The Nature of Horses, A Contemporary Approach to Equine Behaviour Education

A Contemporary Approach to Equine Behavior Education

30th World Veterinary Congress 2011

Sid Gustafson DVM

Veterinary Behavior Educator and Practitioner

Big Sky, MT 59716

Abstract:

This is a review of the current behavioral science regarding the horse. This paper is a primer on equine behavior, and portrays the educational approach to help horsefolk fulfill the health and welfare of horses from the horse perspective, rather than from the human perspective.

Behavioral study and appreciation of the evolved nature of horses provide the foundation for the contemporary principles equine welfare and equine behavior education. Friends, forage, and locomotion are the long-evolved requirements for healthy horses, and must be abundantly and creatively provided to facilitate optimum health, performance, and healing.

Equine Behavior Through Time

Horses began their journey through time 60 million years ago. Three million years ago the footsteps of humans were fossilized next to the hoofprints of horses, suggesting that humans have been contemplating horses for some time. But it was not until perhaps ten thousand years ago that human societies began the dance of domestication with horse. Over thousands of years, perhaps tens of thousands of years, the horse herds gradually merged with human societies. A shared language and sociality facilitated the merging of the two species.

There is archeological evidence that humans had formed an intimate and intermingled relationship with horses by 5500 years ago in Botai, where the horsefolk stabled and milked horses, and probably rode them. Horses provided these early horsefolk with much of the essentials they needed for group survival. It is interesting to note that large domestic dogs lived with these early horsefolk as well, but no other domestic animals. To understand the domestication process is to enhance our appreciation of equine behaviour. Horses apparently became domesticated because they found a niche with people long ago on the steppes of Kazakhstan. Both trained and wild horses existed in this realm south of Russia and west of China. A population of horses more amenable to captivity and taming than their wild counterparts likely provided the stock for the first horse societies. Rather than plucking wild horses out of the wild and taming them, it is thought that over tens of thousands of years a relationship developed in a shared niche.

By the early 20th century the closest living relative to Equus caballus, the Tarpan, had gone extinct. No truly wild horses remain. All of today’s caballine horses are descended from an original and possibly separate population of horses that were amenable to be tamed and selectively bred by humans. It appears to have taken tens of thousands of years to fully domesticate the horse, and to eventually attain control of breeding. Breeding initially consisted primarily of selection for docility and amenability to captivity, and later milking, riding, driving, and stabling. In contemporary culture, selective breeding often involves selecting for the best athlete, or attempting to select for the best athlete. In addition to genetics, this presentation will focus on the socialization aspect of raising horses, and portray the importance of nurture on the eventual behavioral and physical health of the adult athlete.

No longer does human society depend on horse society for survival as it once did. Although still bred for trainability, more and more horses are today bred for specific performance goals. These days, horses provide people with entertainment, recreation, sport, esteem, performance, and pleasure, and, as ever, but in fewer and fewer reaches, utility. Other than stockfolk, few others rely on horses for to sustain a pastoral livelihood. This new role of the horse requires renewed studies and considerations of equine behavior.

Horsefolk and veterinarians alike remain enticed and intrigued by horses. The science of equine behaviour attempts to appreciate just who horses are, and from the horse perspective. To appreciate the horse perspective, behaviorists explore the evolution and domestication of the horse. We continue to find ourselves attempting to appreciate how the current human/horse relationship came to be so as to facilitate a smooth trouble free relationship with our horses. As well, appropriate breeding, socialization, and training of horses helps minimize behavioral wastage.

To understand where our relationships with the horses are headed, veterinary behavior practitioners attempt to see where the human/horse relationship has been, and to subsequently help modify and refine the relationship to favor the horse. Humans continue to live with horses and continue to learn from them, as all horsefolk have through time, but now much less time is spent with horses learning from horses, so contemporary practitioners must research and make themselves aware of behavioral principle that were once gleaned from a near-constant exposure to horses through all stages of their development. We study the evolution and domestication of the horse to better help us appreciate the horses we have in our hands today. Evolution and domestication provide a basis for the understanding of equine behaviour. Man has attempted to refine his relationship with the horse ever since the first kid grabbed a mane and swung atop a horse. To become a partner with the flighty, powerful (but trainable and tamable) grazer of the plains remains the horsefolk goal.

