Observations on Temperament

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bservations on

PHOTO: T. BUDZINSKI

by Emma Maxwell

emperament

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sk an Arabian enthusiast about the temperament of their favorite breed of horse, and all sorts of extravagant claims about their intelligence, courage and sweetness will be made, backed up with a couple of heartwarming anecdotes. Ask anyone else and the word “crazy” often appears backed up with a couple of examples.

So, who is right? The counterargument to anti-Arabian sentiment is to dismiss it by quickly blaming all persons concerned for not understanding such sensitive creatures; but are our excuses getting in the way of some unpalatable truths? As a trainer you get to work with a large number of horses and the reality is that some Arabians are much nicer than others; some much more useful than others and some both nicer and more useful. It is also an unadvertised fact that some Arabian stallions are put down because they have attacked a person. Even worse, 1 ▪ ARABIAN HORSE WORLD

THINKING ABOUT TEMPERAMENT IN THE SAME ANALYTICAL WAY AS WE DO ABOUT CONFORMATION CAN GIVE US A FRAMEWORK TO GUIDE US IN PRODUCING BETTER SUCCESSIVE GENERATIONS .

some Arabians who perhaps should be put down for attacking people, get to breed on because they were already too marketable to shoot. This is the dark side of pedigree breeding, when the piece of paper with names written all over it begins to count for more than the animal it comes attached to. Still, most real-life horses are good at some things and bad at others, and it is not possible to assess temperament on a simple linear scale from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. There are multiple dimensions to an equine character, and the interaction of these traits produces the final composite result. Thinking about temperament in the same analytical way as we do about conformation can give us a framework to guide us in producing better successive generations.

I’ve tried to pin down the shifting nature of the question by working backwards from some of the great horses I have met. Some horses are popular everywhere they go — with both the people who feed and muck them out and the people who have to get a competitive performance from them.

Some can also swap disciplines easily and please very different taskmasters.

These paragons have been cheerful and civilized in the stable, willing and intelligent enough to learn new skills, unflappable in unfamiliar situations and yet energetic when asked to work.

Not forgetting the cherry on the top, charismatic. In fact a cynic might point out that most halter people might be happy with just the charisma and don’t care if it comes with man-eating/boxwalking tendencies, but the more horses you meet the more you realize that life is too short to have to deal with the latter.

Talent needs to come with tractability.

AT

SOME POINT YOUR COCKTAIL

NEEDS A MIXER IF IT IS NOT TO BECOME SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUSTIBLE , AND YOU NEED TO USE BLOOD WITH SOME STOLID COMMON SENSE EVEN IF FASHION DECREES THAT AS PASSÉ .

Meanwhile, other horses are ungrateful pets and frustrating competitors. It is the awkward customers who don’t fit the aspirations of anyone that are most likely to repeatedly change hands in a downward spiral and end up labeled the crazy Arab in the corner.

Of course there are caveats to rigidly labeling perfection in character, most obviously the entwined effects of nature and nurture and the fact that nervous or aggressive behavior can be attributed to handling. It is equally true that different end users appreciate different facets of equine nature; the colt that delights a race trainer is the novice rider’s worst fantasy; the novice rider’s dream steed is the show trainer’s exasperating dullard; while the halter trainer’s snorty darling can’t make it past the first vet gate in endurance. Also bear in mind that a full assessment of a horse’s temperament is not possible until it is about six years old. Some yearlings that start tiresomely nervous, or just plain tiresome can develop into pretty decent all-round horses. While you can roughly gauge a horse’s measure from the floor you can only really assess its character if you ride it, which provides you with a far greater range of tests of ability. However, these obstacles do 2 ▪ ARABIAN HORSE WORLD

not invalidate the exercise, just add to its complexity.

