In recent years there has been a lot of emphasis on behaviours that horses exhibit to indicate emotional state. Nowadays every man and his dog talks about when a horse licks and chews or doesn’t. People point out when a horse yawns or blinks or changes the position of their ears or swings their tail. There are so many tiny observations to make that tell a tale about the emotional and mental state of a horse.
These are important to know and keep track of because nothing a horse does means nothing. It all means something, even if we don’t know what it means. People have asked me how can we know what a horse is thinking. My answer is that they never shut up. They are regular chatterboxes, except they use body language instead of voice. Nothing means nothing when it comes to horse behaviours.
However, although every trainer and teacher in the horse world is talking about when a horse exhibits behaviours almost nobody understands them. People throw out theories that licking and chewing indicates XYZ, based on some questionable reports. Yawning is an indication of ABC and tail swishing is a telltale for MNO emotions.
That’s okay. These are theories and we should consider theories until they are proved to be wrong. But they are only theories and not yet proven facts. I have not seen an equine study that offered definitive proof of these theories.
But let’s put that aside for now.
The question I want to ask is why nobody (that I know about) talks about the quality of a horse's behavioural response.
For example, lots of trainers propose when a horse licks and chews it is a sign a horse is letting go of stress and starting to engage its brain to solve a problem. But not all licking and chewing is equal. Some licking and chewing is a lazy, slow movement of the mouth and tongue. While other times it is a frantic, agitated, frenzied activity. Yet, I have not heard a single trainer or behaviourist discuss the difference between a lazy licking and chewing and a frantic one. This leaves students to assume both behaviours are indicators of identical emotional and mental states.
Likewise, a horse can exhibit a lazy and relaxed yawn while at a different time, the yawn will display a tight jaw, almost no air being passed, and a frozen tongue. The ears of a horse can be pointed in interest at something to show strong focus. Yet at other times the ears can appear to be scanning back and forth at the object of its focus. There are many different ways a horse will blink its eyes. Sometimes it is a rapid series of blinks. Other times it will be a relaxed and lazy blinking. Yet other times, it will be a short burst of blinking followed by no blinking followed by another short burst. I think you probably get my point. Each behaviour has multiple variations.
Despite the variation of any type of behaviour there is a lack of acknowledgement of this by trainers and teachers. Students are left believing that a behavioural response indicates a set emotional and mental state of a horse no matter the pattern or energy of the behaviour.
I can’t have confidence in assuming that licking and chewing means XYZ when there is a huge variation in the way a horse licks and chews. It is highly unlikely that when a horse exhibits a lazy licking and chewing it has the same emotional and mental state as when it has a frantic licking and chewing.
It is my view that our best chance of knowing what is going on inside a horse is to look at the whole horse in context. I feel too much emphasis is being placed on isolated specific behaviours (like licking and chewing, yawning, blinking, etc), which is leading to misinterpreting the emotional and mental state of a horse. Instead, we should look at everything in context. There will always be more than a single behavioural indicator to tell us what is going on inside our horse. And each indicator has multiple variations which all mean different things to a horse.
Video: Look at how this horse is grazing. Is it hungry, relaxed, happy, stressed, troubled, scared?