Hillydale Horse Welfare and Research

21/10/2025

Steps backwards for horses thanks to the organisation that claims that the welfare of the horse is at the centre of everything

FEI Jumping proposes a rule to let bleeding horses continue competing — reversing a welfare safeguard and testing the sport’s social licence.

21/09/2025

18/09/2025

Fantastic talk from the recent International Society for Equitation Conference by Rick Hester who is in charge of animal behaviour at the Cheyanne Mountain Zoo in the Colorado.

While not directly about horses, there's a great deal in here that we can take away and apply to how we manage, train, relate to and think about when we interact with our horses (and dogs, cats etc).

Take home message- when working out what our horses want and need, we need to consider things from their perspective.

What they evolved to want more or and what they evolved to want less of. Rather than just from our own perspective of what we want them to do for us.

Rick is an extremely engaging speaker and really knows his stuff. And there's plenty of videos of animals doing interesting things.

CLEVER HANS LECTURE ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENTS WITH REASONS TO BEHAVE Rick Hester Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA [email protected] A ch...

14/09/2025

What is the role of the aversive stimuli we use in equitation- in negative reinforcement?

To create the opportunity for reinforcement.

That is the sole purpose of using bits, halters, spurs, whips, our legs, some forms of seat cues.

To make the horse uncomfortable, cause pain often, for the sole purpose of removing that discomfort/pain when they perform the behaviour we want them to.

The contrast between the discomfort/pain and the removal of that discomfort/pain-the relief, produces the reinforcement when the discomfort/pain is removed.

This is what makes horses repeat behaviour that allows us to control them.

The deliberate use of equipment that causes discomfort/pain for the purposes of creating the opportunity to escape that discomfort/pain is the basis of equitation.

We know this is true, because we can so easily gain control of horses' behaviour by exposing them to stimuli whose characteristics they want to escape.

They rapidly learn to repeat behaviours that permit them to escape the discomfort/pain caused by those stimuli.

We can call it light, we can call it communication, we can call it a conversation, a dialogue, we can call it refinement. We can even call it pressure. Pressure that causes discomfort and pain.

We can say that it's needed to "help" horses "carry themselves correctly", to stay engaged, focus their attention, to accept the contact, to dance, to perform.

We can label it all kinds of comforting terms that hide the reality of what the horse experiences. Discomfort and pain that it wants to escape. Even when it is tired, confused or scared.

The sole purpose of the aversive stimuli we use in equitation is to create the opportunity for reinforcement.

It's as simple as that.