Page 118 - January 2022

EQUINE HEALTH
“You don’t want to add stress by yelling at the horse or punishing the behavior. It can be helpful to get a 24-hour video of the horse, because often the horse is only doing it when people are there. When you come into the barn and the horse is weaving, for instance, it appears that the horse is doing this all the time. It can be a relief for the owner or trainer to know that the behavior is simply related to feeding time or when there is someone in the barn,” she says.
There are some busy barns with people in them most of the day, and other barns where people
are present for a limited time. “Everything that’s going to happen for that horse in that whole day happens during that brief time. If it is a predictable behavior and you can assure the owner/trainer
that when everybody leaves the barn the horse settles down, comfortable instead of anxious, it can relieve their mind as they are trying to figure out
if there’s a way to minimize this behavior when people are there,” she explains.
“When we do 24-hour evaluations, we sometimes find that the horse anticipates the arrival of the person and starts the behavior. Whatever cues it might be—like the sun coming up—the horse begins the anticipatory behavior.” If you always come to feed the horse at a certain
time of day, the horse knows you’ll soon be there and starts anticipating feeding time.
“If the horse is a stall pacer or weaver, this activity often starts at that time every day. Many of these behaviors, especially cribbing, are associated with minor physical ailments, like gastric ulcers. People still argue about which comes first, the cribbing or the ulcers. Many of the behaviors, not only the stereotypies but also the gazing back toward the abdomen or turning the head to nuzzle behind their shoulder, occur when they are waiting for that highly palatable infrequent meal. They start cribbing and also start doing these other behaviors, which tells me that ulcers are bothering them,” she says.
Anything you can do to prevent or treat ulcers will generally reduce cribbing or locomotive stereotypies. “Some will do head nodding, and
as soon as the sun comes up, they start nodding their head. It is an anticipatory anxiety and a well-known phenomenon even in people who are incarcerated when nothing they can do can change things. They totally depend on other people coming and doing something, so there is anxious anticipation. For people, they are thinking, ‘It’s almost time. They are going to come and let me take a shower, or eat, or whatever.’ Perhaps the
confined or nervous person starts biting their fingernails or pacing, while the confined horse starts pacing in the stall,” says McDonnell.
With several serious problem horses that she took ownership of, as teaching animals, she tried to do a number of things—not only to help them but also to document their behavior for use in teaching. Some of those horses did better if their schedule was varied, but this is difficult to do because our human lives are usually on a schedule.
“If you don’t give these horses a fixed schedule they can anticipate, they often seem to be more relaxed until the immediate cues. I had one miniature horse that would circle in anticipation of feeding, so I put him on a schedule where the only thing that predicted my arrival to give him new hay was when I actually walked in the barn. We observed him on videotape and could see that he was quite comfortable until I walked in. Before that, we always interacted with him and fed him at a specific time each day, and he started what
I interpreted as anticipatory circling in the stall,” she says.
“You shouldn’t do a really random schedule; you can’t feed a horse at 2 p.m. one day and at 4 a.m. the next. It can’t that erratic, but if you can
Young horses are more apt to develop stereotypies when brought into an unnatural environment than are older horses.
116 SPEEDHORSE January 2022