Horses are more relaxed when they’re around humans, especially when those people have no experience around horses, a new study finds.
Yet it seems horses do not distinguish between humans who have a mental illness and those who do not.
A recent study conducted by University of Guelph researcher Dr. Katrina Merkies tested whether therapy horses at Sunrise Therapeutic Riding and Learning Centre in Puslinch acted differently around people who had post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) versus those who did not, though they looked and moved the same way.
“We managed to find four pairs of human subjects and we were able to match them very well to the physical characteristics,” Merkies said. “We had a professional acting coach so he was fantastic in really helping to prep the control subjects to move physically in the same manner as the PTSD subject did.”
The control subjects emulated the actions of their counterpart with PTSD so the horse would be seeing the same visual image.
The research team then looked at behaviour and physiological characteristics like heart rate and cortisol levels to measure the horse’s response.
What they found was that horses don’t act any differently with people who have PTSD and those who don’t.
“What we did find, not surprisingly, is that horses did react differently if there was a human in the pen versus no human in the pen,” Merkies said.
“So any human was great. [The horse] moved slower, they carried their heads lower and their heart rate decreased so they really wanted to be around people.”
In addition, the team unexpectedly gathered data showing that horses are more alert with experienced horse people than with those inexperienced around horses.
“We didn’t set out to find that, it just kind of fell out of the data that we collected,” she said.
The trial had four sets of human pairs, one of each who had PTSD, but both shared physical characteristics and Merkies said that through no intention of the researchers, it worked out that two of the pairs were experienced with horses and two were not.
“With the experienced people, whether they had PTSD or not, it didn’t matter … [horses] approached … the experienced human quicker, they stood closer to the experienced human and they oriented their ears more towards the experienced human,” she said.
She added, “their heart rate was lower with the inexperienced human.”
Merkies hypothesized that horses responded more attentively with experienced horse people because they expected to work.
“An experienced horse person comes into a horse’s space, usually with an agenda – ‘we’re going riding,’” Merkies said.
“So the horses maybe were more attentive to an experienced human that carries or has the demeanor of a purposeful approach, whereas (with) the inexperienced humans the horse wouldn’t have any expectation of work or having to do anything, so perhaps that made them less attentive and (their) heart rate decrease.”
Merkies said it’s important for therapeutic riding facilities to acknowledge and monitor the way horses respond to people with different levels of experience. She added the idea that horses pick up on their rider’s nerves needs to be reevaluated.
“I don’t think it’s that the horses are responding necessarily to the mental fear or nervousness that a person brings with them as much as a nervous person is going to have tighter muscles, clench their muscles, move more in a jerky fashion and the horse is most likely responding to those physical changes in the human rather than the emotional changes,” Merkies said.
For businesses dealing with equine-assisted therapies, she said that as long as the proper and normal precautions are taken for anyone working with horses there is no greater risk for the horse if that person is inexperienced.
“In fact, the experienced horse person may put a greater risk in terms of reactivity of the horses,” she explained.
Merkies set up this study through a $10,000 innovation research grant from the Ohio-based Horses and Humans Research Foundation and conducted the trials last summer with 17 Sunrise therapy horses. The subjects with PTSD completed their trials first.
“The main reason why we did this research is as a foundational study for future research in setting up experimental protocols,” she said.
“So what we found is if horses don’t distinguish between PTSD humans and non-PTSD humans, then when we’re setting up experimental design for future experiments we don’t necessarily have to use a human with PTSD.
“Which makes it way easier to standardize and control experiments.”
Next Merkies said she might look at how horses react in situations where people have a mental illness other than PTSD.
“It could be different,” she said.
But her main interest lies in looking at how horse and human personalities match.
“Horses will forage a relationship with one particular person more than another person,” Merkies said.
“So what are the elements that contribute to that successful relationship?”
