Wouldn’t it be great if we could take the guesswork out of determining our horses’ stress levels while we’re riding them? As it turns out, that might not be as far-fetched as it seems: Thanks to new wearable technology, researchers are on the brink of providing us with a reliable, objective way to monitor horses’ stress levels under saddle.

“The most common approach to evaluating mental state in horses is visual assessment of their behavior, but that’s subjective and time-consuming, so a new methodology is really necessary,” said Deborah Piette, PhD, of the M3-BIORES research team at KU Leuven in Belgium. Piette introduced her new technology at the 2016 International Society for Equitation Science conference, held June 23-25 in Saumur, France.

Piette and her fellow researchers have developed a wearable device that riders can place around their horses’ barrels like a heart monitor. This device does register critical information about heart rate, but an important distinction between the two is that the new technology connects via Bluetooth to a computer system able to separate the “stress” response from the “activity” response, said Piette.

“The presented methodology is based on the principle that a horse’s heart rate can be divided into three parts: basic metabolism, physical activity, and mental state or stress,” she said. “We can generally assume that basic metabolism remains fairly constant during a riding session, so our goal was to separate activity-related heart rate from that related to mental state or stress