Changes in management and education can transform how horses experience short-term separation

We hear time and again that it’s better for horses to live in groups, not alone. Yet we can’t take a private lesson, enter the competition ring, or go to the veterinary clinic with a whole herd or even a favorite buddy.

So what’s a conscientious horse owner to do? During short-term separation how do you ensure horses meet that deep-rooted need for social bonds without creating a welfare and safety crisis?

The Buddy Sour Horse

To start, let’s address terminology—which matters more than we might think, say our sources. People often label difficult-to-separate horses as buddy sour.

“This is yet another example where our language lets us down and seems to subconsciously blame the horse—a bit like the term vice implies a fault in the horse, when behaviors are typically a response to management problems,” says Claire Ricci-Bonot, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at INRAE in Nouzilly, France. “For a species with strong intraspecific group bonds, being in a group means safety and survival.”

The more appropriate term to use would be separation anxiety, she says, likening it to how people feel when they’re lovesick or missing a dear friend. “Separation anxiety isn’t simply about being alone,” she says. “It’s the loss of an attachment figure.”

Recognizing Horses’ Social Needs

As herd animals, horses rarely isolate. They would be prime targets for predators if they did, Ricci-Bonot says.

Within each large group, horses form close relationships with one to three others. They walk and graze beside each other and sometimes groom one other. These bonds are associated with biological changes—
synchronized cardiac activity, for example, and fluctuations of hormones such as oxytocin (the bonding or love hormone). “So, when they’re separated, it’s likely to cause quite a lot of stress for them,” she says.

Across thousands of years of domestication breeders don’t appear to have selected for easy-to-separate horses, she adds. That means separation anxiety remains a deep-rooted trait in modern horses, for both those who leave and those who get left behind