Do Horses Feel Pain?

I have your attention now, right?

If we agree that horses do, indeed, feel pain, then we must also agree on a few other things, by necessity. We kind of can’t have our cake and eat it too, if you see what I mean. So if we agree that horses can, indeed, feel pain, then we also logically need to agree to some other things.

If we agree that horses can feel pain, then we must also agree that therefore, pain could cause behaviors we struggle to understand, because horse’s can’t talk, they can only do actions. We must agree that pain can be chronic (constant). We must agree that being in pain can cause a cascade of other health and behavioral issues. We must agree that pain could cause a horse to be aggressive or to otherwise “act out” or behave extremely unpredictably. We must agree that pain can be “sub-clinical” and difficult to impossible to diagnose using all of today’s available technology.

I think it’s also important that we agree that the horse, as a prey animal, is designed to mask pain, so by the time it’s observable by the human, it’s likely pretty bad. A prey animal in pain is the weakest link in the group, and the most susceptible to predators. Even domesticated horses living in safety have this wiring.

A horse can be in pain other than “lameness”. They can have spinal pain, and headaches, cramps, and pain in multiple limbs at the same time. These “symmetrical lamenesses” (both hinds, both fronts, all four) are particularly difficult to diagnose.

Vets are great at their jobs, but their jobs have limits. Vets are taught to identify lameness via a head bob at the trot, and there are lots of other kinds of pain a horse can be in besides a single-leg lameness. Bodyworkers have their limits, farriers and trimmers have their limits, and dentists have their limits.

The first time I successfully (“successfully” meaning that a vet was able to document what I was seeing) identified a horse with lameness in all four legs was around the year 2000. The vet was able to document and isolate one or more causes for clinical lameness in all four of his limbs. This horse was a horse I had in for training, and he would lay down when he saw me coming with the saddle. When he arrived from his previous barn, he had a weird oily residue on his hair. I’d seen that before, on horses coming out of the hospital purging tons of drugs from their systems. But I digress….

The owners of this horse, once we discussed the vet’s findings, pulled him from my training and placed him with a different trainer. That trainer rode him.

About 75% of horses sent to me for training in the past 20 years or so have had physical issues that affect their training and their quality of life. I actually had to put a clause in my boarding/training contract that the owner had to agree to a veterinary examination if I requested one. Because people argued with me about that. And this is the primary reason I don’t train for the public anymore. I got to do very little training, really.

A horse in pain – I think that horse people have kind of developed a lot of ways to explain this away and make the pain behaviors the horse’s “fault”. It’s amazing how many (potential) pain behaviors we learn to ignore and accept, like biting at blanketing or cinching, tail swishing, general anxiety, herdboundness (horses in pain often really want to stay in a herd for safety), gate sourness (working hurts, so they want out), dramatic behaviors with truly no warning like bucking, rearing, and bolting, self-harming, trouble picking up feet for the farrier, a poor topline, “checking out”, chronic ulcers, chronic loose stool, inability to focus, hard to catch, trouble holding a hind lead, standing in weird postures, we could go on and on. In our horsey culture, we often chalk these behaviors up to the horse’s personality, or “quirks”. All these and many more have the possibility of being pain behaviors. They also have the possibility to be something else that is not pain related. This is why it’s tricky. Horses can’t talk.

I’m afraid that we, in some horsey cultures, actually work pretty hard to desensitize ourselves to horses’ pain. We get so we literally don’t even see the pain behaviors and markers. If every horse at the show or the trail ride is lame or in pain, none of them will stick out, if you see what I mean. Even worse than “normalizing” pain in horses is making fun of pain in horses. Imagine what that must feel like to the horse, to be crying out for help in the only way one knows how (actions), only to be jeered and laughed at (and have the video put on social media so strangers can have a laugh). This desensitization is very dangerous to the welfare of the horses in our lives.

And I’m not saying everything is pain. There are lots of things going on with horses that aren’t pain. Training has its place. Relationship has its place. Every health care option out there has its place. There’s genetics, there’s trauma and mental pain. There’s a lot to it. All I’m saying is if we agree that horses CAN feel pain, then we really need to also accept that they could possibly be doing ______________ because they’re in pain. That’s a place to start. I get it, it’s HARD to figure out, and sometimes impossible.

As soon as we say a horse is doing _______________ because he’s an *sshole, or because he’s just “quirky”, or he’s “lazy”, or he’s “dominant”, or it’s because of who the horse’s sire is, we stop investigating and asking questions, and the horse is silenced.

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