Appreciation and sensitivity to all of our caballine horses' evolved preferences results in optimum health and soundness, and therefore optimum performance. A horse cannot be coerced to win the Kentucky Derby. The people must work with the horse, and from the horse’s view. If we understand equine behaviour, we understand what makes horses do our bidding, and do it willingly and well. To this day, horses seek to appease their domesticators much as they appease others in horse societies and herds. Horses are willing learners. This learning behavior is a result of evolutionary development of a complex social lifestyle. More recently, selective breeding has influenced equine behaviour.

The nature of the horse is enhanced by the horse’s social development. Appropriate socialization with other horses in herd pasture setting best prepares horses to be subsequently trained by horsefolk. Pastured horses train up and learn more efficiently than stabled horses. The appropriate, efficient, and considerate training of horses is highly dependent on their previous socialization by the dam and other horses, as well as their current husbandry situation. Trainability is heavily influenced by the intensity and type of stabling and husbandry, not to mention the type of training. In the latest revolution of horsemanship, the area of appropriate socialization and stabling has not received the attention it deserves.

Horses are a quiet species. They prefer calm, and learn most efficiently in tranquil, familiar settings. Horses must know and be comfortable and secure in their environment to be able to learn as horsefolk hope them to learn. Horsefolk all know what we want from our horses, however in this paper I shall present the science of what our horses want and need from humans, the science of equine behaviour. Equine behaviour is not only the basis of training and trainability, but also the very basis of equine health. To succeed in our endeavors with horses (whatever the our equine goals or pursuits), our horses are best served to receive what they preferentially need and require behaviourally, nutritionally, socially, physically, environmentally, visually, and metabolically. In order to properly care for horses and successfully teach and train horses, horsefolk must know horses. They must know who the gregarious grazers of the plains are. They must know how to properly socialize horses through their growth phase to ensure that their horses grow up to be horses. Horses raised out of the herd context are vulnerable to behavioural insecurities later in life. Most behavioural wastage is due to improper socialization and husbandry.

Rather than dissimilar to us, horses are much like us. In this presentation, I attempt to clarify humankind's social and communicative similarities to horses. As with people, strong social bonds develop between individual horses and groups of horses. This herd nature results in intense social pair and herd bonds. Horses need other horses. Horses require other horses for security, comfort, and behavioural health. Horses need friends throughout their entire life, first their teaching mother, and then their teaching herd. Today’s domestic horse needs horse friends and human friends, although horses do retain the wherewithal to survive just fine without horsefolk. Horses need friends so preciously and constantly, that horses allow horsefolk to substitute as friends. This is possible because man shares a sociality with domestic horses. We speak their gesture language, and horses speak ours. We share a language of movement, and language described as kinetic empathy.

Domestic horse is no longer human prey, and has not been for thousands of years. Horse has been brought into the circle of humanity, along with a dozen or so other domesticates that shared an adequate sociality with mankind to be allowed to develop and mutually beneficial relationship.

Horse and man have co-evolved together for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years. Each knows the other, well, and horses have proven to know the nature of people more consistently than people know the nature of horses. It is paramount that horsefolk appreciate the social and communicative nature of horses, and deal with horses in a fashion that is appropriate to their long-evolved social nature.

