26/08/2025
👏👏
Mares are horses too 🐴
If we put 2 horses side by side showing the same stress behaviours, but one was a gelding and one was a mare, I guarantee being “hormonal” would be very high on the list of people’s explanation of the mare’s behaviour. While the gelding may have ulcers, kissing spine and other sources of pain thrown onto the table, its almost like mares are seen as a different species.
I find the way we speak about mares can have a particularly nasty under-tone, no doubt stemming from the misogyny ingrained into all of us from a young age. It leaves a really sour taste in my mouth watching people laugh at distressed horses “haha she’s so sassy, little witch!” who are just desperately trying to communicate their discomfort.
It is so normalised that mares are "grumpy" that we actually highlight the ones that aren't by saying they're "not mareish". We literally think its normal for mares to be stressed and upset and that's just how they are. I hate the term "mareish".
I have a client who’s horse started napping and rearing, after a basic trot-up and palpation of her back, for some reason I still cannot fathom, she was prescribed a course of Regumate “to see if it helped”. Regumate is not something we should be giving to horses lightly and with absolutely no solid evidence of hormonal issues, but I hear of this happening commonly when we have a mare who is showing behavioural issues.
Upon assessing this mare I could see she was on a very restricted amount of forage and also didn’t have adequate muscling to carry the rider comfortably. She was scoped and diagnosed with stomach ulcers, we of course implemented management changes then worked on building her body up again. The napping behaviour never returned as now she was comfortable. This was such a simple, basic deduction from assessing this horse, and yet we jumped straight to a hormonal issue and disregarded anything else simply because she was a mare.
I am of course not saying mares cannot have hormonal issues. This idea of “oh she’s just hormonal”, okay, if that is the case she is likely uncomfortable, perhaps she is in pain and she is not up to training today, it is not a justification for ignoring the horse and carrying on. Grumpiness and irritability usually come from pain and stress, it is not stand-alone. I know if I’m feeling grumpy and irritable I want to be left the hell alone.
Another thing to note is that often horses who are having hormonal issues improve hugely when we improve their management to be more species-appropriate and reduce their chronic stress-load, just like us.
This is absolutely not a generalisation of all mares, but I have anecdotally found that mares tend to be quicker to express how they’re feeling, which I’m sure plays a huge part in their unwarranted “difficult” reputation. They’re just harder to bully.
Have any of you had your concerns dismissed because your horse happens to be a mare? 🐴
Picture is of a much younger me with a beautiful mare I had on loan called Zerlina, she was sweet, kind and gentle with both people and other horses, just like all mares can be if given the opportunity.
