Horse riding can be done in many different disciplines and with a variety of different types of tack. English is one main type of riding style. Under English riding one can perform in dressage, show jumping, eventing, hunter and more along with subcategories in each to define the skill level. The saddle used is lighter and smaller than western saddle and hornless with no fenders but the bridle and martingales are designed to try to keep the horse maintained and under better control physically and for precise movement along with the riders aids; therefore a tight reign is used with constant contact which keeps the horses head held in a more fixed position. In the English world, dressage in particular, is a very high skilled and precise discipline. You can barely see the signals the rider gives the horse in this type of riding. Some practices have regulations that require the horse’s nasal plane to be at or in front of the vertical due to the discomfort the horse can be put in if its behind the vertical. In other practices the horses head and neck are usually arched with the horses nose tipped into its chest, also called rollkur or the modern riding style, where the muscles are extended beyond the horses normal range of motion with the nasal plane behind the vertical while its performing. The position that the head and neck are put in can create stress, discomfort, and anxiety in the horse it can lead to misbehavior and raised emotional levels. This can also cause the horses to show stereotypical behavior in being more fearful, acting out or abnormally during warm ups or when subjected to new things, and can cause them to be much more excitable. Different types of work or practices in riding can influence the behavior of a horse in a negative way. Through the experiments found in the research of three different scientific articles I will prove this argument.
During some exercises and performances in dressage, the flexion and overall position that the head and neck are put into can sometimes be unnatural and can ultimately cause behavioral reactions in the horses. Kienapfel, Kathrin, Yvonne Link, and Uta König v. Borstel did research on this. They did a good job by not creating any bias since they made sure that the riders used in the experiment had no idea about the studies, because the researchers wanted true non-biased results. The authors also did not interfere in any way with the horses or riders during the experiments. From one dressage competition they did a pilot study on 29 horses that were not in the main study. They used two observers that were both biology students and both were good with behavioral observations except one had horse knowledge but the other did not. I believe this could have flawed the results though since some horse behavior is very hard to see and sometimes takes years to notice the slight changes in behavior even with an experienced horse person. At the same time it could have been good. I think they should have had another opportunity to retake the test with two observers that had horse knowledge too just in case. The observations were made during warm-ups. Also the two categories were for the position of the head and neck, also can be called HNP, where the nasal plane was either in front of the vertical or behind the vertical. They used the same classifications of HNP as in the main study while observing 5 different horses in a dressage competition that was not related to the main experiment. Inter- observer reliability for the absolute number of conflict behavior and the independent conflict behaviors like unusual oral behavior, ears fixed backwards, swishing of the tail, and gait change was computed based on diverging parts of a analysis of a general linear mixed model with the horse being a random factor and the observer the fixed one.
The main study was conducted at eleven national, international and local dressage contests. The dressage horses (n=171) were scrutinized here in the overall duration of 180 rides. Nine of the horses were scrutinized twice at two different rides. The horses used differed in age, breed, and sex but the majority were warmbloods. I think they should have done tests with each breed, age, and sex differently to get true results since mares and geldings act different just like in people the females tend to act more emotionally and the different ages of the horse affect their behaviors and also the different breeds can have an effect too, some breeds tend to be more excitable than others in general. The levels at which the classes took part in were different types varying at levels A (novice), L (elementary), M (medium), and S (advanced) classes. The levels were put together into two categories, higher (M and S) and lower (A and L) performance levels. The rides that were picked for the study was during warm ups based on the horses HNP and having 30 horses apiece per HNP class. The horses were classified into one of the three HNPs: Nasal plane mainly in front of the vertical (IV), nasal plane behind the vertical up to 10 degrees (AV), and nasal plane behind the vertical by more than 10 degrees (BV). I liked how they classified them in these groups.
The observations were carried out at the time of riding when the horses were not standing relaxed and the reins were held short. The horses also had to be in their assigned HNP for 3-minute intervals at a minimum of 95% of that time. The horses were scrutinized for 3 minutes in warm up and then for the initial 3 minutes of the exam. During the second part of this experiment they scan sampled every 15 minutes (which equaled 105 times) for an overall 26.25 hours for three dressage events during eight days. All the horses (N=355) that were there in the warm up were put into classes depending on their HNP. The scans were only done at the warm up prior to the tests at the levels S, M, and L.
