anim Sci. 2020;19(1), 137–146. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1828051X.2019.1706433

Zollinger, A., Wyss, C., Bardou, D., & Bachmann, I. (2023). Social box: A new housing system increases social interactions among stallions. Animals. 2023;13:8. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/13/8/1408