Identifying risk factors for conflict behaviours in Canadian riding lesson horses by Caleigh Copelin

Summary

This detailed transcript discusses the welfare challenges faced by Canadian lesson horses, highlighting the physical and mental stresses they endure. Kay Cin, a PhD candidate, presents a comprehensive study on the management and behavior of lesson horses in Canada, emphasizing key risk factors associated with conflict behaviors such as bucking and kicking. The study involved a survey of riding facilities across Canada, revealing correlations between herd sizes, equipment use, workload, and horse behavior. The results suggest that management practices significantly influence both positive and negative behaviors in horses, with larger facilities and certain equipment leading to more conflict behaviors. The findings aim to guide better management practices to ensure horse welfare and rider safety.

Highlights

• Lesson horses face unique welfare challenges compared to leisure horses 😟.
• Key concerns include vertebral issues, aggression, and stereotypic behaviors in lesson horses 📉.
• Smaller herds tend to have fewer conflict and more affiliative behaviors with horses 🌈.
• Increased workload correlates with more conflict behaviors among horses 🕒.
• Use of equipment like crops and spurs is too common and linked to negative behaviors ❌.
• There's an urgent need for improved management practices to enhance horse welfare and rider safety 🛡️.

Key Takeaways

• Lesson facilities are essential to the equine industry despite the challenges they pose for horses 🐴.
• Research reveals that lesson horses show more physical and mental stress than leisure horses 😞.
• A survey identified key management practices influencing horse behavior, highlighting areas for improvement 📈.
• Smaller herds show more positive and fewer conflict behaviors compared to larger herds 🌟.
• Equipment like crops, spurs, and restrictive tack are linked to increased conflict behaviors 🚫.
• There's a need to balance workload to prevent stress-induced behaviors in lesson horses ⚖️.

Overview

The talk by Kay Cin, a PhD candidate, delves into the welfare challenges that lesson horses in Canada face, focusing on the risks posed by current management practices. Lesson horses are crucial yet face significant physical and mental stress compared to leisure horses. Their mental and physical state can lead to conflict behaviors, posing risks to rider safety and facility reputation.

Through a comprehensive survey conducted across Canadian riding facilities, Kay Cin identifies several risk factors for these behaviors. The survey reveals that larger herds are associated with increased conflict behaviors while smaller herds show more positive behaviors. Equipment such as crops, spurs, and restrictive tack are highlighted as contributing factors to negative behaviors.

The study emphasizes the need for better management strategies that focus on the well-being of lesson horses. As the second phase of this research moves forward, there is hope to provide more concrete data on how to mitigate these welfare concerns, ensuring that lesson facilities operate ethically and safely, benefiting both horses and riders.

