Horse Basics, 101

10/10/2026

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7 FUN FACTS ABOUT HOW HORSES UNDERSTAND OUR WORDS

1. Horses really can learn individual words.
Horses can learn that a particular spoken word predicts or represents something specific. With repetition and experience, a sound that initially means nothing can become a meaningful cue.

2. They aren’t just memorizing your voice.
In a 2024 study, horses learned a completely unfamiliar word and were later able to recognize it when it was spoken by people they had never heard before. That suggests they had learned something about the word itself—not simply the trainer’s particular voice.

3. Horses can recognize people by their voices.
Horses can connect the sound of a familiar person’s voice with that person. Researchers have even found that horses notice when the voice they hear doesn’t match the person they see.

4. Tone of voice carries information too.
Horses can distinguish emotional information in human voices. So what we say and how we say it may be giving them two different kinds of information at once.

5. Words become meaningful through experience.
A horse isn’t born knowing that “whoa” means stop or “walk” means move forward. The sound gains meaning because it repeatedly occurs alongside an action, situation or consequence. Eventually, the word itself can become a cue.

6. Your horse may be listening to much more than the word.
When we give a verbal cue, the horse may also be reading our posture, movement, hands, legs, facial expression and the situation around them. Sometimes we think the horse knows the word when he may actually be using several clues at once.

7. Consistency makes words much easier to learn.
If “walk,” “walk on,” “come on,” “let’s go” and “okay, go” all mean the same thing, the horse has to sort through a lot of unnecessary information. Using the same distinctive word for the same thing gives him a much clearer signal to learn.

So, does your horse know what you’re saying?

Probably more than we once gave them credit for—but not necessarily in the way we understand language.

To a horse, a familiar word can become meaningful through learning and experience. And while he is listening to the word, he may also be figuring out who is speaking, how they sound, what their body is doing and what usually happens next.

Your horse isn’t just hearing you.

He’s learning what your sounds mean.

I think many of us already knew that ❤️🐴🥕

https://koperequine.com/when-horses-hum-exploring-audible-tinnitus/

10/08/2026

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Tips for Providing Veterinary Care to your Animals in a Difficult Economy

1) Do your best to have a routine care relationship with a veterinarian. In an emergency or unexpected medical crisis situation, you're far more likely to receive an option to make arrangements with payments if they know you and your pet.

2) Consider pet insurance. Many owners swear this has saved the day

3) If you do not have saving for rainy days, apply before an emergency for care credit now.

4) If you can't get approved for any type of line of credit, consider having the conversation with close family or friends on whether they would help in a crisis timely.

5) Look for low cost clinics as a back up that are income based for care, and see what those costs are, what the requirements are and how long appointments take. Ask if they offer surgical care or refer out. Don't assume low cost clinics offer all care.

6) Share your budget with vet staff in an unexpected situation where diagnostics are needed. Ask for billing updates. Be honest if you can't pay that day BEFORE care is given. Do not expect a vet to cover your pet's care costs.

7) If you can't afford the first line of treatment, make sure to ask for lower cost alternatives to try. Usually, vets are super aware cost is a concern for many clients. They often have 1, 2 and 3 or more options to try, though obviously, success will vary when option less ideal treatments.

8) If you can't ultimately do anything for your pet, make sure you're discussing surrender options with reputable rescues when possible OR humane Euthanasia.

If you have additional tips, please share in comments!

10/01/2026

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The researchers wanted to settle an argument. People blanket horses constantly in Northern Europe, and nobody actually knew whether the horses wanted it. So they decided to ask them.

Using carrot slices and about 15 minutes of training a day, they taught each horse that a horizontal bar meant put my blanket on, a vertical bar meant take it off, and a blank board meant leave me alone. All 23 horses learned it. Most had it down in about 11 days.

Then came the real test. On cold, wet, windy days, 10 of the 12 unblanketed horses walked up and asked for a blanket. On warm sunny days, the blanketed ones asked to have it taken off. Their answers tracked the weather almost perfectly, which told the scientists the horses understood exactly what they were choosing.

They were never confused. They just had no way to tell us until someone handed them a board. 🐴

09/27/2026

In case you wanted to know.... : )

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💩Your horse’s poo is giving you information every single day!

Changes in consistency, moisture, colour and fibre content can all provide useful clues about what is happening with diet, chewing, water intake and the digestive system.