In addition to adequate and appropriate sociality and socialization, the importance of constant locomotion is paramount to appreciating equine behaviour and the moving, digestive nature of horses. Locomotion. Horses need movement. In addition to friendship, most all horses require near-constant movement for behavioural expression and health. Interdependence exists between horse health and locomotion. Horses evolved to be near-constant walkers and grazers. The last place a horse evolved to be is alone in a stall. Despite domestication and selective breeding for docility and captivity, horse health remains dependent on locomotion. Locomotion is inherent to grazing. Locomotion is inherent to digestion, to respiration, to metabolism. If horses are not allowed to move about freely and socialize with other familiar horses grazing and chewing as they evolved to do, they become metabolic unstable and subsequently troubled. Horses deprived of locomotion and constant forage ingestion develop strategies to maintain the motion and oral security they feel they need to survive. When horses are deprived of adequate and abundant locomotion, they develop strategies to keep themselves and their jaws moving, as is their essential and inherent nature. Horses deprived of friends, forage, and locomotion are at risk to develop stereotypies to provide themselves with the movements they need to survive.

The primary premise of equine behavioural health is this: In natural settings, horses walk and graze with other horses two thirds of the time. They take a step and graze, then another step or two grazing and moving along, always observing their surroundings, grazing while in touch with other members of the herd unless playing, occasionally dozing or sleeping, but only under the secure and established watch of others. Horses that are not afforded the opportunity to graze and walk much of the time take up with behaviours to replicate essential locomotion. When stabled, some of the horse's long- evolved survival behaviours become unwanted and unwelcome.

Horses require friends, forage, and locomotion to stay healthy and productive. Additionally, horses need clean air and abundant space for optimum health. In rural settings, these requirements are easy to fulfill. Open grasslands and steppes are the geography and environs that the most recent predecessors of Equus caballus evolved. The further we remove horses from their social grazer of the plains preferences, the more health issues develop that require treatment and management by veterinarians and horsefolk.

Stabling, stalling, hospitalization and transport all deprive horses of their preferences for friends, forage, and locomotion. Although convenient for horsefolk, stabling is inconvenient for horses. Stabling limits the resources of friends, forage, and locomotion. Stabling creates bad air, and allows pathogens and parasites to travel easily between horses. When stabling is required, horses are best served to have their natural needs re-created in the stable. The air must be kept clean, and forage must be always available. Opportunities for movement and simulation of grazing with friends must be provided in abundance. Once our horses behavioural needs are understood, appreciated, and fulfilled, the learning and training can begin. Enrichment strategies re-create the needs of stabled horses. Horses deprived of friends, forage, and locomotion are not able to learn as well as appropriately socialized horses. Those strategies that best replicate the grazer of the plains scenario promote the best health, learning, and performance from horses.

Locomotion and socialization are essential for both horse health and healing.

Husbandry, healing, and rehabilitation nearly always benefit from appropriately managed locomotion strategies that are constantly tailored to the horse's healing process. Locomotion is required not only for normal healing, but for normal digestion, respiration, hoof health, circulation, and all other physiologic functions of the horse. Stall rest is at the expense of many systems, especially the hoof and metabolic systems. Digestion and respiration are compromised by confinement and restriction of movement. Metabolic, digestive, circulatory, hoof health, musculoskeletal, and nervous, systems, as well as the all other systems and functions of the horse, are dependent upon adequate and appropriate locomotion for normal functioning and/or healing.

For horses that are hospitalized, paddocked, stabled, and corralled; active implementation and re-creation of the social pasture setting is required to optimize and maintain health and promote healing. Medical conditions are apt to deteriorate in the face of the deprivations of forage, friends, and locomotion created by stabling and hospitalization. Re-creation of a natural setting in the stall is the biggest challenge veterinarians face in maintaining the health of stabled horses.

Stalled horses not only heal poorly, they learn and train poorly. Locomotion, social, and forage deprivations create problems for horses. In addition to appropriate medical treatment, veterinarians and stable managers must creatively provide horses with abundant socialization, forage, and locomotion to maintain health and facilitate healing within the parameters of acceptable medical and surgical treatment. Restriction of locomotion to facilitate healing necessitates the implementation of enrichment strategies to simulate locomotion, including massage, passive flexion, and a wide variety of physical therapies.

