Respect The Horses

We know vaccines painful, and by comparing horses at rest with horses getting vaccinated, we've been able to determine how they express pain visually. By looking at horses with disorders like colic, broken bones, wounds, and so on, we can determine their facial expressions during more severe pain.

At zookeeper school we were drilled through the pain faces of the most common lab animals and livestock. Nowadays I believe this has become a routine lesson in all animal related fields, but the general public still doesn't know that this is a thing that exists.

Here are all the pain face/grimace scales I've been able to find. Please study them if you interact with any of these animals on a regular basis:

gettingvetted here.

Let me tell you a story about how livestock animals work.

In the beginning, God created the horse. God looked at the horse and saw that it was beautiful and strong. “However,” God said, “it breaks too easily.”

Then God created the cow. God looked at the cow and saw that it was more durable than the horse, and tasted good to boot. “However,” God said, “it poops too much.”

Then God created the goat. God looked at the goat and saw that it was perfect.

God looked around and saw that he still had some spare bits of fluff on his work table, but no brains to put into it. So then God created the sheep.

Now let me tell you what my equine surgery professor said on the first day of class.

“Horses are only interested in two things: homicide, and suicide.”

Horses don’t got enough toes.

So, back right after the dinosaurs fucked off and joined the choir invisible, the first ancestors of horses were scampering about, little capybara-looking things called Eohippus, and they had four toes per limb:

They functioned pretty well, as near as we can tell from the fossil record, but they were mostly messing around in the leaf litter of dense forests, where one does not necessarily need to be fast but one should be nimble, and the 4 toes per limb worked out pretty good.

But the descendants of Eophippus moved out of the forest where there was lots of cover and onto the open plains, where there was better forage and visibility, but nowhere to hide, so the proto-horses that could ZOOM the fastest and out run thier predators (or, at least, their other herd members) tended to do well.  Here’s the thing- having lots of toes means your foot touches the ground longer when you run, and it spreads a lot of your momentum to the sides.  Great if you want to pivot and dodge, terrible if you want to ZOOM.  So losing toes started being a major advantage for proto-horses:

The Problem with having fewer toes and running Really Fucking Fast is that it kind of fucks your everything else up.

When a horse runs at full gallop, it sort of... stops actively breathing, letting the slosh of it’s guts move its lungs, which is tremendously calorically efficient and means their breathing doesn’t fall out of sync.  But it also means that the abdominal lining of a horse is weirdly flexible in ways that lead to way more hernias and intestinal tangling than other ungulates.  It also has a relatively weak diaphragm for something it’s size, so ANY kind of respiratory infection is a Major Fucking Problem because the horse has weak lungs.

When a Horse runs Real Fucking Fast, it also develops a bit of a fluid dynamics problem- most mammals have the blood going out of thier heart real fast and coming back from the far reaches of the toes much slower and it’s structure reflects that.  But since there is Only The One Toe, horse blood comes flying back up the veins toward the heart way the fuck faster than veins are meant to handle, which means horses had to evolve special veins that constrict to slow the Blood Down, which you will recognize as a Major Cardiovascular Disease in most mammals. This Poorly-regulated blood speed problems means horses are prone to heart problems, burst veins, embolisms, and hemophilia.  Also they have apparently a billion blood types and I’m not sure how that’s related but I am sure that’s another Hot Mess they have to deal with.

ALSO, the Blood-Going-Too-Fast issue and being Just Huge Motherfuckers means horses have trouble distributing oxygen properly, and have compensated by creating fucked up bones that replicate the way birds store air in thier bones but much, much shittier.  So if a horse breaks it’s leg, not only is it suffering a Major Structural Issue (also also- breaking a toe is much more serious when that toe is YOUR WHOLE DAMN FOOT AND HALF YOUR LEG), it’s also hving a hemmorhage and might be sort of suffocating a little.

ALSO ALSO, the fast that horses had to deal with Extremely Fast Predators for most of thier evolution means that they are now afflicted with evolutionarily-adaptive Anxiety, which is not great for thier already barely-functioning hearts, and makes them, frankly, fucking mental.  Part of the reason horses are so aggro is that if deinied the opportunity to ZOOM, it’s options left are “Kill everyone and Then Yourself” or “The same but skip step one and Just Fucking Die”.  The other reason is that a horse is in a race against itself- it’s gotta breed before it falls apart, so a Horse basically has a permanent terrorboner.

