Felicity George - Understanding Equines

28/03/2025

Reminder - webinar on Monday. Booking at https://www.trybooking.com/uk/EOWH, hope to see you there

15/03/2025

My first attempt at a reel...

15/03/2025

An extract from our upcoming webinar - mainly discussing working with people here, but many other topics covered.

Booking at https://www.trybooking.com/uk/EOWH

11/03/2025

Booking at https://www.trybooking.com/uk/EOWH

Since ‘Applied Equine Psychology’ was published last summer, we’ve had quite a number of questions from readers. In this webinar, Dr Veronica Lac, from The HERD Institute®, puts some of these questions to the authors – Felicity George, Marie-Louise Holmes and Sharon Smith.

Discussions are wide ranging, touching on most of the topics presented in the book. Part of the webinar will present the pre-recorded session with Dr Lac and the authors. There will also be plenty of time for further discussion on the questions raised in the recording, and for new questions from webinar attendees.

Booking at https://www.trybooking.com/uk/EOWH

16/02/2025

07/02/2025

Lovely.

“It’s not pain, it’s just behaviour”

I saw a post with this sentence recently, it’s something I’ve seen a lot, and I have some ramblings to share. I don’t like the narrative of pain vs behaviour, as if our horses are either physically hurting or just choosing to do things we don’t like. This black or white thinking prevents us from investigating any other possible reason for unwanted behaviours, we stop thinking about what the horse is communicating immediately after the vet has left, if it’s not pain it must be choice right? Imagine if I said “it’s not behaviour, it’s just pain”, that doesn’t sound right at all.

Emotional discomfort is still discomfort.

Horses, like all sentient animals, have 11 major factors influencing mental well being. Physical needs being met is just one of those factors and even that includes more than just the absence of pain (think also of nutrition, sleep, shelter, water, thermal control etc ) [Franklin D. McMillan (editor), 2005. Mental Health and Well-being in Animals, Wiley-Blackwell] When we stop investigating behaviour after we have ruled out pain, we are turning a blind eye to everything else in our horses lives that is affecting their well being and as a result, damaging our relationships with them.

I recently have had to re evaluate my horses’ environment, he was showing signs of discomfort when coming in to be handled - pulling me to grass and being very overstimulated around food. I am confident he is not in pain, so it would be easy for me to just assume that he’s just being “muggy” and rude and only thinking about his stomach. But in reality, he’s doing all this because he doesn’t feel safe. His social needs have not been adequately met this winter; he was on restricted forage so didn’t have control over how much he could eat and when. He hasn’t been receiving a lot of mental stimulation as I’ve been busy and as a rehomed rescue his early experiences are still influencing his behaviour. There are many more factors influencing his behaviour and all are worthy of investigating and addressing so that he can feel safe again.

There is always, always a reason for every behaviour, good or bad. There is no such thing as “just behaviour”, all behaviours have a purpose and they are your horses only way of communicating with you!

If you are struggling with a behaviour problem, investigate pain. But then keep investigating, keep making changes to help your horse, let them communicate with you, help them feel heard.

Here’s a picture of Mr T not feeling happy because I hadn’t managed to resolve his emotional discomfort, I’ve been working on his environment and slowly but surely he’s starting to feel better, it takes time but it’s worth it for him ❤️

06/02/2025

It's published!

A study on Darcie, who some of you know in person, some through an EBA webinar -

A black mare stands adjacent to a fence. In the background there are trees and the ground is covered with tall grass. Abstract This case study focuses on a 12-year-old Welsh Section D mare with little known history. She initially presented with a catching problem, but this was fundamentally a fear o...

18/01/2025

We've had some lovely feedback on the book on social media - but not so many ratings/reviews where the book is sold.

So - we'd hugely appreciate your leaving a rating, or even better a review, if you purchased online - Amazon, 5M or any other sites.

Thanks!

23/11/2024

Thanks Sarah for getting to the heart of the EBA's Applied Equine Psychology Course (formerly the Applied Behaviour Course) - and we are delighted it adds value for someone who already has such extensive equine qualifications, knowledge and experience.

22/11/2024

Looking for anyone who'd be happy to help the EBA's professional trainees practice 'client conversations'. What would this involve? Talking to one of the trainees for around an hour over zoom about your horse. Ideal if you have some concern about your horse - whether it's to do with what they do, how they feel, where they live, your relationship with them...

