All because Elvis left the field...

Tigger, whom we love dearly, spent a lot of time alone until he was 3 years old, and has, to put it mildly, very poor social skills – he just always seems to be saying or doing the wrong thing around other horses! In a stable herd he does OK, make changes to the group and anything could happen.

So, about 6 weeks ago Elvis injured his leg, needing stiches and rest in a small non-muddy paddock for 4 weeks. Paddy and Flynn were nominated to keep Elvis company, taking turns to stay in. Elvis, who has very good social skills, adjusted to this change in routine remarkably well. He didn’t show any great desire to go back out to the big field, and led out nicely in hand every day for some grazing. The only change in his behaviour was due to being fed treats while he was getting his dressing changed every day – he is much more interested in people approaching than previously, and nickers at the sight of hibiscrub and bandages J

So, all was well in the small paddock. Out in the big field… in the absence of Paddy and Elvis, Tigger finds new horses to hang out with. This causes all sorts of problems. Tigger has an ill-founded burst of confidence, and starts challenging horses whom he has always steered clear of in the past. This doesn’t work out too well for him and causes all sorts of trouble… he then becomes very attached to a 3 month old foal in the field, and doesn’t want to come in any more.

Now we have a fairly calm and content Elvis, but a Tigger who is distracted, unsafe to handle and having fights with other horses!

Elvis, Paddy and Flynn are now back in the field, and things have more or less settled down again. The video shows Elvis being turned out for the first time after his ‘paddock rest’. Elvis is a confident pony with, as I mentioned, excellent social skills, and it really shows. He enters the field, turns back for a treat, says ‘hi’ to the horses and ponies he hasn’t seen for nearly a month – all pretty relaxed. Meanwhile Paddy is back in the field also, and the drama is not Elvis rejoining the herd, but Paddy separating Tigger from the foal – and having to put a lot of effort into it – usually Paddy just flicks an ear and Tigger moves. The last clip is day 2, and you can see how much less Paddy has to do to tell Tigger to leave the foal. 

Any point to this? 

Firstly, that good social skills make such a difference to your horses social life - just as they do with people. With horses, there is so much focus on social dominance hierarchy, and how that affects their behaviour, and far too little focus on their social skills and how these may affect their behaviour towards other horses and people - and how badly a lack of social skills may affect them emotionally. 

Secondly, to be aware of how changes to the social group can affect a horse, particularly one like Tigger. He changed very quickly from a rideable, manageable horse into one you could not even safely bring in from the field - all because Elvis left the field. 

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'Aggressive' mare in stable - the fundamental attribution error?

I’m not a psychologist, so forgive my massive simplification, but I came across a term a while ago that grabbed my interest – the ‘fundamental attribution error’. Basically, this means that when we see someone doing something, for example running a red traffic light, we tend to think it relates to their personality ('he's an idiot') rather than the situation the person might be in. And the ‘error’ bit would give a clue that we are often wrong in attributing their actions mainly to their personality.

Why did it interest me? Because it is so common in how we view horses. I hear often about horses who are grumpy, moody, vicious and in other ways of bad character, when often they are simply responding to a situation they can’t cope with.

Recently, I visited a client who was concerned about her young horse. Lets call the horse Milly. Milly was lunging over the stable door at people, with her mouth open, ears pinned. Going into the stable with her was a risky business, she would unpredictably lunge at you, or turn her hind quarters and threaten to kick. Recently she’d become much worse when you approached with a head collar.

So, this is a classic case where Milly might be described as being aggressive, grumpy, having a bad attitude and so on. Actually, Milly is afraid of particular situations and events, and having no option to flee in her stable is resorting to defensive threats.

If a horse like Milly is approached with the attitude that she is being, in some way 'bad', or needs to learn manners, the common approach will be to punish her behaviour - making the situation worse. If we realise she is simply showing her fear of a specific situation, we can do something a bit more constructive. 

So, what do we do? Retraining Milly to be truly comfortable with people in her stable may take a while. The most immediate problem then, for Milly’s welfare and the safety of her handlers, is to be able to put a head collar on her without scaring her. Then she can be taken out of the stable, turned out into her field, her owner can muck out safely and so on, while she is retrained.

This client very kindly did a little bit of filming while I was there, and even more kindly has allowed me to put the video up on youtube. Of course, being there to work with the horse and owner and not to make a movie, it's just a few wee clips and the progress by the end of the session wasn't filmed - we were both much too absorbed by Milly! 

We worked with Milly for a little over an hour, with several long breaks and lots of short ones. In the initial part of the film, she is clearly fearful, and trying to retreat as far as her stable will allow. The second part of the film is taken early on in the ‘retraining’. She is not looking totally relaxed, but is investigating me and the head collar, and I am giving her a very tiny food reward each time she progresses a little in her explorations of the head collar. When I move the head collar towards her, she still backs off, but if I am patient and let her choose to come forward, she is making good progress.