HOW HEAD CARRIAGE AFFECTS STRESS LEVELS   

Horses ridden with an overly flexed head carriage experience greater degrees of physiological stress than those ridden in more relaxed “frames”, according to a new study from Europe. Researches at three institutions–Aarhus University in Denmark, Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and Ghent University in Belgium–joined forces to study the reactions of seasoned dressage horses to being ridden in a “hyperflexed” head position.

“Hyperflexion is the term that has been used to describe a rane of head-and-neck positions from where the chin nearly touches the chest to where the nasal plane is slightly behind the vertical,” says Janne Christensen, PhD.

While this head position is often associated with dressage, it is also seen in other disciplines, says Christensen. “I cannot answer about the rationale behind it, other than some riders and trainers argue that it trains flexibility, but there may be other reasons. For show jumpers it may relate to poor response to rein signals. For instance, the rider may find it easier to control the horse in the hyperflexed position.”

Hyperflexion has long been the subject of controversy, with critics warning of its effects on a horses physical and mental well-being. To provide hard date for such discussions  Christensen and fellow researchers  set ot to investigate behavioral and physiological stress responses of horses ridden in various headsets. The study included 15 experienced dressage horses who were worked by their usual riders.

For three study sessions, the horses were ridden through predetermined 10-minute tests that included work at the walk, trot, and canter. In each session the horse had a different headset:

a competition frame, in which the head was positioned so the nasal plane (the front of the face) was aligned “on the vertical”.

a “low, deep, and round” frame with the head positioned “behind the vertical”.

a “looser” frame, in which the rider aimed to keep the reins as loose as possible and did not request a specific head position. 

The riders ultimately decided exactly how the horse’s head would be held in each category, but riders were videotaped for later measurements to ensure that the head positions differed between the tests.

The horses were outfitted with monitors to record their heart rates as well as their heart rate beat intervals as they worked. Salivary samples were collected before and after each ride and tested for levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with tress. In addition, the horses were monitored for behavioral signs of stress, such as head tossing. 

The data showed that horses had significantly higher cortisol concentrations immediately after being ridden in a low-deep-round frame compared to the looser frame. More head movements-indicative of stress-were also observed during low-deep-round riding. No difference was detected in heart rate or heart-rate intervals but the researchers say that could be because of the intensity of the dressage program was too high to detect possible differences in HR and HRV. Overall, the data suggests that the horses found the deeper frame more stressful. “The horses in our study were accustomed to hyperflexion as a part of their usual training, so novelty could not account for the increased stress responses,” says Christensen.

The researchers conclude that “there may be beneficial physical effects of a low-deep-round fram that warrant its use as a training tool as long as riders and trainers are aware of the potentially increased stress induced by the training method.”

PUBLISHED JUNE 2014 EQUUS MAGAZINE

So I was looking through an ethogram of agonistic behaviour in bachelor herds (link here! it’s pretty interesting!) 

 That’s right! Bitless bridles in all of their diversity and crank nosebands have a striking similarity that I find very significant.

A quick overview for anyone who hasn’t heard of crank nosebands:

source

The buckle strap (blue) passes through a roller before going through the keeper and buckle. The extra roller allows the rider to cinch the noseband tighter than would be possible by pulling on a normal cavesson. Needless to say, this tosses the two-finger noseband rule right out the window. The noseband can be made so tight that extra padding (yellow) is required to protect the horse’s mandibles.

This “cranking” action allows the rider to forcibly clamp the jaw shut. The formidable tightness involved has been recognized as a health and welfare risk. 

A lot of you have probably read this far with squinty-eyed suspicion, so I’ll cut to the chase.

The pressing similarity between the crank noseband and the bitless bridle is that they both deny the horse a behavior that is very important to the sport of dressage in particular: accepting the bitted bridle.

 Accepting the traditional double or snaffle bitted bridle and its cues is necessary for the (bitted) horse to attain coveted “lightness”, in which the horse becomes relaxed and fluid. Importantly, the horse’s mouth should be closed with a relaxed jaw that does not open to resist the bit pressure. The horse should instead yield to the bit without coercion; the closed, supple mouth is a victory for both horse and rider as the horse has been educated to the point of complete harmony with the rider. In more ethological terms, one could say lightness is seen in a horse that is not demonstrating distressed body language while working (head tossing, body tension, jerky gaits, tail wringing, gaping, or chomping).