Identifying risk factors for conflict behaviours in Canadian riding lesson horses by Caleigh Copelin Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 for our next speaker we are going to have Kaye cin come up she has a PHD candidate with Dr M's lab in the department of minimal bioscience so we can all Lear all right hello everyone
• 00:30 - 01:00 you guys hear me all right right as we all know lesson facilities are critical to the development and sustainability of the horse industry they provide introductions for so many people into the world of horses and riding in 2010 $400 million was spent on writing lessons in Canada and Facility Owners are reporting continuously increasing demand for these services oh dear
• 01:00 - 01:30 um sorry there and I need to share sorry folks okay good now 51% of Canadian Stables offer riding lessons lesson horses up 2.3% of the total Canadian horse herd
• 01:30 - 02:00 but despite the important role that these horses play in our industry they face some really significant welfare challenges research has found that when compared to Leisure horses lesson horses demonstrate significantly higher levels of severe vertebral issues equipment related wounds aggression towards humans and stereotypic Behavior even at rest lesson horses rank moderately high on the horse Grimace scale and are more likely to be seen displaying backwards facing ear positions or depressed like ERS lesson horses have also been found
• 02:00 - 02:30 to have pessimistic cognitive biases all of this suggests A reduced state of welfare in these horses both mentally and physically now this can manifest in a lot of ways but a key concern of ours is behavior conflict behaviors like bucking rearing and kicking out are often used as indicators of a horse's mental or physical state these behaviors can arise from Pain stress fear confusion restrictive tack incorrectly utilized training cues and more now these well
• 02:30 - 03:00 challenges that I mentioned previously which can lead to a lot of these states like pain stress fear may put lesson horses at a higher risk than other types of horses per for performing these conflict behaviors now these behaviors are a problem because they can threaten Rider safety and negatively impact a facilities social licensed to operate however in addition to conflict Behavior we can also look to affiliative behaviors to give us insight into a horse's mental or physical state as well as social or play behaviors research suggests that taac engagement with
• 03:00 - 03:30 handlers can be enjoyable to horses and may suggest they feel positively about their handlers and of course the expression of behaviors such as Alo grooming and different types of play can indicate positive states of welfare as well what we have here is the first part of a two-phase project which seeks to better understand the various the impact of various management practices on the behavior of lesson horses in Canada our major objectives were to gain a better understanding of current lesson horse management Trends across the country then use this information to identify
• 03:30 - 04:00 potential welfare concerns risk factors for conflict behaviors and management strategies that were associated with expressions of positive behaviors to do this we put together a survey of writing lesson facilities across Canada it consisted of 83 possible questions inquiring about respondent facility and lesson horse herd demographics horse Behavior Tac use and workload housing and nutrition uh and professional and paraprofessional use on Farm our question types were primarily multiple choice with some Licor scale and open-ended questions as
• 04:00 - 04:30 well we distributed our survey via ewine related social media groups email lists and news outlets in Canada our respondents were required to be the owner manager or head coach of a riding lesson facility we received 157 responses representing 1,567 working lesson horses an estimated 13.4% of the Canadian lesson hurt from there we used Univar at Monte Carlo estimates with 100,000 permutations that we took from two tailed Pearson's Ka Square test to identify associations
• 04:30 - 05:00 between our variables we're going to jump into some results here but I will preface this uh much like Quinn with only 12 minutes and 83 questions in our survey we don't have time to delve into all the results so we're just going to hit the highlights here I'm going to start with some descriptive statistics just to give you a sense of how the Canadian lesson industry currently looks our responded demographics were well in line with other demographic studies of the North American ewine industry shocking nobody I'm sure our respondents were primarily women with a completed postsecondary
• 05:00 - 05:30 degree y nobody's shocked uh and they had an average of 30 years of horse experience among them though it ranged from six to 60 years Hunter jumper was the most popular discipline uh followed by Dr and then Western Pleasure and horsemanship but a lot of facilities did report offering lessons in more than one discipline the average number of horses per facility was 10 though herd sizes ranged from 1 to 50 horses and stock
• 05:30 - 06:00 horses and ponies were the most common breed types used for riding lessons comprising of 34 and 24% of our sample respectively now Tac use of force plays a massive role in the experience of the ridden horse cavis and nose bands we found were the most commonly reported type of nose band followed by bridal without a noseband which was great to see restrictive nose bands were not exceedingly common but flash nosebands were the most common type of restrict restrictive nose band used in some capacity by 26% % of facilities now in
• 06:00 - 06:30 terms of bits snaffles Were Far and Away the most common uh used by nearly every facility hackamores or bitless Bridal were our next most popular type of bit followed by shank or leverage type bits when it came to additional equipment crop use was exceptionally common in lesen Barnes reported by 86% of our facilities spur use was less common but still reported by 39% of our facilities and standing martingales grass Reigns and side rains were the most commonly reported auxiliary rains though none
• 06:30 - 07:00 were reported particularly extensively now 80% of facilities reported offering their horses some form of additional therapies or bodyw work traditionally aimed at increasing soundness and comfort uh for example joint injections massage or laser therapy now 45% of facilities reported that at least one of their horses was receiving long-term pain medication such as nids in order to maintain soundness and serviceability of the horses but at most of these facilities it was more than one horse of those 45% of