Horses also heal horsefolk, and those horsefolk that implement these healing strategies often experience a sense of healing themselves, it seems. The human/horse bond runs deep. Domestication of the horse is a co-evolving evolutionary process. The human perspective is being shaped by the horse's perspective these days. Appreciation of the science of equine behavior and equitation is encouraged to support the renewed interest in equine medicine and welfare, and to facilitate the veterinarian’s role of providing horses with their essential needs.

References

McGreevy, Paul, (2004) Equine Behavior: A Guide for Veterinarians and Equine Scientists Philadelphia: Elsevier Limited. ISBN 0 7020 2634 4

Olsen, Sandra, Horses and Humans, The Evolution of Human-Equine Relationships, 2006, Sandra Olsen, Grant, Choyke, and Bartosiewicz, BAR International Series 1560, Archeopress, England, ISBN 1 84171 990 0

McGreevy, Paul; McLean, Andrew, Equitation Science, Wiley Blackwell, UK, ISBN 2009048321

McGreevy, P.D. et al, (2007) “Roles of Learning theory and ethology in equitation” Journal of Veterinary Behavior 2, p. 108-118.

McGreevy Paul D., (2006) “The advent of equitation science” The Veterinary Journal 174 p. 492-500.

Waran, N., McGreevy, P., & Casey, R.A., (2002) “Training Methods and Horse Welfare”, in Waran, N., ed., The Welfare of Horses, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers (2002) 151-180.

Magner, D. (2004.) Magner’s Classic Encyclopedia of the Horse. Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 2004.

Dr Gustafson is an equine veterinarian, veterinary behaviorist, and novelist. He helps refine horse and dog training methods to accommodate the inherent nature and behavior of horses and dogs. Applied veterinary behavior enhances optimum health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity in animal athletes. Natural approaches to development, training, nutrition, and conditioning sustain equine health and enhance performance. Behavioral and nutritional enrichment strategies enhance the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses. DrSid provides equine behavior consultations to help recreate the needs and preferences of horses in training and competition.

Dr Gustafson's interview The (Behavioral) Life of a Racehorse

The Behavioral Life of a Racehorse, interview with DrSid regarding the welfare of racehorses and foals
http://pondside.cachefly.net/equinely-inclined.ep107.mp3
Dr Gustafson's interview begins at 25 minutes remaining.

DrSid provides equine behavior consultations to help enrich the lives of horses in training and competition.

Appreciating Horses Farm.tv video

Dr Gustafson is an equine veterinarian, veterinary behaviorist, and novelist. He provides education and presentations regarding equine behavior and equine welfare. Dr Sid helps animal folks refine their horse and dog training methods to accommodate the inherent nature and behavior of horses and dogs. Applied veterinary behavior enhances optimum health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity in equine and canine athletes.
Follow DrSid to learn how to effectively implement natural approaches to development, training, nutrition, and conditioning to sustain equine health and enhance performance. Behavioral and nutritional enrichment strategies enhance the lives of stabled horses, and leads them to the winner's circle. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, willing horses.
DrSid provides equine behavior consultations to help recreate the needs and preferences of horses in training and competition.

Contact Dr Gustafson

Appreciating Equine Behavior

Appreciating Equine Behaviour

Sid Gustafson DVM 

Hello horsefolk! 

Friends, forage, and locomotion. These are the requirements for healthy horses.

Horses began their journey through time 60 million years ago. Three million years ago the footsteps of man were fossilized next to the hoofprints of horses, suggesting that humans have been contemplating horses for some time. But it was not until perhaps ten thousand years ago that man began the dance of domestication with horse. There is archeological evidence that man had formed a close relationship with horses by 5500 years ago in Botai, where the horsefolk kept and milked horses, and probably rode them. Horses provided these early horsefolk with nearly everything they needed. It is interesting to note that large domestic dogs lived with these early horsefolk as well, but no other domestic animals. To understand the domestication process is to appreciate equine behaviour. Horses apparently became domesticated because they found a niche with man long ago on the steppes of Kazakhstan. Both trained and wild horses existed in this realm south of Russia and west of China. A population of horses more amenable to captivity and taming than their wild counterparts likely provided the stock for the first horse societies. Rather than plucking wild horses out of the wild and taming them, it is thought that over tens of thousands of years a relationship developed in a shared niche.

