Riders should keep horses’ natural tendencies in mind whenever they ride and across all stages of training, whether in an arena or outdoors | Photo: Photos.com

For you, it’s a work area. But have you ever thought of what an arena space is in the eyes of a horse? A grassless void, a place of separation from a herd, a place that has a “home base” and other areas worthy of careful exploration. Even if they’re used to “working” in that space, horses view arenas in the context of their own natural environment. Ethical training should take the horse’s point of view into consideration and allow the horse to express natural exploratory behavior in arenas, according to Canadian researchers.

Their study design and full details are described in their paper, “Sniff, look and loop excursions as the unit of “exploration” in the horse (Equus ferus caballis) when free or under saddle in an equestrian arena,” published in a recent issue of Behavioural Processes.

“We have demonstrated that the horse has a unique viewpoint of the (arena) area, revolving around a home base, and a specific behavior pattern, looping, that it uses to explore the arena,” said Candace Burke, BSc, MSc, of the Department of Neuroscience in the Canadian Centre for Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge, in Alberta, Canada