Is your Horse Afraid of the Dark?
In horse riding I know from personal experience that the most dangerous party of horse riding can open be horse’s flight reaction when they are scared. When riding at night a shadowed or a quick motion can set your horse bolting to the other side of the ring while you hang on for dear life. In Uta Von Borstel’s paper, “ Fear Reactions in trained and untrained horses from dressage and show-jumping breeding lines” mentions that as much as 27% of all horse related accidents are due to the horses fear response. Heitkamp et al. (1998) discovered that the common belief that dressage horses are more nervous than show jumpers is true. In the study they found that the injury rate of show jumpers and dressage riders were the same, but the showjumpers’ accidents were more sever. This is still surprising because showjumping involves more risk due to the nature of jumping high objects.
Show jumping horses appear to be more calm because they have been breed to be responsive to the riders’ cues, fast and good at jumping, where as, dressage horses have been breed to be very sensitive to the riders cues. The selection for these characteristics could have caused physiological changes in the horses other genes causing it to be more fearful. Another possibility is that the training that the show jumper receives decreases the sensitivity to possible fear inducing objects. One direction, I would love to look at would be how police horses, bullfight horses and cross country jumpers fair in fear response tests.
References / Link to Article:
Heitkamp et al., 1998 H.C. Heitkamp, T. Horstmann and D. Hillgeris, Reitverletzungen und Verletzungen beim Umgang mit Pferden bei erfahrenen Reitern. Unfallchirurg, 101 (1998), pp. 122–128.
By Caroline Adams (4)
I wonder if the sensitivity to cues of the rider makes the horse more sensitive to its environment as well. Maybe the genesthat cause fear and allow the horse to listen to its owner are very close together and there can't be one without the other. This would be intesteting to study which genes are activated for fgear and dressage and see if the are close together on the chromosone.
ReplyDeletePosted by Noelle Kellicker
This is a pretty cool study and shows how aware animals are of human cues. I think it would be interesting to do a study of how both humans and horses react in these situations. In the cases where horses spook and get scared, are the humans showing stress levels first or are the horses simply reacting to the situation before their humans reaction to it? I don't know much about horses but I think its fascinating how alert they are to human emotions.
ReplyDeletePosted by Suzanne Sullivan
I wonder what would happen if the horses are set free after being show-horses. Would they be more sensitive to the change and therefore to a fright stimulus because they now are on their own. Also is this stimulus then passed on genetically. Does a baby horse from a show horse instantly more frightened and therefore have a worst response than that of a wild horse.
ReplyDeleteJobin Oommen
I know some about horses, but I don't know as much as a "horse" person would. What I'm wondering is can any breed be used for show jumping or dressage, or do they have specific breeds that are better for each? It's interesting to think how much of this fear response is nature and how much is nurture, whether a line of horses is bred for showing or an entire breed. I also wonder if the horses scare at any sudden movement, or do certain things scare them?
ReplyDeletePosted by Chelsea Van Thof
Ah horses, man's main mode of transporation 200 years ago. Um, out of curiosity since it wasn't answered, are horses afraid of the dark? You need to be careful with your sentence structure and spelling. There are two spelling errors in your first sentence. You wrote "... the most dangerous party of horse riding can open be horse’s flight reaction...," when I think you meant to write: the most dangerous PART of horse riding can OFTEN be horse’s flight reaction.
ReplyDeleteI'd pre-read your blog entry before posting next time.
Posted by Austin Gray
This is really interesting. I would have to agree that showjumpers are less likely to spook because they are trained to to pay attention to unfamiliar objects, and just to get over them. From personal experience I can say that horses definitely feed off of the riders emotions, it would be interesting to see how the differences between dressage riders and showjumpers come into play.
ReplyDeleteChelsea, There are particular breeds that are more commonly used for higher level dressage and show jumping. Warmblood breeds are usually the most common, but at the lower levels you can see just about any breed competing.
Posted by Emily Nobrega
Hi Chelsea,
ReplyDeleteYes there are specific horses that are used for the different disciplines of riding. Hanoverians are usually the horses of choice for dressage where as warmbloods are a favorite. So within a breed of horses the horses that are high performers are selected for. There are certifications and tests which are used to determine the quality of dressage horses or jumpers. In this way they create a line of horses.
Horses usually only spook as a result of a stimulus. For example, a rabbit hopping out in the middle of the path might startle the horse and cause the flight reaction. Horses also can be frisky and pretend to spook. This might be caused because the weather is cold or they have not been exercised in a while.
Yes, I agree with Emily that it would be interesting to examine the effects of the types of horse riders that tend to participate in a particular style of riding.
Posted by Caroline Adams