By the early 20th century the closest living relative to man's Equus caballus, the Tarpan, had gone extinct. No truly wild horses remain. All of today’s caballine horses are descended from an original and probably separate population of horses that were amenable to be tamed and selectively bred. It must have taken tens of thousands of years to fully domesticate the horse, to attain control of breeding. Breeding likely consisted of selection for docility and amenability to captivity, and later milking, riding, driving, and stabling.

No longer does man depend on horse for survival as he once did. Although still bred for trainability, many horses are today bred for specific performance goals. These days, horses provide man with entertainment, recreation, sport, esteem, performance, and pleasure, and, as ever, but in fewer and fewer reaches, utility. Other than stockmen, few others rely on horses for to sustain a pastoral livelihood.

Horsefolk remain enticed by horses. The science of equine behaviour attempts to appreciate just who horses are, and from the horse perspective. We continue to find ourselves attempting to appreciate how this human/horse relationship came to be so as to facilitate a smooth trouble free relationship with our horses. To understand where our relationship with the horses is headed, we attempt to see where the relationship has been. We live with horses and we continue to learn from them, as all horsefolk have through time. We study the evolution and domestication of the horse to better help us appreciate the horses we have in our hands today. Evolution and domestication provide the basis for the understanding of equine behaviour. Man has attempted to refine his relationship with the horse ever since the first kid grabbed a mane and swung atop a horse. To become a partner with the flighty, powerful (but trainable and tamable) grazer of the plains remains the horsefolk goal.

Appreciation and sensitivity to all of our caballine horses' evolved preferences results in optimum health and soundness, and therefore optimum performance. A horse cannot be coerced to win the Kentucky Derby. The people must work with the horse, and from the horse’s view. If we understand equine behaviour, we understand what makes horses do our bidding, and do it well. To this day, horses seek to appease their domesticators. Horses are willing learners. This learning behavior is a result of evolutionary development of a complex social lifestyle. More recently, selective breeding has influenced equine behaviour. The nature of the horse is enhanced by the horse’s social development. Appropriate socialization with other horses in herd pasture setting best prepares horses to be subsequently trained by horsefolk. Pastured horses train up and learn more efficiently than stabled horses. The appropriate, efficient, and considerate training of horses is highly dependent on their previous socialization by the dam and other horses, as well as their current husbandry situation. Trainability is heavily influenced by the intensity and type of stabling and husbandry, not to mention the type of training. In the latest revolution of horsemanship, the area of appropriate socialization and stabling has not received the attention it deserves.

Horses are a quiet species. They prefer calm, and learn most efficiently in tranquil, familiar settings. Horses must know and be comfortable and secure in their environment to be able to learn as horsefolk hope them to learn. Horsefolk all know what we want from our horses, however in this paper I shall present the science of what our horses want and need from us, the science of equine behaviour. Equine behaviour is not only the basis of training and trainability, but also the very basis of equine health. To succeed in our endeavors with horses (whatever the our equine goals or pursuits), our horses are best served to receive what they preferentially need and want behaviourally, nutritionally, socially, physically, environmentally, visually, and metabolically. In order to properly care for horses and successfully teach and train horses, horsefolk must know horses. They must know who the gregarious grazers of the plains are. They must know how to properly socialize horses through their growth phase to ensure that their horses grow up to be horses. Horses raised out of the herd context are vulnerable to behavioural insecurities later in life. Most behavioural wastage is due to improper socialization and husbandry.