As the focus is on the conversation, and this is training, no life or death issues!

Just message me if you'd be interested.

26/10/2024

Sharing for Rita Seery, in the last stages of her PhD at Queen's University, Belfast. If anyone in this field could complete this, before October 31st, that would be much appreciated.

Would be so grateful if this post could be shared. It is the last study of my PhD looking into the Horse-Human Bond.

Do you provide a service that helps people through horses? We are looking for equine assisted service practitioners to complete a survey exploring practitioner experiences and perceptions in relation to their understanding and knowledge of equine behaviour. The survey consists of 16 visuals and is best taken using a large screen device. This anonymous survey can be completed online by clicking on this link;

https://qubpsych.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8c9TGWvxuKkCDXM

Please feel free to share this survey with others and thank you in advance for your help

22/10/2024

Very exciting - a written interview with the wonderful Marc Bekoff about our book, Applied Equine Psychology. Just published in Psychology Today.

"Applied Equine Psychology" offers fascinating science-based insights into equine sentience, the mental well-being of horses, and how to help individuals in need.

12/10/2024

Well said Sharon Smith - EBA Registered Equine Psychology Specialist.

So much you could explore here.

'Train it to stand relaxed calmly in Park'... - we all know you don't need to train a horse to stand - they get the hang of this for themselves pretty quickly :-)

So, if we let go for the moment the objectifying terminology ('it' 'park'), it seems this is saying we can always train a horse to feel OK about a range of stuff we want to do to them. And further, that one technique, done correctly, can always achieve this.

This asserts that we can reliably alter the emotions of another sentient being. Not just alter their behaviour so that they stand when we want them to, but also feel relaxed and calm about it.

Not possible. We don't even have that much control over our own emotions...

I'll stop there for now :-)

This is a screenshot taken today.

Let’s look at this mature horse as if ‘it’ were a 2 year old child, because emotionally we can be pretty confident that there may be an approximation in regards to ability to control emotions. Remember horses have all the same emotional and learning centres in the brains as humans (Schmidt et al., 2019)

‘It’ is getting milk-teeth erupting and is new to the dentist. ‘It’ keeps trying to get out of the chair because they are scared. What would a good parent do?

Console, comfort, change the environment to not be so scary, take more time, wonder whether it was actually necessary today, or whether to try again later, hold their hand.

What would a good dentist do? Very much the same, and perhaps encourage curiosity in their tools and the room, offer a nice distraction (true overshadowing), use a numbing swab… any number of things… and - yes - they may not need to do a ‘full’ job today but instead do what they could to build trust and - above all - change the emotion.

So, the difference in my approach for a horse, compared to that in my screenshot, would be more like this dentist visit. But I would first think about how the horse might be feeling about what they believe will be done to them, and wonder whether these were realistic expectations of the owner for that individual horse, at that moment, in the place they are, and the situation in which they find themselves.

The owner and I need to find ‘the story that makes sense’ as to why the horse may feel unsafe, but that is only to help us decide what might help change the emotion, not to retrain around the ‘why’.

In no particular order, we may decide it is not so important a task (like mane-pulling) after all. There may be biopsychosocial improvements that may allow the horse to tolerate something, then a less-intrusive experiment/simulation will give us more information to work with. Maybe the owner will consider the vet, or physio, or saddle-fitter. Maybe a change of location, equine company, and any one of a multitude of options would help the horse feel safe enough to stand still. It depends.

If you are still struggling to see the difference in approach, now think how you might feel at a hairdresser, when you have no idea you had an appointment, and are taken there in handcuffs with your mouth taped shut. The last time you were there, someone was yanking your hair out by the roots. Now, every time you move your head away, you get it pushed back (gently). No-one has yanked out your hair this time, yet, but you suspect it’s coming.

So you try to leave, and the door is locked. They keep hold of the handcuffs and move you back and forth, sitting you down and then standing you up.

Still, no-one has yanked out your hair… yet.

You realise eventually that any attempt to escape is hopeless and so you just sit and let them do whatever they want to you, for as long as they choose. You have no say.

All they’ve done is push your head a bit, move you about, and lock the door. You behave ‘calm’ but are you really ‘relaxed’. And how do you feel about them?

Yep.

10/10/2024

20/09/2024

If you're thinking of getting a copy of 'Applied Equine Psychology' there's a great deal just now from Books - 30% discount and the other 70% to a great charity.