The first impression you will gain of any horse relies on his amiability and it often colors your whole opinion more strongly than perhaps it should. Some horses are indisputably sweeter to hang out with than others, but as most adult horses are asked to do rather more than eat, sleep, and get out of the way of the wheelbarrow, bedside manner is far from the end of the story. If a horse finds it difficult to settle away from home he is always going to be an unpredictable or frustrating competitor. A good nature must include the ability to respond sensibly to a challenging situation, and however sweet a horse is at home, if he can’t maintain his composure under pressure, he should not be touted as a wonderful-tempered horse. However, I frequently see stallions advertised and publicly considered as good-natured when I know perfectly well that they are not easily transposed from their home environment. I think this is an error of judgment — we should acknowledge that fretting is undesirable. Vice versa, a few horses that are irritating and rude in the stable can remain impressively cooperative under pressure. My classic example would be a mare we bred, whose ear gestures showed how little she appreciated your presence in her bedroom. This mare at four years old and in full race training was the first horse I showed in-hand aged ten. Three weeks later my sister Lucy rode her in Lucy’s first race aged 16. Good- or bad-tempered Arab mare? Like so many things, good temperament is a trade-off between the amiable and the capable with some unfortunates scoring low on both criteria and a few special ones high on both.

A second feature we can assess as we come into contact with a horse is tolerance. The physical irritability of a horse produces strong effects on his behavior. Irritable horses seem to have thinner, more sensitive skin than other horses and have an objection to being touched around the elbows, flanks, and legs. It is as a result of being ticklish that these horses can be nippy and more liable to kick you and thus gain a reputation for bad behavior. Very sensitive horses can be very irritating to own because they have all sorts of objections to daily routines and you always have to bear their preferences in mind if you don’t want to be caught out by a swift reminder. If you have an irritable mare, it is wise to spend a lot of time on her newborn foals to try and desensitize them; time you spend now will be repaid many times over as they grow older. On the other hand, I’ve ridden irritable horses who once you have managed to do the girth up with your trousers intact are wonderfully straightforward and helpful riding horses and certainly could not

THE

FIRST IMPRESSION YOU WILL GAIN OF ANY HORSE RELIES

ON HIS AMIABILITY

…

SOME HORSES ARE INDISPUTABLY

SWEETER TO HANG OUT WITH THAN OTHERS

be written off as useful members of the equine community.

However, I am less keen on head shyness, which at Lodge Farm we always assumed was man-made until the one particularly head-shy mare we bought managed to always produce an identical tic in the next generation.

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…

And the next. Some horses just cannot bear to be touched on the poll, which is an extremely inconvenient and timeconsuming paranoia in a domesticated equine. Horses who will or will not let you touch and clip their ears also run in families, although previous handling obviously governs their behavior as well.

Still, a tolerant horse is more relaxing to be around and is a necessity for a novice or very young owner.

Dominance is a very important thing to consider in a horse’s temperament and it will affect every moment of your dealings with him.

Some horses like to be in charge, others would rather follow. Neither type of horse is better than the other, except on both the extreme edges of the trait.

Horses who are constantly obsessed by trying to put one over on you and any other horses are consistently tiresome and usually end up being thumped for it either by horse or human. Conversely, horses who cringe

subserviently to any other horse, will, if put out in equine company get beaten up, which reinforces their view. Horses who have been “trained” by the rest of their herd or by harsh and inconsistent human training to be very subservient are in such a state of insecurity they find it hard to learn new skills.

It does depend on what you want from your horse, whether a leader or a follower, is a good thing or a bad thing. If you have modest ambitions and want a horse to hack about, share with other livery horses, and do some small shows, a dominant horse that challenges your authority all the time may not enhance your life. A dominant horse will start testing your character in the stable and will invade your space to see if you will get out of his way. If this works he will start physically barging you and while he might comply with you when your ambitions coincide, he won’t do anything he doesn’t fancy. If your horse won’t stand still for you to halter or rug, that’s a strong indicator that he/she is wearing the trousers in your relationship and you probably ought to try and do something about.

At the other end of the scale, whenever we tried to put just our show string mares out in a field together instead of with the great unwashed there was always trouble. The show mares were all chiefs and no Indians because dominant horses tend to have the presence and charisma necessary to win in the ring.

Likewise many good performance horses have a dominant streak that translates into the will to win, and that pushiness can be channeled positively.