Rather than dissimilar to us, horses are much like us. In this talk, I will focus on humankind's social and communicative similarities to horses. As with people, strong social bonds develop between individual horses and groups of horses. This herd nature results in intense social pair and herd bonds. Horses need other horses. Horses require other horses for security, comfort, and behavioural health. Horses need friends throughout their entire life, first their mother, and then their herd. Today’s domestic horse needs horse friends and human friends, although horses do retain the wherewithal to survive just fine without horsefolk. Horses need friends so preciously and constantly, that horses allow horsefolk to substitute as friends. This is because man shares a sociality with domestic horses. We speak their gesture language, and horses speak ours. We share a language of movement.

Domestic horse is no longer man’s prey, and has not been for thousands of years. Horse has been brought into the circle of humanity, along with a dozen or so other domesticates. Horse and man have co-evolved together for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years. Each knows the other, well.

The importance of constant locomotion is paramount to appreciating equine behaviour and learning. Locomotion. Horses need movement. In addition to friendship, they require near-constant movement. Interdependence exists between horse health and locomotion. Horses evolved to be near-constant walkers and grazers. The last place a horse evolved to be is alone in a stall. Despite domestication and selective breeding for docility and captivity, horse health remains dependent on locomotion. Locomotion is inherent to grazing. Locomotion is inherent to digestion, to respiration, to metabolism. If horses are not allowed to move about freely and socialize with other familiar horses grazing and chewing as they evolved to do, they become troubled. Horses deprived of locomotion and constant forage ingestion develop strategies to maintain the motion and oral security they feel they need to survive. 

The primary premise of equine behavioural health is this: In natural settings, horses walk and graze together with other horses two thirds of the time. They take a step and graze, then another step or two grazing and moving along, always observing their surroundings, grazing while in touch with other members of the herd unless playing, dozing or sleeping under the watch of others. Horses that are not afforded the opportunity to graze and walk much of the time take up with behaviours to replicate essential locomotion. When stabled, some of the horse's long-evolved survival behaviours become unwanted and unwelcome.

Horses require friends, forage, and locomotion to stay healthy and productive. In Alberta, these requirements are easy to fulfill, as this is the geography and environs that the most recent predecessors of Equus caballus evolved. Stabling is what deprives horses of friends, forage, and locomotion. Although convenient for horsefolk, stabling is inconvenient for horses. Horses are best served to have their needs re-created in the stable. Once our horses behavioural needs are understood, appreciated, and fulfilled the learning and training can begin.

Domestication of the horse by (with) man seems to have been facilitated not only by a shared geography, but also by a shared sociality that uses mutual communication and teaching principles, thus allowing the training and shaping of horse behaviors by man. Trainability! Training up horses to our desires is what fascinates horsefolk. So how can this be that man can slip in as horse’s friend? Horses utilize kinetic empathy to facilitate communication. They communicate information to each other (and to horsefolk) via gestures, behavioural patterns, pressures, conditioned reactions, and movements. 

Due to convergent evolution, this quiet gesture language can be applied by horsefolk to have horses do their bidding. When spoken correctly, horses understand what people want them to learn, and they learn willingly, provided they were allowed to be taught to learn by their dams. Horses understand the language of horsemanship, and it is a language taught to them by horses, and used to communicate with both horses and people. Horses are not only born to communicate and learn, it is in their nature to appease others, to please them. With these characteristics, the population of horse that took to following pastoral man around became the ideal domesticate. Horsefolk can express kinetic empathy that horses consistently respond to if the movements are correctly taught to the horse and consistently applied by the horseperson.

Please appreciate that just how the horse's mental processes are similar to the human cognitive processes is not clear, and may never be. Horses think about what is important to them. They learn what they need to survive. They adapt to horsefolk and the restrictive environments horsefolk impose upon them.

Care must be taken not to give horses either too much or too little credit for their thinking and reasoning capabilities. The consequences of incorrect assumptions can result in exceeding the horse's adaptability, which results in health and behaviour issues. 

