THE CHRONICALLY SPOOKY HORSE
The Chronically Spooky Horse
Ever wondered why you can lead a horse around an arena and they are fine but when you get in the saddle they spooks at everything?
There are a number of reasons for this but I want to highlight one that is not well understood.
To understand this you need to be aware of the horse's visual field. In the attached graphic, I have shown the differences in visual field between humans and horses.
By looking at this you can see that horses have 4 x the amount of visual data they need to process and interpret. How they interpret it, will depend on how they are able to respond to their environment.
Therefore, all that visual field requires a lot of processing power! And that is not even considering all the other information coming from their senses they have to process as well!
When you are leading the horse around the arena and they are not worried about anything, they are showing you they able to roll through their visual processing easily and interpret they are safe.
They change when you get on their backs and start spooking because being ridden compromises their capacity to process. So, instead of being able to go through their processing sequence, it is being short cut and they start bouncing off the environment instead.
The most common things things that compromising the horses ability to efficiently process its environment include:
1. Confusion and conflict with the rider - when a horse is struggling to work out how to navigate what the rider is asking him or her to do.
2. Discomfort - When the horse is struggling to avoid discomfort created by the rider or from tack it is wearing eg. poor saddle fit or unbalanced rider.
3. Lameness - When a horse is lame it will adjust its gait or way of going and only a few types of lameness can be observe. Also, sometimes the weight of the rider can make certain problems worst such as back or stifle issues.
Therefore, many chronically spooky or shying horses stop being like this when their rider improves the way they ride and communicate; the source of the discomfort is removed; and lameness issues are resolved or managed.
Therefore, if you have a horse that is prone to being like this please consider these things. You might not have a "spooky horse", you might just have a horse that is uncomfortable or confused.
Thank you to both Kerry M Thomas and Janet Jones (Horse Brain Human Brain) for helping me see this connection.