• 07:00 - 07:30 facilities an average of 31% of their herds were receiving these drugs regularly to maintained functionality now the mean workload reported per horse on average day of work was just over two hours per day and the mean maximum workload for a horse per day was three hours and 15 minutes though both categories ranged up to eight hours per day at a couple of facilities now when comparing workload to the behaviors that our respondents reported seeing in their lesson horse horses we found that facilities with
• 07:30 - 08:00 longer average daily workloads of over 2 and 1 half hours per day were reporting increased levels of horses who bit their handlers or kicked out under saddle compared to those with shorter workloads now interestingly workload was also associated with herd size facilities with larger herds classified here as 13 or more horses uh reported longer maximum working hours for their horses generally over three hours per day but workload wasn't the only thing that herd size impacted in fact one of the most significant Trends we identifi within our results was the impact of herd size
• 08:00 - 08:30 on the behaviors our respondents were reporting facilities with smaller herds of one to five horses reported lower levels of conflict behaviors and higher levels of affiliative and positive behaviors these included horses approaching grooming and interacting with their handlers and making contact with them while held engaging in interactive play object play and all grooming and standing quietly for grooming and attacking up meanwhile facilities with larger herds of 13 or more horses reported lower levels of those behaviors and higher levels of
• 08:30 - 09:00 stereotypic and conflict behaviors these included oral and locomotive stereotypies biting handlers pinning ears on the ground and under saddle and bucking bolting and shying under saddle now in both cases mediumsized herds of six to 12 horses reported moderate amounts of each Behavior so this all suggests a uh an inverse relationship between positive and negative behaviors and her size a crop and spur use were also both associated with increased levels of conflict behaviors and reduced levels of positive behaviors facilities who use
• 09:00 - 09:30 crops reported higher levels of horses biting their handlers pinning their ears on the ground showing reactivity when tacking up and kicking out and bucking under saddle as well as lower levels of horses standing quietly for grooming and tacking up or grooming their Handler facilities who use Spurs saw higher levels of oral stereotypies in their horses and lower levels of horses interacting with their handlers or demonstrating interactive play restrictive Tac use was also associated with increased conflict behavor avior facilities who used Side
• 09:30 - 10:00 Reigns reported higher levels of horses pinning their ears on the ground and rearing under saddle facilities who used standing martingales reported higher levels of horses performing oral stereotypies evading Rider AIDS shying and kicking out under saddle and Facilities who use Flash nose bands reported higher levels of horses performing oral stereotypies kicking out at handlers on the ground and bolting under saddle they also reported lower levels of horses who voluntarily approached their handlers in the field or engaged in object play so what does this tell us about the
• 10:00 - 10:30 experiences and management of Canadian lesson horses well longer working hours were associated with conflict behaviors and that's not particularly surprising because the longer a horse has to work the longer they might be exposed to stressful or frustrating practices from beginner Riders and the less time that's available to them to perform natural behaviors However the fact that larger facilities were reporting longer working hours per horse despite having more horses at their disposal was a little bit surprising but can probably be attributed to the scale of a business a
• 10:30 - 11:00 facility with 50 lesson horses is likely making a majority of their income from riding lessons whereas a facility with five lesson horses may have multiple streams of Revenue besides riding lessons so they have less of a need to maximize their daily lesson output per day now these smaller facilities also reported fewer conflict behaviors and more affiliative behaviors in their herds here with fewer horses to manage it's likely that the operators of these facilities are just able to be more intimately in involved in their horses
• 11:00 - 11:30 day-to-day lives and this level of individual engagement could make it easier for them to identify and address issues as they arise sooner than a larger facility might be able to now one area of particular concern was the extremely high level of crop use and relatively high level of spur use reported by facilities the fact that this equipment is so common suggests that a lot of lesson forces are habituated to leg cues or as we say dead to the leg uh it's also possible that novice Riders just don't have the strength skill yet to cue the horse
• 11:30 - 12:00 properly so they need additional backup or as we've discussed before lesson horses are facing a lot of physical issues that could make them stiff sore or just generally reluctant to move forward but regardless of why facilities are choosing to use this equipment it's still a concern because of the prevalence of this because these pieces of equipment crops and Spurs are easily misused and aversive if they are misused particularly by novice Riders who don't necessarily understand the function of such equipment or have the skill to use
• 12:00 - 12:30 it correctly now it's possible that this may have led to the increased levels of conflict behaviors that we saw associated with crop and spur use and lesson programs restrictive Tac was also associated with conflict behaviors but here we get a bit of a chicken versus the egg scenario it's possible the horses are expressing these conflict behaviors in response to the restrictive Tac or it's possible that Tac has been chosen for them as a result of previously expressed conflict behaviors trying to suppress them and we can't say for sure from survey data alone