Horses have emotions and feelings that may or may not be comparable to man's. Insight and intelligence cannot be scientifically measured just yet, it seems. Horses do have the mental capacity and behavioural flexibility to successfully survive and function both within and beyond man's realm. Horses can survive in close proximity to man, as well as completely without him. This requires complex, adaptable, flexible, and efficient intelligence and behaviour.

The traditional training of horses utilizes negative reinforcement. Pressure is applied, and then released when the horse gives the correct response. So then, pressure followed by release to the desired response is negative reinforcement. 

Positive reinforcement is adding something, such as food or a rubbing reward. Positive punishment is adding punishment, a kick, jerk, or whack.

Once again, negative reinforcement is pressure and release, a certain pressure is applied, and when the horse offers a move in the direction of what is requested, the pressure is released. Negative reinforcement is how most horses are trained, and the negative does not imply anything negative, only that the pressure is applied and then removed when the correct response by the horse is answered. Positive reinforcement can be layered upon negative reinforcement. After the horse responds to the cue and pressure is released, a positive reward can be added, a verbal acknowledgement or a rub, or a food treat. Both negative and positive reinforcement are forms of operant conditioning, sometimes called instrumental conditioning. Operant conditioning is how horses are initially trained, and operantly taught responses can be modified by classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is conditioning by association. The rein cue to stop can eventually be replaced by a seat cue, for example. The rein and seat cue are given together for a time, and then the rein cue is dropped and no longer needed.

The dam teaches the foal how to be a horse using all these training and teaching techniques, and as do humans when they train horses in later life.

Shared sociality. Kinetic empathy. 

Horses are horses. Folk are folk. Horses are domesticated. Horses and humans live together, and have for some time. The two species share many aspects of living, including communication and learning.

For behavioral and organic health horses require friends, forage, and locomotion...and lots of each mixed together, it seems. Play, sleep, constant nipping and chewing, water, salt, and more roughage and forage, especially in the form of grasslands and appropriate pasture. They like the open view, so as to be ever vigilant and constantly knowing of their surroundings.

When any of the three (friends, forage, locomotion) are lacking, health and welfare issues develop.

Kinetic, horses are kinetic. If not allowed movement they devise the movement they require for normal function of all of their systems and physiologic functioning.

Locomotion is integral to behavioural and hoof health. Horses need to move on a near constant basis, yes they do. Breathing, digestion, musculoskeletal function, and hoof health depend on movement.

Rhythm and balance, effective training requires accurate application of the rhythm and balance of locomotion. Timing is what engenders respect. Getting the feel of a horse's movement is necessary to properly apply and release cues, not to mention the refinement and shaping of requested locomotions.

We seek timing, balance, and feel with horses to establish connection, communication, and confidence. Confidence is consistency.

But even this does not help unless our horses have adequate if not constant friends, roughage, and locomotion. To understand how horses stay healthy, we need to understand how horses heal. Restorative healing of physical and behavioural problems in Equus caballus is accomplished in the same fashion that appropriate socialization is accomplished, in the herd, grazing setting.

Restoration strategies that recreate the horse's social grazing preferences facilitate and potentiate horse healing. Appropriate healing of many equine maladies is encouraged when the veterinarian provides appropriate initial treatment and subsequently carefully facilitates a scenario to provide the horse with abundant forage, friendship, and locomotion. 

Grazing pasture in an open setting with other horses, when appropriately orchestrated, has the potential to provide the most profound and often the most cost-effective healing of musculoskeletal infirmities and injuries. For conditions allowed to progress to lameness, time is required, often months. When musculoskeletal conditions are detected early, before lameness ensues, short-term rest and restorative strategies encourage solid healing (days to weeks). Both long and short term healing are enhanced when the horse is content with the forage, friendship, and locomotion resources. Avoid unnecessary restrictions to locomotion whenever feasible.

The earlier inflammation is detected, the shorter the time period is required to heal. Healing in a social-grazing setting is a long-evolved trait of the horse. Horses acclimated to herd and pasture settings during their development respond best to restorative healing. 

