Human Exercise Faces Vs Horse Stress Faces

“Human athletes often look angry and in pain when under physical strain for sport!”

The age old excuse that is so often brought up when people discuss the prevalence of pain and stress faces in competition horses.

So let’s dive into this and point out some of the flaws with this argument as a deflection away from needed discussion about sport horse stress and why we need to be looking at how to mitigate it.

First and foremost — human athletes consent to sport. Even if they ARE in pain, they’ve made the express decision of their own accord TO compete and can opt in or out at any time.

Horses do not have the same privilege, in fact, when they exhibit behaviours that serve as their “no, I don’t want to do this” they are often punished for it and such behaviours are labelled as disobedience and disrespect.

This comparison would only really be relevant if everyone in the horse world practised consent based training and didn’t continue to push when horses tried to say no and certainly didn’t opt to physically punish horses when they try to resist engaging in wanted behaviours.

If consent were prioritized in horse training, then we could MAYBE argue that horses make the choice to compete despite physical discomfort / are merely making a “focus” face due to physical strain.

Also, what we aren’t going to do is claim that horses do consent because if they “didn’t want to do it, they wouldn’t” as there’s already been some studies showing there’s absolutely no correlation between obedience and lack of stress or a desire to participate.

Secondly, humans are predators. Horses are flight animals. It is in the nature of predators to engage in more physical strain to seek certain outcomes whereas flight animals are natural energy conservers.

Flight animals also, if anything, seek to mask pain and discomfort, because making this outwardly obvious makes them an easy target for predation by signalling some level of weakness.

So, when they do start to show clear discomfort, more often than not, it is the indicator of a more severe level of discomfort, rather than something that should be immediately shrugged off as nothing.

Thirdly, at this point in research, we have enough studies that use biological markers, such as blood and saliva cortisol levels to link certain horse behaviours to stress and pain. Given the fact that they are actually testing for stress hormones, this removes the level of bias or personal perception that may be present when you are simply only looking at outward behavior .

On top of this, there have been equine pain studies where researchers have looked at the faces of horses who have known pain issues before and after treating such pain with pain blockers like lidocaine and they have tracked the results reliably to conclude what behaviours are likely to be associated with pain.

As horse advocates, we need to be really careful how quickly we write off the discomfort of a being that is not ourselves, especially one that has no voice, because it is easier to air on the more favourable side for ourselves. It is tempting to shrug things off if acknowledging their presence seeks to potentially disrupt our ability to use the horse for desired purposes.

It is much harder to look at situations critically when they serve to cause us personal discomfort and potentially alter the way we view the sport as a whole.

But, it is necessary, and in order to be excellent horse owners, we need to do the uncomfortable work that is checking our own biases and not always taking the easy and comfortable way out.

Currently, there is no literature that supports the idea that like humans, horses may exhibit pain and stress faces simply due to physical strain and focus. There are some studies that see a smaller rise in cortisol due to the stress of exercise, which is normal, but there are thresholds that are normal for strenuous exercise versus an indicator of a higher, more chronic level of stress.

There are also numerous studies on elite sport horses at this point that find there to be high levels of stress associated with competition. Because of this, it is absolutely imperative that we start to look deeper and talk about what we can do to address this and lessen the level of stress that they may be under.

This shouldn’t be viewed as an attack on the industry as a whole because we have the capacity to change and develop with the times and use modern research to better the way in which we go about things for the sake of our horses.

The willingness to do so is the mark of a good horse person.

So, here is your encouragement to lay into the discomfort that is accepting that the way we have been taught to look at a lot of things, and the excuses that we make may be harmful to our horses.

The level of discomfort that we feel in starting to accept the fact that horse stress is much more prevalent than what we may like to admit, is absolutely nothing compared to what so many horses go through, completely unheard by their handlers.

We owe it to them to be a little bit uncomfortable in the pursuit of knowledge that will allow us to be better horse people to them.