Category Archives: Equine Behaviour

Articles on equine behaviour.

Snorting Horses

To those of us most involved in the true well-being of our equine friends, these findings will not come as a surprise but a recent French study of snorting in horses shows that the horse living in a relaxed environment produces far more snorts that one in a stressful situation. And, also not surprisingly, the […]

Returning to riding. Part Two, a trek across Dartmoor and Exmoor

Harry had only been backed the previous year, so was not an experienced horse. But he had proved to be reliable, calm and co-operative, and quite good in traffic. Since I would be camping with Harry, perhaps in the open, I accustomed him to being tied up for grazing, and line tied as well. The […]

Time for Behaviour – by Suzanne Rogers

In my work as an equine behaviourist one of the main concerns of my clients and potential clients is how long it will take for a problem to be resolved and how much time will they need to invest to solve the problem. Both concerns are of course completely valid and it is important that […]

Behaviour Based Horse Management – A Blueprint for the 21st Century

The first question is why do we need anything other than the customary practice we’ve built up over the years? And the answer would be that many of those practices are remnants of a past that was radically different from today.

The relationship first

I have a rocksteady faith in building a relationship through lots of positive reinforcement, before you’re even allowed to actually work with pressure. And that’s not just because then you can’t do what you’ve always done quite instinctively (push just a little bit, pull just a little bit, tap just a little bit, hit just […]

What is Clicker Training Actually Good for? by Catherine Bell

Clicker training is one of the recent success stories of equestrianism. It makes use of a bridging signal to indicate the moment of the desired behaviour, followed by positive reinforcement. We are told that training with positive reinforcement is more ethical than training with negative reinforcement and/or punishment. We are told that positive reinforcement activates […]

Not So Merry Go Round, By Josepha Guillaume

The round pen, rope halter and lead rope. These combination of things seem to have become as much a part of each other as bit, spurs and whip have been over the course of many centuries. As opposed to bit and spurs, the round pen and the lead rope seems to have an image of […]

Questions and Answers with the Equitation Science Group by Emma Lethbridge

I was recently asked to do a question and answer session for the Facebook group Equitation Science (http://www.facebook.com/groups/equitationscience/). The questions asked were very interesting so I thought I would do an article including some of the Q and A session. I would like to note that there were many fantastic comments made by the other […]

The Nonsense of Naughtiness By Alison Averis

If there was one thing I could do to improve the welfare of domesticated horses, it would be to get rid of the notion that inappropriate equine behaviour is naughtiness. The word ‘naughtiness’ implies deliberate misbehaviour, and it’s all too common for owners and riders to assume that this is what is going on when […]

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