However, when ridden in a cranked-up noseband, the horse has no choice but to have a closed mouth that yields to bit pressure, regardless of training. The jaw is literally jammed closed around the bit(s). The horse cannot gape or chomp to show a lack of submission. This means that the horse’s mouth is sensitized to bit pressure. Any discomfort or poor training has been masked, but not fixed at its source. 

Yikes.

source

Importantly, the horse also cannot truly accept the bit. The jaw cannot become relaxed and hang slightly. The horse cannot mouth the bit normally. 

Bitless bridles deny horses the ability to accept the bit in a much simpler and less harmful way: there is no bit to accept. The horse can’t answer a question that nobody asked. The horse still has to learn to accept the bridle, with its cues and pressure across various parts of the face, of course.

Why is that similarity important?

It is important because one of these items is legal in competitive dressage, and one of them is not. 

Many arguments have been made for and against the inclusion of bitless bridles in competitive dressage. One of the main concerns from the bitted-only camp is that bitless bridles can’t allow for the same kind of contact, and the same kind of acceptance of the bridle. Many have argued that handling a snaffle bridle or double bridles correctly is part of the dressage tradition, an integral element of the test of the rider’s skill.

The catch is, the same thing can certainly be said about cranks. They don’t allow for classical lightness and submission either.

What we have here would appear to be a double standard: you cannot compete in dressage bitless because that doesn’t allow you to show the horse’s acceptance of the bit, but you can show in a crank, which… doesn’t allow you to show the horse’s acceptance of the bit. 

Therein lies the rub.

Id like to add that some people do not crank up their crank nosebands but buy them because the extra padding seems ‘kinder’ to use on the horse.  The problem with the extra padding is that it can press the cheeks into the teeth:

(x) see where the padding extends down between the curb and bradoon cheek pieces.

Here is the padding altered to give the cheeks clearance:

As someone with an interest in photography, one of the very first things I learned about composition is that the horizon line should be level. As someone with an interest in horses, seeing a crooked horizon line in sales and ad photos also makes me mighty suspicious. 

I have no beef against Quarter Horses. I think they’re pretty neat, and my mare wouldn’t be alive today if she hadn’t been bred to race as a quarter horse. So this isn’t about blasting a specific breed. This is an exercise in blasting people trying to cover up shitty conformation with photo tricks.

Plus this was kinda a fun exercise. I took the photos with the worst horizon lines and photoshopped them straight.

As awesome as photoshop is, I can’t re-attach hooves that have been “artistically” hidden, as much as I wish I could! 

And I’m not saying some of these horses still don’t have pretty decent comformation once they’re straightend out!

Here’s some nifty URLS for your perusal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jBjg717TJc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JPgsMGN4bk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkOBI_zmjDQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-s2P0TsRvw

Last two are different riders, for good measure.

 Furthermore, if a horse is coerced, their body language will let you know. 

Let’s talk about what equine distress looks like. Stressed horses move with tension in their body, with rigid ears, tension above the eyes, and often show the sclera of the eye. The horses in those videos show no such signs of pain or distress. 

They are alert, attentive and supple, behavior contradictory to the concept of forced submission.

The reason I showed you these clips is that there is nothing forced about them. This is the power of good training and a strong bond.

Oh, and here’s some science on the weight-bearing capacity of the horse’s back: http://www.horsesciencenews.com/horseback-riding/how-much-weight-can-a-horse-carry.php

I have yet to find any science that shows that jumping and riding causes horses inevitable pain and injury.

Your language is very closed and ignorant, ie “these half ton animals” and you need to enter the 21st century to discover a very different way of both looking at horses and approaching them.

It is horses nature to never show pain, horses will endure the worst pain before they show any signs of it.

http://www.academialiberti.de/images/artikel/Harm_of_riding_study_I_edited.pdf

http://speakhorse.tumblr.com/post/121911435757/harm-of-riding-study-ii

http://www.academialiberti.de/images/artikel/Harm_of_riding_III.pdf

http://www.academialiberti.de/images/artikel/Harm_of_riding_IV.pdf

http://www.pdf-archive.com/2014/09/23/saddleeffects/

Too much flexion increases convict, say German researchers

Effect of different head-neck positions on physical and psychological stress parameters in the ridden horse

Research Shows Head/Neck Position Can Cause Stress in Ridden Horses 

The influence of head and neck position on stress in the horse

Study Indicates Head Position Affects Horse’s Stress Level

The Cruel Premarin Industry

PMU (Pregnant Mares’ Industry) is used to produce estrogen and hormone-replacement drugs such as Premarin, PremPro and PremPhase - and now DUAVEE, a “PremPro-Lite” which contains Premarin. PMU drugs are made by keeping mares constantly pregnant and collecting their estrogen-rich urine.