Their pilot study results showed that of the 29 horses ridden, the observers put 58.6% with the nasal plane behind the vertical and 43.4% with the HNP in front of the vertical. In their observations the ones ridden with the HNP behind the vertical showed 23.3 behavioral acts and the horses rode with the HNP in front of the vertical showed 10.6, both per the 3 minutes in warm up. The scoring, or marks, in the conflict behaviors of independent horses showed only the rate of them going against the reins to affect the marks and the horses that bucked made lower scores than the ones that didn’t. The gross amount of conflict behavior was affected by the HNP significantly and also by the level but not by the setting (test of warm up). The horses rode IV had notably fewer conflict behaviors versus the ones in AV or BV. The ones in the upper levels showed notably more conflict behaviors (12.5) in comparison with the ones in the lower levels (9.3). Although HNP and level interaction was not noteworthy, showing that the result of the individual HNPs was alike at the higher and lower levels. 11.9% of the 355 horses scrutinized during the warm up were ridden with their nasal planes in front of the vertical. The ones ridden with HNP at the vertical was 18.7% and the ones ridden behind the vertical were 69.4%.
It didn’t matter what level competition because the horses all showed more conflicts in behavior the more their head was retained behind the vertical. Studies showed that a firmly flexed HNP is uncomfortable for horses regardless of the riders experience. Also in the studies they found that tail swishing (a sign linked to fear or pain or response to conflict when there are no flies present) can be caused by more aggressive riding and/or the use of spurs or whips and indicates that most of theses riders keep the horses HNP behind the vertical. Therefore it was found that when the horses HNP is held behind the vertical that these horses are typically ridden more aggressively than the other HNP positions. Their studies also found that HNP that is very round and low creates more anxiety or arousal and that tail swishing happened more often during the hyperflexion. The shorter the reins the higher the rein tension also. When the rein tension is tight its usually a stop signal but since the riders use whips or spurs that are usually used as a go forward signal added with this rein tension its likely to cause a lot of the conflicts in the horse. At the levels L and A there was only 23.3% ridden in the same way in competition as in warm up. in levels S and M there was 6.7% of riders showed the horses in competition with the horses head in BV. The overall results showed that horses are typically ridden in this practice with HNP behind the vertical more often at warm up that the competition. They also showed conflict behavior more often with HNP behind the vertical preferably than in front or at the vertical. Since this was seen despite the level of competition, its proposed that the actual flexing of the posture itself rather than the skill of the rider or the horses level of training is the principal part causing the conflict behavior. They could have bettered this study by adding an additional section using horses that had previously been ridden in rollkur on a regular basis. I believe this would help shed more light to if it would still upset them the same.
Rollkur is typically used in dressage as a way of training even though it may cause pain or irritation and could impact the horses well being. This is shown to be true in a research article by Borstel, U. U. V. et al.`As mentioned previously, rollkur involves the horses neck being flexed beyond its natural movement. Their main focus was to measure the behavior of horses and their heart rates to show the differences in fear response, stress, and discomfort when ridden in the rollkur riding style acquired by tension on the reins compared to normal flexion of the poll and if they favored one or the other riding style when offered the option.
They did a pretty good job in this study and had a good methods and materials section. Out of the 15 horses they used, 4 were mares and 11 were geldings. Their ages ranged from 6 to 23 years old and they were all of a warmblood breed. I believe if they would have done this study twice using more horses, in the second time using different breeds not including warmbloods they could have had a better distribution and therefore better evidence of their findings. They rode each horse 30 times throughout a Y-maze unsystematically rotating between sides. They first rode through one section of the Y and followed by a shortened round rode in rollkur. Then they rode through the other section of the Y followed by a shortened ride with the horses’ nose being in front of or at the vertical. Right after this stage they were then repetitively rode into the maze but the riders let the horses choose which section of the maze they wanted to go into. During the rollkur part they seemed to move slower and had more obvious behavioral signs showing that they were uncomfortable like acting out and trying to buck, swishing their tails a lot, and tossing their heads. Also 14 out of the 15 horses rode significantly chose the section of the maze that had the ride where the horses’ nose was at or in front of the vertical instead of the section that had the part ridden in rollkur. I think there may have been a setback in this study because it was indicated that the riders knew about the study and every aspect of it so it wasn’t biased, they knew exactly what was going on and what they would do throughout the whole study. They also used 8 of these horses in 2 fear tests that followed a short ride in rollkur and a ride in where the horses’ nose was at or in front of the vertical. During rollkur the horses showed to react more strongly to the stimulus and took a much longer time to even just approach it. This showed that using rollkur on horses can make the horse so uncomfortable that is also could make them more dangerous to ride since they become more fearful. The horses also showed to be very frustrated and showed conflict, stress and discomfort when ridden in rollkur. They were very hesitant to go in the rollkur section of the maze. Their heart rates reflected. This experiment showed that Horses, when given the choice, would choose regular poll flexion riding over rollkur and that ridding in rollkur is very uncomfortable and leads to stress and emotional behavior problems during or after being ridden in the rollkur position.
