369 Equus

12/10/2024

Steve just wanted to communicate with horses forever. He was born to work with horses.

11/30/2024

11/10/2024

Your thoughts?

"Look how much they love you.. you are amazing, they just want to be with you now..."
These were the comments I heard from the people who were there watching the scene together with me, the first time that I ever saw a trainer doing a Join Up with some horses in the roundpen. And at that time I was so admired too, looking how all of those horses finally decided to follow him. Because me too I believed them to magically respect him as a leader, me too I believed them to simply want staying with him....
While the truth is so different from all of that, as there's absolutely nothing magical about it, there's absolutely nothing beautiful about a human chasing prey animals around with the threat of a whip until they finally understand how to make the threat stop by following him. This has nothing to do with respect and this has nothing to do with a willing choice to be together. Instead, just for a change, it's only another coercive way to force an animal into submission by making him understand that he has no other choice but to give up and become obedient.
And please let's stop justifying this by saying that horses do it too with other horses, as first of all we aren't horses and so there's simply no way for us to try acting like them and then also because horses may surely chase each other to defend a resource, a territory or another horse, but they will never do it just to be bossy and for sure the horse being chased will never finally decide to happily follow the chaser around....
Please, let's stop believing the endless fairytales being told by the equestrian industry only to justify its goals, let's stop blindly believing everything being told just to sell new training methods and magical solutions 🧡🙏🏻

Picture credit: Fed Up Fred

11/09/2024

How do you wean a foal? at what age?

INDUSTRY STANDARD PREMATURE WEANING PRACTICES

Weaning is naturally gradual, whereby the physical and psychological bond between mother and offspring is ended. To date, there are numerous studies, across a wide range of species, showing the physical and mental harm that is done when animals are prematurely and forcibly weaned. The act compromises an animal's welfare and goes against best-practices for raising a physically and behaviourally healthy animal. Therefore, it should be avoided.

Premature weaning of horses (~4-7 months of age) is sadly still a common practice in the horse world. While young horses can physically be kept alive when weaned at this age, the practice is harmful in the short-term. It can also result in the creation of unwanted behaviour problems in the long-term.

While we have selectively bred horses to perform a wide range of activities for us, we have not been able to breed out the basic needs which they still share with their wilder relatives. Studying how horses behave under natural conditions gives us valuable information on how best we can provide for our domestic horses. For example, horses have evolved to need fulltime access to what I call the 3 F's of Friends, Forage, and Freedom: living in direct contact with other horses, having continual access to forage so that they can trickle feed, and having the ability to freely engage in a wide range of normal behaviours in their environment. When horses are denied access to one or more of these three F's, or when we interfere with their ability to engage in normal behaviours it results in stress, decreased welfare, and can result in the creation of unwanted behaviours.

To better understand the effects of weaning practices, researchers in France and Iceland examined how and when foals wean themselves when living under natural conditions. Of the 16 mare-foal pairs they observed, they found that all of the foals spontaneously weaned themselves at around 9-10 months of age. Two weeks prior to self-weaning, the mares and foals remained closer to one another than they did to others in the group, usually within 1-5 horse lengths of one another. Suckling bouts also didn't decrease in the two weeks prior to weaning, and the foals made no attempts to suckle once weaned. This self-directed weaning also caused no signs of stress to either party.

A frequent rationale for premature weaning is to preserve the physical condition of the mare. Interestingly, none of the mares in this study lost physical condition, despite the length of time mares and foals were together.

In summary, to quote the authors:

"Modern breeding practices generally impose strong constraints as compared to the conditions of development of foals in a more natural environment. One major aspect is the early artificial weaning, which is not just a stage of diet transition but also a stage of social separation. There is increasing evidence that such a practice, although carried out on a routine basis by horse breeders, leads to short- and in some cases to long-term severe negative outcomes.

There is therefore a clear need to better understand the factors at stake (e.g., cessation of milk intake, immature digestive system, maternal deprivation, absence of adult models, additional changes in feeding or housing…), to improve the domestic management of weaning and animal welfare."

You can read the full paper, 'Domestic Foal Weaning: Need for Re-Thinking Breeding Practices?' by accessing it at this link: https://tinyurl.com/PrematureWeaningHorses

Image by Hans Benn from Pixabay

11/06/2024

Horses can plan ahead and think strategically, scientists find

Team hopes findings will help improve equine welfare after showing cognitive abilities include being ‘goal-directed’

The old English proverb “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” has been used since the 16th century to describe the difficulty of getting someone to act in their own best interests.

Now, research by equine scientists suggests the use of this phrase has been inadvertently maligning horses for centuries.

Horses have the ability to think and plan ahead and are far more intelligent than scientists previously thought, according to a Nottingham Trent University study that analysed the animal’s responses to a reward-based game.

The horses cannily adapted their approach to the game to get the most treats – while making the least effort.

“Previously, research has suggested that horses simply respond to stimuli in the moment, they don’t proactively look ahead, think ahead and plan their actions – whereas our study shows that they do have an awareness of the consequences and outcomes of their actions,” said the lead researcher, Louise Evans.

The three-stage game involved 20 horses, who were initially rewarded with a treat merely for touching a piece of card with their noses. Then, in the second stage, researchers started switching on a “stop light”. The horses were only given a snack if they touched the card while the stop light was off.

At first, they ignored the light and carried on indiscriminately touching the card, regardless of whether or not the light was on.

But when, in the third stage, researchers introduced a penalty for touching the card while the stop light was on – a 10 second timeout during which the horses could not play the game at all – the team found there was a sudden and highly significant reduction in errors by all the equine participants. The horses started correctly touching the card only at the right time to get a treat.

“That timeout was enough to immediately get the performance out of them that we wanted,” said Evans. “That was enough for the horses to go: ‘OK, let’s just play by the rules.’”

Instantly switching strategies in this way indicates horses have a higher level of cognitive reasoning than previously thought possible. It suggests that, rather than failing to grasp the tenets of the game, the horses had understood the rules the whole time but, astutely, had not seen any need to pay much attention to them in the second stage.

“When there was a timeout for getting something wrong, they switched on and started paying attention,” said Evans. This behaviour requires the horse to think into the future, researchers say, and is very goal-directed, with horses required to focus on what they want to achieve and the steps they need to take to do this.

Evans hopes the groundbreaking study, which will be published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science, will help to improve welfare for horses. “Generally, when we start to think that animals may have better cognitive abilities than previously thought, their welfare does improve. But also, what we’ve shown is that, in training, you really don’t need to use aversive methods or anything too harsh to get really good performance out of horses.”

Copied from The Guardian Donna Fergurson July 2024

Photo is Humphrey. he is a handsome Saddlebred gelding with kyphosis and scoliosis. He is healthy and happy as a permanent resident of SaveTHeHorses.org in Cu***ng, GA.

11/03/2024

In honor of Steve Cook. This page will live on in his memory. We will always show kindness, compassion and patience to all equine.

Learn about horses from your heart to theirs. Horse cohesion will change your life.

10/29/2024

Louie spend much time over the years as Steve and I worked with horses and traveled picking up horses and donkeys, going to vet hospitals, spending time connecting with the animals and the earth. Louie was a great dog. Here are a few happy memories we shared. I know some of you remember Louie. I know Steve and Louie are exploring the forests of Heaven together. All we have are memories and they are precious.