The mares are repeatedly impregnated, and for six months of each 11-month pregnancy most are confined in stalls that prohibit turning around, grooming themselves and comfortably lying down. Their water intake is often regulated to produce maximum estrogen-rich urine. The mares are continually attached to plumbing which is designed to fit over their urethras. It is held in place with movement-restricting body straps. When mares can no longer adequately “produce,” most are sold for slaughter. Most of their surviving foals are either pulled and raised as “Pee Line” replacements or slaughtered for food in China.

The 2002 Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) – a major landmark study – concluded that the use of PMU drugs increases the risks of breast cancer, heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, blood clots and dementia. Many doctors in the United States and Canada stopped prescribing PMU drugs once the dangers were fully known. However, Pfizer (and Wyeth before it) saw what was coming down the pike and began moving production abroad where local regulations are more lax and there are significantly less FDA inspectors available to monitor production. Reportedly, this not only results in significantly more horrific conditions for the mares but also less oversight in the manufacturing of an already dangerous drug.  There are reportedly 90,000 mares currently on PMU lines in China.

What can you do?

Boycott Pfizer Drugs!

Centrum Brand 

Advil 

Chapstick 

Neosporin 

Preparation II 

Robitussin

Celebrex 

Effexor

Lipitor

Lyrica

Viagra

Xanax

Zoloft

If you use any of these drugs please talk with your health care provider and ask if there are any other alternatives you can use! If not, please don’t put yourself in harm’s way by not taking them. Instead this is something else you can do:

Contact Pfizer’s CEO here and express your disgust and disapproval for their abusive PMU practices:

Ian Read, CEO Pfizer 235 East 42nd Street New York, NY 10017 (212) 733-2323

They don’t live their lives in their stalls though…..???????????

They get out for hours and hours and hours on end, hand grazing and walking around the property and generally meandering. We don’t treat them like objects, we treat them like valuable, fragile things. And the key word there really is fragile because horses are fragile and in order to keep a horse sound enough to pass an FEI jog, we must ensure that they do not do siginificant, permanent damnage to themselves. 

Even articles that support welfarist turnout procedures all agree that stalling is not good for horses:

Stress is supposed to be minimized to improve animal welfare in a housing system. Allowing free exercise and social interactions are invaluable tools to achieve this aim in horses, and thus should be facilitated by every horse keeper.

Regular turnout led to calm behavior on the pasture in all the horses, especially when it happened in groups. Thus, if free exercise is permitted regularly and in well socialized groups, the risk of injury is decreased because of less activity.

The behavior of the horses in the stable was more relaxed when turnout was allowed in addition to training. The behavior during training was also more relaxed and the willingness to perform was not negatively affected by turnout. Furthermore, the study indicates that training does not fulfill the exercise requirements of the horses. Regarding the risk of injury caused by free exercise, it is advised to allow TAT because locomotion activity is decreased with this order of events as compared with TBT. By contrast, the horses’ willingness to perform was evaluated as being better when turnout was allowed before training (TBT).

Time spent per week in turnout influenced behaviour during turnout. More horses in the short turnout group than in the long turnout group showed active behaviours such as trot, canter, and buck. Horses in the short turnout group also displayed active behaviours more frequently, but grazed less frequently, than those in the long turnout group.

Due to their excellent ability to utilize herbage of variable quality with a high fibre content, horses are well-adapted to grazing a range of plant species and pasture types. Although grasses are the most preferred species by horses, several other vegetation species are eaten depending on factors such as season and grazing intensity. Horse growth rates compare favourably with those of other livestock species, even when they were grazed on poor quality pastures, such as mires. The ability to accumulate much body fat in summer, which can be mobilized as a source of energy in winter, is of great importance in free-ranging horses.