'Milly' before and during first training session

By the end of the session, we had put the head collar on Milly a couple of times, with her full cooperation. She allowed both of us to scratch her withers, and began grooming us back. She certainly did not look like a mare of ‘bad character’, she was more than eager to be friendly to people when she didn’t feel threatened by them.

The outlook for Milly is good – she has a very caring owner, who recognised that this was a problem her horse needed help with, not a bad horse who needed put in her place. 

Can horses get stressed?

No, I wouldn't seriously ask that question, would have hoped the answer was obvious.

Anyway, today I noticed that there was an article about stress in horses in the new British Horse magazine.
Good to see.

The article opened by reporting on a survey, which found that 90% of horse owners questioned believe that horses suffer signs of stress or anxiety. 44% have a horse that displays signs of stress, and 84% wish to reduce these signs. The stats look quite nice like this, but looked at another way...

... 1 in 10 horse owners don't believe horses can suffer signs of stress or anxiety

More than half the horses out there have owners who believe they don't display signs of stress

And 1 in 6 owners have no wish to reduce stress signs

Long way to go apparently!

Problem solving ponies

Had an interesting situation yesterday. Some big bales of straw had been delivered to the yard, leaving just a narrow pathway between bales for the horses to go through to get out to their field. The gap was narrow enough that the bigger horses would rub against the bales on both sides as they went.

So, I took the horses out one by one, on very long lead ropes, to see what they would make of it. Benson, Flynn and Paddy viewed it with mild suspicion but walked through of their own accord. Tigger looked at it, snorted, investigated, backed off, and after about 5 minutes and some encouragement leapt through. All pretty normal so far. All of them coped, without getting overly anxious and put up with something a bit challenging to get to the field.

Elvis - approaches, stands still and looks at it. No snorting, no movement, just looking. After a minute or two, he aims at the single bale, approaches at a brisk walk, puts his shoulder into it and rolls it aside. Then walks calmly through the big gap he's opened up. Deeply impressed - one truly problem solving pony!

Equine Cushing's disease and behaviour

About 6 weeks ago, I asked my vet to test Benson for Equine Cushing's disease. He is 24 years old, there weren't strong indications but he was sweating a little round the shoulders when he shouldn't have been, and some coat loss throughout the summer. He came back with a high reading, and we started him on medication.

I'm awaiting blood test results, but the behavioural changes so far are interesting:

• He is interacting much more with the other horses - mutual grooming with his old pal Paddy, and even playing nippy games, which I haven't seen him do in years
• He is more alert and responsive, and keen to interact with people. A few people over the summer had called him 'bargy' - he simply wasn't paying much attention to his environment and was slow to respond. This included not noticing or reacting to people around him. His supposedly 'dominant' behaviour, 'not respecting' people etc. has been miraculously improved by medication...
• He is vocalising more, whinnying to the other horses
• He is muddy! He is rolling more
• Not behavioural, but he's put on weight and muscle tone is looking better. 

The downward progression with Benson was very, very gradual. Improvement has been very quick. Apart from the obvious point - test your horse for Cushings if you see any small signs, this is another case where behaviour could easily be attributed to the horse having a 'bad attitude' in one way or another, when they are actually unwell. 

Friendship between horses

Paddy may be hitting his fourth decade, but he is still bright and sociable, and very much a ladies man.Over the last couple of months, he's formed a strong attachment with a very elegant chestnut mare he shares his field with, along with about a dozen other horses.

Today was one of the saddest sights I've seen in a while. The chestnut mare was moved to another field while Paddy was away from the field having his breakfast with my other horses. On turning them all out, the others were calm and behaving as usual. Paddy trotted then cantered up the field, calling and calling for the mare. He checked the whole (very large field), then just stood there whinnying - much more deeply and loudly than usual.

No blame to anyone else - Paddy's welfare is my responsibility, and none of us can find a perfect environment for our horses, we just do the best we can. Sharing a field with lots of other horses has been so good for Paddy - the downside is that horses will come and go, for all sorts of reasons. 

It really made me think about how we move horses, suddenly breaking bonds and having such a big impact on them - and often with little thought of how this feels from their point of view. We are rightly concerned and careful about introducing new horses, but may give little thought to taking horses away from a group, which is equally significant from the horses point of view. Planning ahead for group stability can make such a difference to your horse and is often undervalued or not considered at all. 

Hair by Benson (mutual grooming)

Benson giving my hair that special extra today - but amazing how gentle he is, especially when he touches my face. Of course you need to be careful about rubbing noses with a horse, but such a shame when bonding behaviours like this are discouraged or misread as the horse being pushy, aggressive etc.