In the experiment done by Hausberger, Martine et al., they tested to see if the horses’ personality was affected by the type of work they did. They used 119 horses that had only their type of work different between them besides their ages ranging from 4 to 20. They were all geldings, had the same food and housing, and were one of two different breeds, either Angloarabs or French Saddlebreds. Their type of work categorized them. 11 were in eventing, 29 in dressage, 18 in advanced riding school, 5 in voltige, and 15 in high school. The horses’ ages didn’t differ in each of the groups. This was beneficial to their findings I believe. Even though they didn’t find a relationship in behavior and age they stated that one year in the horses work was enough to affect personality. I would agree but I also think it would have been beneficial to do each age group in each work group also to get better results, just in case. They used three tests. One was called the arena test were they left the horses alone in the arena they had been ridden and their behavior was recorded every 10 seconds for a total of 10 minutes. The second test was called the novel object test. In this test they put an object in the arena and let the horse go in there for 5 minutes. They recorded its movement, behavior, and how it looked around and approached things. This was to check for nervousness. The third test was called the bridge test were the horse was walked up to and over an obstacle that was made with a foam mattress. If they refused to cross it meant they were more fearful and spooky. They only did the test one time per horse. They used the same person for each horse, and this person did not know the horses and did not interact with the horses besides lightly pulling on the rope to see if they would walk over the object. This was good for this experiment I believe because it didn’t let the horse rely on the person it knew or was acquainted to. If a horse has grown a bond with someone they are more likely to do what that person wants them to and this could have affected the results if they hadn’t done it the way they did. Most of the horses didn’t walk on the bridge but went to one side of it instead. When this happened they were taken back to the start and tried again. The test was stopped only when the horse had successfully crossed it or if they exceeded the 10-minute time frame to get the horse across. The total amount of time to cross was what was recorded.
In the novel object and arena test the majority of the behavior patterns was standing, walking, or general exploring but nearly none cantered or did passage nor did they poop (which can be a sign of nervousness in horses). During the novel object test, it showed that the closer (within 5 meters) and longer the horse was to the object, then the lower its emotionality index but the farther and longer the horse spent time away from this object then the higher its emotionality index scored. During the bridge test, more than half (about 63%) did cross the bridge within the time frame but there were substantial individual differences in the time (7-392 seconds). It showed that the Angloarabs took a longer amount of time to cross it rather than the Saddlebreds. I believe to better the results they could have added different breeds but grouped them the same way with having the same tests done to each group of breed. They did pool the data for the novel object and arena test though since there was no behavioral difference between these specific two breeds. The work type didn’t show emotional indices during the arena test but it did in the novel object test. Behavior differences depending on the work type were shown in both tests. In the object test, the jumping horses showed to be more likely to tough the object where the dressage and high school horses moved around a lot more and showed more excitable behaviors like raising their tail, snorting, and being more alert and watchful. The same was seen in the arena test also. This was made sure of when they compared them in detail to the behavioral patterns. The bridge test showed that jumping and voltige horses hesitated less before going over the bridge, with dressage and high school horses taking the longest and hesitating more.
Their tests on behavior of personality showed that the type of work did affect the horses’ emotional level when confronted with a challenge. Even if they were used to the arena, some horses would respond intensely when let alone in the arena or if there was an object in their with it. Not only was the total emotional level in horses different depending on their type of work but also their intrigue in the object or their ability to be more active and move around a lot and show excitable behavior like being alarmed, raising their tail, doing passage, snorting, and more. The voltige horses showed the more relaxed, quieter descriptions when left alone and were not as fearful when walking over the bridge. Dressage horses are overall more reactive, anxious, and more emotional as well as with high school horses (which is basically a more complex version of dressage). This further complies that work attributes are indicated to have an effect on horse behavior. Dressage and high school horses are under more strong control for a longer amount of time with their pace restrained which and them being expected to behave quick to what the riders demand may be what causes these horses to have clashing relationship with the people riding them. Their overall results show that the horses’ type of work can be a critical component in the horses’ personality.
As shown in the experiments in the three articles mentioned above, different practices or work situations can affect a horse’s behavior. With the examples using dressage (in particular using rollkur), you can see how much discomfort, anxiety, and conflict comes to the horse when ridding this way. Its important to see this and to get these kinds of results so that we can better learn to ride these horses in a more humane way. As I mentioned in the paper, there are numerous potential ways to go to further this research. Using more groups categorized by different ages, breeds, and sex of the horse could better the results. Also using horses that have had a lot of experience with rollkur versus horses that haven’t could better the results so we could see if it causes more problems the longer they have been used under rollkur or not. Also using people with horse knowledge in one part versus using the same with someone that doesn’t have experience. There should also be no bias in any of the experiments. Overall the articles were pretty excellent. There wasn’t a whole lot I would change about them.