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What’s the Difference between a Vice and a Stereotypy?
Q.What is the difference between a vice and a stereotypy in horses?
A.My answer here might be all about semantics. However, choosing the correct word affects not only our precision in defining specific behaviors but also can affect our tone in how we address a behavior.
In the past, we freely used the terms “vice” or “stable vice” for all manner of things horses did that ranged from dangerous to just really darn irritating, including bucking, cribbing, and dunking hay in water buckets. And all these behaviors have evoked negative feelings, not only about the behavior, but about the horse himself. Some of these behaviors are products of the domestic environment, and some are learned
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Written by:
Nancy Diehl, VMD, MS
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