Can Science Help Us Train For the Ultimate Horse
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I’m always of the mind that we don’t know how much we don’t know and that we don’t know far more than we know. But, thanks to careful research, we are learning more about horses than ever before. Scientific research is giving us clues about the mind and body of the horse and enabling us to become better riders, trainers and caregivers. Here are just a few of the many research projects that answer some questions about horses, and open the door to even more.
Vision and Sided-ness
There is still a lot we don’t know about horse vision. We know that their field of vision, color perception and processing is quite different from ours, making it difficult to see the world through the eyes of the horse. Our own field of vision overlaps by quite a bit and gives us a ‘binocular’ view of the world, where we see a continuous picture. But, horses have a very small overlap, so that both eyes see different things. Researchers have discovered that a horse processes and reacts to the information it gets through its left and right eye differently. In the study, they seemed to look at items that scared them with their left eye. Another study suggested that horses preferred to be worked with from the left side1. The implication is that working with your horse from the left may make it easier to process any new information. However, some horses are ‘right-handed’ and working from the left may slow down learning.
Color Perception
Is your horse happy to jump red ground poles, but spooks at an identical obstacle with blue poles? The clues to how a horse approaches any surface may be in the color of that surface. In a study that documented how horses reacted to different colored floors it was discovered that horses were most spooked by blue floors. Yellow, white, black or blue mats were found to make horses most hesitant to walk across them. Green, red, brown or grey mats seemed not to phase them. The same colors hung on a wall however, did not get the same reactions. Since we don’t know exactly how horses see these colors, it may be a clue to why horses seem to irrationally respond to certain objects or ground colors.
Discovering Effective Ways to Desensitize
Over the years I’ve seen lots of examples of people trying to desensitize a spooky horse. The scenario usually goes something like this. Someone’s horse is routinely spooky at things that flap like plastic bags caught on fences, laundry on the line, or little flags flying along the roadside. So, to get the horse used to ‘flapping objects’ the owner festoons that horse’s paddock or stall with anything that flaps - bags, streamers, balloons, old shirts. The horse is left in the enclosure, with the idea that it will soon reason that these items are no threat. But what often happens is the horse stands in a corner, positioning itself so it can shut out the scary items. When the horse is taken from the stall or paddock, it acts like it is escaping attacking lions. This can go on for weeks, and still the horse is no less scared of flapping objects. Over a long period of time, the horse may lose its fear, but there appears to be a more effective method for dealing with issues like this.
Studies have shown that a slightly different approach is more effective. A Danish study2 suggests that rather than ‘flooding’ the horse with scary objects, introducing the objects slowly may have better results. Horses in the study were gradually introduced to white plastic bags, and by the end of the study, the horses were more accepting of the bags than horses that were exposed fully to the bags, or horses that were rewarded when approaching the bags which also suggests that positive reinforcement methods are not suitable in all situations.
Memory
Horses have remarkable memories. A well trained horse can be left in a pasture for ten years, and with just a little polish, be brought back to its former level of training. Long term memory was tested with a maze test. This study involved running horses through a maze. All horses tested learned the maze, albeit at different rates. Horses were tested again several months later, and all retained the memory of the maze. However, an Australian study3 suggests that a horse’s immediate recall might not be that good. Horses were tied in an arena where they could hear and see other horses being fed. They were tested to see if they could go to the area where the feeding took place. In the first test they were let go immediately after the other horses were fed. In the second test, they were freed 10 seconds after. It was discovered that the horses were far less successful finding the feed after the 10 second delay. What does this mean for training? It could mean that timing is crucial when training and that a horse’s short-term memory is far shorter than we thought.
If you could initiate a scientific study, what aspect of horses would you explore?
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1ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19618222
2onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2746/042516406778400574/full
3appliedanimalbehaviour.com/article/S0168-1591(03)00241-7/abstract |
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