21/02/2025
Have you heard of the horse 'grimace' or pain scale ?
It still amazes me that despite the vast amount of factual information at our fingertips on t'interweb that many horse owners pass off their horse’s facial expressions as 'grumpy' 'bitchface', 'moodymare' or worse some even resort to posting what they think are 'funny' videos on social media and yet sadly fail to recognise these as expressions of pain and find out the reasons behind why they are being presented.
Over the last few weeks I have been putting together training material for my forthcoming Equine Touch Foundation Courses and observation of the horse plays a huge part in our modality whilst working with the horse. Such observation I feel that not just students on the course but any horse owner should be made aware of in line with The Equine Touch’s own Mission Statement ‘To help horses by educating humans’
I have included below the Image of the 'Grimace' scale the full report can be downloaded from the link below and whilst this particular study was carried out on horses undergoing routine castration I feel it is an important one to get an idea of what we as horse owners should be looking for as signs of pain
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260950013_Development_of_the_Horse_Grimace_Scale_HGS_as_a_Pain_Assessment_Tool_in_Horses_Undergoing_Routine_Castration
In addition to this the notorious Dr Sue Dyson published her 3 year 6 phase study assessing over 400 horses known as the 'Pain Ethogram in the Ridden Horse' a catalogue of behaviours that can be used to spot potential pain in ridden horses, and has been so influential, in getting the awareness out into the horse industry. Dr Dyson's findings have shown that there is evidence that more than 47% of the sports horse population in normal work may be lame, that is almost half the horses that are out there competing but the lameness is not recognised by owners or even trainers!
‘Whilst an alternative means of detecting pain may be recognition of behavioural changes in ridden horses. It has been demonstrated that there are differences in facial expressions in non-lame and lame horses. The Ridden Horse Pain Ethogram (RHpE), also known as the Ridden Horse Performance Checklist, can be used to reliably predict musculoskeletal (MSK) pain that may not be obvious to even an experienced eye. The RHpE identifies 24 behaviours of a horse under saddle, which are often labeled as disobedient, disrespectful, or dishonest (such as reluctance to go forward, ears back, tail swishing, head tossing, bucking and so on)’
A very useful site that I came across whilst researching my presentation material is The Train with Trust Project which not only delves deeper into animal behaviour and communication in order to strengthen the horse human bond but has freebee downloads including a mobile field guide to the 24 behaviours and behaviour and observation checklists as well as a documentary and blog postings all of which can be found on the website here : https://trainwithtrustproject.org/
Feel free to share this post as it is essential to try and educate more horse owners about what the horse is trying to communicate as so often I hear the phrase ‘If only they could talk’ when quite often the horse is shouting in the only way they know how but the owner isn’t really listening.