Horsefolk need to take special care not to exceed the horse's adaptability regarding stabling and healing. 

Horses require a sense of comfort and security for physical and mental restoration (and maintenance). An adequate social grazing environment, or appropriate facsimile thereof, often provides the most comfort to the most horses. Horses provided with adequate socialization throughout their upbringing are most responsive to these strategies. For horses, comfort and security come from friendship, forage, and, most-critically, a near-constant casual locomotion. Young horses and newborns learn to be horses from the dam and herd, and foals are best served to develop with horses in an appropriate grazing environment, as well. Horses learn to socialize, communicate, graze, locomote, run at speed in close company, play, smell, balance, move, and compete from their mother along with the herd members.

Corral or stall rest is often counterproductive to healing, as it deprives horses of all three healing essentials. Horses heal efficiently in a social grazing setting, not one of isolation and deprivation. To a horse, restoration, from the word rest, ideally implies grazing open country in a herd setting with abundant environmental resources; appropriate grasslands to graze and walk, salt, and appropriately placed clean water. The properly managed social grazing setting with the open view is the environment in which horses evolved to thrive and heal.

Healthy physical and mental development are best actualized in a social grazing environment. Neonates rely on their dam for critical early learning processes, including sensual development, locomotion, and early mobility.  The development of agility, coordination and athleticism in early life is critical to subsequent mental health and soundness. Abundant social contact, grooming, sleep, play, athletic development, and social bonding occur during early herd life. Horses rely on constant contact and frequent interactions with other horses for healthy mental and physical development. 

Opportunities for the abundant expression of normal equine behavior and motion promote healing. 

Unfortunately, healing opportunities of this sort are not available everywhere, especially in the more urban equestrian settings. Space and grazing limitations restrict healing opportunities. In these scenarios, the horse's preferences have to recreated with carefully designed and implemented enrichment strategies that provide some fashion of near constant forage ingestion that allow oral and physical and movement and motion. Stabling scenarios often restrict social expression and sensual contact. Horses are sensitive to these deprivations, which result in stress, which complicates and delays healing. 

Locomotion is essential for both horse health and healing. 

Husbandry, healing, and rehabilitation nearly always benefit from appropriately managed and free choice locomotion strategies that are constantly tailored to the horse's healing process. Locomotion is required not only for normal healing, but for normal digestion, respiration, hoof health, circulation, and all other physiologic functions of the horse. Stall rest is at the expense of many systems, especially the hoof and metabolic systems. Digestion and respiration are compromised by confinement and restriction of movement. Metabolic, digestive, circulatory, hoof health, musculoskeletal, and nervous, systems, as well as the all other systems and functions of the horse, are dependent upon adequate and appropriate locomotion for normal functioning and/or healing. 

For horses that are hospitalized, paddocked, stabled, and corralled; active implementation and re-creation of the social pasture setting is necessary to maintain health and promote healing. The absence of abundant forage, friends, and locomotion are detrimental to a stabled or hospitalized horse's health, if not welfare. Medical conditions are apt to deteriorate in the face of the deprivations created by stabling and hospitalization. 

Stalled horses not only heal poorly, they learn and train poorly. Locomotion, social, and forage deprivations create problems for horses. In addition to appropriate medical treatment, veterinarians and stable managers must creatively provide horses with abundant socialization, forage, and locomotion to maintain health and facilitate healing. 

Horses also heal horsefolk, and those horsefolk that implement these healing strategies often experience a sense of healing themselves, it seems. The human/horse bond runs deep. Domestication of the horse is a co-evolving evolutionary process. The human perspective is being shaped by the horse's perspective these days. Appreciation of the science of equine behavior and equitation is a welcome change for the horse after centuries of considerable subjugation. 

Dr Gustafson is an equine veterinarian, veterinary behaviorist, and novelist. DrSid provides equine behavior consultations to help recreate the needs and preferences of horses in training and competition to promote willing partnerships and winning combinations.