But poo isn’t a diagnosis.

A change can be as simple as moving onto lush grass or changing forage or the bucket feed ingredients. It can also be a reason to look more closely at dental health, parasites, illness, hydration or the overall diet.

One of the most useful things you can do is know what is normal for your horse. Then changes become much easier to spot.

And remember: what goes into the horse matters.

✅ Plenty of appropriate high fibre forage

✅ Good access to clean water

✅ Effective chewing and regular dental care

✅ Sensible starch and sugar intake

✅ Gradual dietary changes

✅ A diet balanced to the nutrients actually supplied by the forage

And our top tip …. If your horse keeps having very dry poos then consider adding salt into the diet. When the poos are dry and like bullets, the digestion is slow and this can be something as simple as poor sodium in the diet which then reduces drinking and water intake. Just table, rock or sea salt from the super market is perfect and for an average 500 kg horse 1 x 25 ml scoop of salt per day. You can double it too if needs be. Slow moving guts which create hard poo can cause impaction colic so a bit of salt could save you a whole load of bother.

Save this image for the next time you’re standing in the field wondering, “Is that poo normal?” 😄

And send it to a horse owner who might like to inspect poo far more closely than they ever imagined they would.

09/21/2026

For those that have an older equine, here are some points to look at to assess the older equine's health.

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09/19/2026

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07/29/2026

Summer is peak season for ticks. A daily grooming session is a good time to inspect horses - don't forget to check their legs and bellies!

07/27/2026

A horse's field of vision.

👁️ The horse’s field of vision 👁️

In terms of senses, the horse has one of the largest eyes of vertebrates with panoramic vision of 350°.

Instead of a central mass of retinal cells like humans, horses’ retinal cells are elongated to enable equal visual priority of the entire horizon at once.

With such an eye, horses do not visually focus on any one thing but have the ability to focus on the entire horizon and therefore much more broadly than humans.

The horse’s eye is also dichromatic, that is, it lacks red-green differentiation.

It is largely dominated by rod cells rather than cone cells, which implies that equine vision is less sharp than that of humans in daylight, but better than human vision in semi-dark to dark settings.

However, horses take longer to adjust to dark settings than we do, so it is important to take that into account when releasing horses into unknown fields at night-time or when moving from daylight into buildings or dark trailers.

This is an excerpt from Andrew McLean’s Modern Horse Training: Equitation Science Principles & Practice Volumes 1 and 2, both of which are available to purchase on the ESI website. ✨

07/20/2026

The True Cost of Owning a Horse — the purchase price is just the start! From feed and boarding to vet care, farrier work, tack, and hidden costs, here's everything that adds up.

What surprised you most about these expenses?

07/13/2026

Just a thought — we probably shouldn’t expect horses to spend 16 hours every day in one single feeding posture. 💭

In free-ranging horses living in a natural environment, feeding involves continual changes in:

• neck angle
• limb position
• body orientation
• roaming
• reaching
• turning
• grazing on slopes and varied terrain

We often fixate on the groundwork/ridden work, however do we really give enough attention to how our horse eats for the rest of their day?

The way in which our horse eats adds to their daily “postural load”, it influences how their tissues are recruited, and it really does deserve as much attention as their exercise.

So, haynets?

A study comparing horses eating from the ground, hay racks and elevated hay nets found that higher feeding positions consistently altered head and neck posture. Horses fed from elevated systems spent significantly more time with their neck held above wither height and showed greater head twisting while grasping forage (Hernadez Garbati, 2025).

Looking at the morphology, neck posture was affected by feeding position… but crucially, the mandibular angle was significantly wider when horses were fed on the ground.

In a study by Zebish et al. (2014), hyperflexion of the neck in ridden horses led to changes in the width of the mandibular angle as a welfare stress factor. It was associated with an increase in neck circumference and in the thickness of the jaw muscle, with a consequent compression of the larynx, thus reducing air exchange and producing higher flow resistance. From this, research has extrapolated the data and drawn attention to the fact that high haynets could affect the jaw joint over time, in addition to the functionality of the horses breathing, back and neck posture (Hernandez Garbati, 2025). Even though a lower hay net promoted a better back posture than a high haynet, it was not sufficient to maintain a neck posture and mandibular angle similar to that obtained from horses fed from the floor.

However — we do need to look beyond the haynets, and consider varying feeding postures to mimic their natural environment as much as possible.