18/09/2026
🐴 Understanding Our Horses: The Science Behind Equine Welfare 🐴
A fascinating study to share with our Cannington Equestrian Centre community! 📚
Our L3year 1 students had a clipping lecture this week from Simon @ Sharper Focus. He gave a fascinating talk about not only how to care for your clippers but also about the benefit of skin to skin contact with your horse and how to your emotional responses effect the horse when clipping. He sited this the study below.
Understanding how horses respond to their environment, training and handling helps us become more empathetic, knowledgeable riders and carers.
Let’s explore what the research tells us and how we can apply that knowledge to improve our horses’ wellbeing.
❤️ What does the research actually tell us?
A 2009 study investigated how a person’s nervousness affects their horse.
Researchers measured the heart rates of horses and their handlers or riders. Participants were told an umbrella would suddenly open, but it never did. Despite nothing happening, both the humans and horses showed increased heart rates.
💡 The takeaway: Our horses may respond to changes in our emotional state, even when we don’t realise we’re feeling anxious.
This is why developing self-awareness, calm communication and empathetic riding and being around horses is so important.
Before we ask our horses to learn, we should consider what we are communicating through our own posture, breathing and behaviour.
🐎 A better understanding of ourselves helps us build better partnerships with our horses.
📚 Read the research: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19394879/
Research: Keeling et al. (2009), Veterinary Journal.
The heart rates (HR) of horses and the people leading them (10 horses, 20 people), and riding them (17 horses, 17 people), were recorded in an indoor arena. The horses were Swedish leisure horses of mixed ages, s*x and breed. All except two of the people were female and all were of mixed age and rid...
