Owner-reported breed differences in the behaviour of ridden horses

Abstract

Domestic horses are often selected for specific activities according to anecdotal breed-specific behavioural traits some of which are tested in competition environments and many of which relate to human safety. On the other hand, breeds are often celebrated for their versatility. The purpose of the current study was to investigate breed differences in ridden horse behaviour, as reported by horse carers (“owners”) through the Equine Behaviour Assessment and Research Questionnaire (E-BARQ). From a pool of owners’ reports (n = 8151) in the E-BARQ database, selection criteria were applied to reports as follows: purebred only; horse ridden within the last six months; only the first record of the horse taken if there were multiple records per horse; and only breeds with at least 35 horses. This generated a sample of reports on 1635 horses for the current study. Fourteen previously reported behavioural constructs were considered, namely trainability, safe to ride, boldness, easy to handle, easy to ride, easy to stop, unlikely to stall (unlikely to baulk), approachable, bold with non-humans, novel object confidence, tolerance of tactile stimulation, easy to load, tolerance of isolation and repetitive behaviours. For each of these constructs, an ordinal logistic regression model was fitted to the score data, with breed as the explanatory variable. The results confirmed that there were significant differences among the 14 breeds in 12 of the 14 construct scores, the exceptions being easy to handle and boldness with non-humans. The constructs that showed the most difference according to breed were repetitive behaviours. As expected, there was some weak clustering of constructs, e.g. safe, easy to ride, easy to stop, and unlikely to stall. These are the traits that make riding horses useful. Furthermore, the current findings suggest that equine behaviourists should consider E-BARQ profiles of their patients to establish how different they are from a breed average. With more knowledge surrounding what is typical behaviour for particular horse breeds, trainers and riders will be able to adjust their training and management techniques to better suit their individual horses.