For instance, the groups of horses that presented greater frequencies of abnormal behaviors spent the longest periods per day in stalls; in contrast, horses kept for show jumping and rental, which had the lowest frequencies of abnormal behaviors, were stabled for 12 hours/day or less. 

Multivariable analysis showed that foals of low- or middle-ranking mares were less likely to develop abnormal behaviour than foals of dominant mares (rate ratio (RR) 0.23, P<0.01; RR 0.48, P<0.01, respectively). Weaning by confinement in a stable or barn was associated with an increased rate of development of abnormal behaviour, compared with paddock-weaning (RR 2.19, P<0.05), and housing in barns, rather than at grass after weaning, was associated with a further increase (RR 2.54, P<0.01).

For an optimal dissemination of knowledge, it can be recommended that the information provision to horse enthusiasts is organized around these 4 clusters of horse enthusiasts. The first cluster devotes both the least amount of time on horses and on searching for information on horses and lacks appropriate knowledge and skills regarding most welfare issues. The second cluster contains mostly female horse enthusiasts, who devote a lot of time both on horses and on searching for information on horses, and have a relatively good knowledge of issues relating to equine welfare, which, however, does not always result in horses being housed appropriately (e.g., social contacts). The third cluster is dominated by male respondents, who, among all clusters, devote the largest amount of time per week to horses. They are clearly less emotionally involved with horses, the least likely to think that there are horse welfare problems, and mostly lacking appropriate knowledge and practices to ensure horse welfare. The fourth cluster primarily contains horse enthusiasts who first came into contact with horses at a riding school, believe that there are welfare problems among horses in the Netherlands, have the appropriate knowledge about horse welfare issues, and apply this knowledge in daily practices accordingly.

The authors argue that the domestic environment should, whenever possible, offer horses the opportunity to socialize with other horses. This can best be achieved by keeping horses in groups.

Riding schools that used box housing had more horses reacting strongly when released in the arena, especially if a novel object was present. They were more prone to express “high locomotory components”, which suggests that risks of accidents may be superior in these schools where horses’ “nervousness” (as evaluated by riding teachers LeScolan et al., 1997) may be higher. These horses are more likely to behave in an unpredictable and exacerbated way, and as a consequence are potentially more dangerous.

It’s almost like… horses are meant to be socializing with other horses… and that keeping them in stalls carries big ole welfare implications…

Believe it or not, your fancy Olympic dressage horses aren’t actually that special in the grand scheme of things. Plenty of backyard ponies have very good conformation, a good many actually move WAY better than top dressage horses do, and interestingly enough, many top dressage horses have full siblings, half siblings, and other family members that experience far more turnout than their competing brethren.

So these are a couple of screencaps I took from the only video I could find of Charlotte Dujardin’s most recent performance. I really would have more but I got frustrated with the quality of the video and you can hardly see anything in these anyways.

I’m under a lot of fire right now because you can’t critique an olympic rider’s technique apparently?? I guess because their riding is completely flawless and devoid of anything incorrect or needing of work because they’re gods or s/t idk

But the first picture doesn’t even need an explanation because ???? hands???? Why are they all the way up there??? Is that rlly necessary because I don’t think so. His head is pretty significantly behind the vertical as well.

The second one shows an absolutely fantastic broken neckline - I mean look at that, it’s perfect. Even with the shitty quality you can still see exactly where the break is, and it sure isn’t at the poll. The hind end is also way out behind him and his back is kinda hollow - you can tell easily by the presence of that dip behind the saddle. The withers and shoulders definitely look dropped and he looks heavy on the forehand.

The last one… holy hollow back batman. Just look at that dip in his back, right behind the saddle. Holy cow. His diagonals are also really far off and there isn’t much connection between front end and hind end. Neckline is broken, just like in the other two. 

Now do I think Charlotte getting high scores is some fluke in the system? No. I don’t. It’s BECAUSE of the system that riding like this is rewarded. Like I said in a previous ask, the judges want to reward what’s going to draw in a crowd and make people oooh and aaah. The huge movements are flashy, and people like them. They are that thing that’ll draw in the crowd, even if they aren’t correct and cannot be achieved through correct training. The sad part is that judges look right through all the incorrect training, the broken necks and hollow backs, and reward what looks good.

So that’s what people shoot for. Competitors aim for the big, artificial movements and toe flicking, and they do what it takes to win, which is exactly what Charlotte does with Valegro, and why so many obvious flaws are just brushed right off.