• 12:30 - 13:00 now in conclusion our results suggest that management does indeed have the potential to influence levels of conflict behaviors that we see in lesson horses specific risk factors include facilities with larger herds longer daily working hours the use of crops and Spurs and the use of restrictive tech for the next phase of this study we'll be conducting on Farm behavioral analyses of lesson horses during work and with this we hope to validate some of the results from this survey while also mitigating some of the natural limitations of survey based data understanding how management impacts the
• 13:00 - 13:30 lived experiences and subsequent behavior of lesson horses will allow the lesson industry to move forward in a sustainable way that protects their social license to operate and Rider safety and ensures a good life for lesson horses before we wrap up here I'd like to say a big thank you to my adviser Dr Katrina mky my labmates and my generous funders for This research and of course for your attention
• 13:30 - 14:00 [Music] yes absolutely good okay so a crop uh easiest example I could think of would be on the racetrack they use a similar piece of equipment it's essentially a small whip that's held in the rider hand
• 14:00 - 14:30 uh and it is supposed to be used to reinforce the leg CU which usually asks the horse to move forward or move sideways uh but it's effectively hitting the horse on the side so it's an aversive uh piece of equipment that asks the horse to go forward or Hells the horse um and it's very easily misused by beginner Riders because if they don't have the strength to ask the horse correctly a lot of them may potentially just default to using the crops so hitting the horse to go forward as opposed to applying a lighter
• 14:30 - 15:00 pressure thank you very much some questions okay we're going to go here awesome presentation did you get the impression that owners netive or something that it happens and that's just how it is so the question was did owners perceive the conflict Behavior as negative or just of
• 15:00 - 15:30 the operation that's a great question so for the purposes of this survey we didn't look into owner interpretations of the behavior because we didn't want to ask questions that might influence the objective information that they were going to be providing us about just if they are seeing this behavior in their horses or not and how much uh it would be a really interesting thing to look into because it's been found that horse owners in particular are very poor at identifying uh Behavioral signs of stress and fear in their horses of which
• 15:30 - 16:00 conflict behaviors can certainly represent that uh particularly when those signs are more subtle though so maybe a conflict Behavior like evading our Rider's cues um you know essentially not doing what they have been trained to do that might be a more subtle conflict behavior that people may struggle to recognize compared to something like a horse rearing up which is fairly dramatic and obvious to those watching but that is not what's going on okay we're going to come over here and then I'll take one
• 16:00 - 16:30 [Music] online so the question was in the survey was there any way to know about the level ofing so we did talk talk about this as an issue and we opted in this survey to
• 16:30 - 17:00 not assess that only because we were asking owners to answer questions representing the majority of their herd and so to be able to distill down the individual situation of every horse would likely hurt our completion rate of our survey which we already struggled with because it was 83 questions however that is something we are going to be addressing in the second part of our study that we are doing this summer we're going to be looking at the difference between how a beginner Rider might impact a horse versus how an advanced Rider because like you said beginner Riders do a lot of things wrong
• 17:00 - 17:30 but you could argue that those lessons are a lot less physically taxing if the hes may be only trotting for 10 minutes as opposed to walk TR can or jump a course so we are definitely interested in that question and hopefully next year we'll have some fun results for you about that question says [Music] basar you guys great you keep asking the questions we're looking at in our next
• 17:30 - 18:00 study same thing uh it was hard for us to distill that from this specific question because some people were answering the survey um for 50 horses so we weren't able to break it down Enough by how much each individual horse can take and again I do believe uh that Rider level will likely play an um a role in that answer as well so maybe four hours of beginner work is fine but only two hours of advanced work or vice versa this is not me making any clear hypotheses right now um but that is
• 18:00 - 18:30 something we're going to be looking into as well as what are is what are the H's daily workloads looking like and how that potentially impacts the behavior that we're seeing there's very little research on what an appropriate workload for any horse is right now unfortunately so it's a new question that we're hoping to make some ground on what is the calling rate so how many
• 18:30 - 19:00 of the horses are being basically sold slaughtered yeah the question is what the is so culling rate isn't really a thing that we look at in uh lesson horse herds uh ideally none of them would be going to slaughter that uh wouldn't be the goal obviously some will end up being euthanized some will end up being sold or retired out of the herds and one of the questions in the survey was looking
• 19:00 - 19:30 into where lesson horses go when they retire or how owners make the decision to retire the lesson horse from work so some owners saying that you know it's a it's a physical issue with the horse saying the horse can't physically keep up with the demands while remaining sound anymore other owners may say it's a mental issue it's clear that the horse is either demonstrating behavioral issues or is just not engaged with it anymore so we have looked at uh the Reas reasons behind that in some common retirement
• 19:30 - 20:00 areas are people either uh choosing retirement forward for their horse or just keeping it on property but having it not work anymore uh as for specific calling rates that's not something that we calculated or asked about as most lesson facilities wouldn't be uh recording that information in the first place [Music]
• 20:00 - 20:30 all right our next speaker is he was a PhD candidate in Dr Mason's lab in the department of integrated biology please Jo in