A new show ring and a new environment can equate to stress–and even poor performance–for your horse. Because according to Danish equitation scientists, the faster a horse’s heart rate in a new environment, the more likely he is to perform poorly.

New places are also not the ideal environment for teaching your horse a new trick, added Janne Winther Christensen, PhD, from the faculty of science and technology at Aarhus University in Tjele, during the presentation of her study at the 2011 International Society for Equitation Science (ISES) Conference, held Oct. 26-29 in Hooge Mierde, The Netherlands. As she and her colleagues discovered, not only do horses tend to perform better at home, they also tend to learn better.

Studying 25 Danish Warmblood geldings (aged 2 to 3 years) all pastured together, Christensen and her fellow researchers compared heart rates when the horses were being taught something new at home, and when they were being taught the same task again in a novel, competitionlike environment a month later. At both sites, the horses were trained to sidepass (crossover) when the handler cued the horse with a whip.

Before training started at each site, the researchers gave the geldings a basic "fearfulness test," in which they noted and rated the horses’ behavioral reactions in response to a surprise object. They also checked the basic cortisol (the "stress" hormone) level in the horses’ droppings while they were at pasture and observed their social rankings within their group to determine if that had any impact on learning and performance ability