While dominance or lack of it is

DIFFERENT

END USERS

APPRECIATE DIFFERENT FACETS OF EQUINE NATURE ; THE NOVICE RIDER ’ S DREAM STEED IS THE SHOW TRAINER ’ S EXASPERATING DULLARD .

PHOTO: GENIE STEWART-SPEARS

an inherent trait, how it is expressed is dependent both on that horse’s relationship with other horses and on his relationship with you. The foals of a boss mare on a large stud get used to the herd parting like the Red Sea as they approach the gate to come in first. I have seen this effect over five generations of non-embryo transfer breeding. At the bottom of the heap, foals equally learn to hover on the periphery — I would be fascinated to know how embryo transfer affects this behavior as it provides a control group that separates learned from innate behavior. Living in a group of horses definitely seems to educate a horse in flexibility of response, and in general we were favorably impressed by the obliging natures of horses we acquired from the state systems of Poland and Russia.

Dominant horses that have grown up in a big herd are more tactful about how they present their desire to dominate you and less offended if you politely 4 ▪ ARABIAN HORSE WORLD

turn them down. Followers are quite happy to just fall into line — although they are so used to companions they may have a phobia about being worked by themselves.

The effect of growing up in large bachelor herds at one and two seems even stronger in male horses. We found state stud stallions vastly more tractable than privately bred colts and concluded that this must be due to their experience of relationships within the herd. The opposite applies to spending their formative years in a solitary lifestyle. A horse that repeatedly argues over the same situation is often a male horse that has never lived in a herd situation, or a female horse that has lived in a smallherd environment over which she gained dominance at an unnatural age such as a yearling. These horses have never experienced backing down from an argument and don’t intend to start with you. If you have an excessively dominant horse, the best solution is to go find a

friend with a bigger, older, and tougher horse who easily dominates them and let them win the status battle before you step in again.

Whether you are subservient to or bullying to your horse can be easily gauged by how well you can catch it alone in an arena. A respectful horse that has always been treated fairly will go away on demand and return on demand. If your horse regards you as a domestic slave it is unlikely to let you catch it immediately without edible bribery or producing its best equine friend. If you have bullied a horse, likewise it is unlikely to allow you to catch it without your cornering it, tempting it to the gate by other means, or sidestepping the issue by rushing it out down a catching alley for someone else to deal with. If you have a horse in training with a third party this one piece of observation can tell you an awful lot about how your horse regards his trainer. Make him let the horse go, with no head collar on and catch the horse himself in the training halter he schools the horse in. If the horse continually tries to avoid having the training halter put back on, he is telling you in capital letters and words of one syllable that he doesn’t like what happens in this halter. I find it both astonishing and depressing how many people with years of horse experience can ignore this message. No professional

be bred from — as long as they have actually proved that they have translated their character into concrete wins in whatever sphere. However, I am very suspicious of linebreeding to famously strongly dominant horses because my experience is that you get a ramped-up version of the ancestor’s egotism that can make the horse dangerous to work with. This can be especially pointless if the horse also displays few of the ancestor’s talents. In fact, I have some suspicions about extremely linebred and/or inbred horses in general as I have met a significant few which, although they are quick learners, in some domains seem to get blocked in certain circumstances and will repeat their original PHOTO: LYNN GLAZER answer ad nauseam.

Strongly repetitive behavior is extremely difficult to remove from a horse’s GOOD PERFORMANCE repertoire and can interfere with all your other goals.

HORSES HAVE A DOMINANT The next fundamental element of STREAK THAT TRANSLATES any horse’s mental makeup is security, which interacts with all the other traits INTO THE WILL TO WIN . to create very different resulting natures.

Like dominance, it has an inherent component, and choosing to try and turn a panicker into a police horse is training halter, dashing off when they a task only to be attempted by those hear it rattle near their faces. Please try with a lifetime to spend on it. A secure and use your powers of deduction in horse maintains his composure in a wide this situation.

Because dominance is linked to how range of situations, alone or in company, settles in a strange stable and always a horse performs, it can never be said eats what is put in front of him. It is a that very dominant horses should not horse trainer has any excuse for not being able to catch a horse, on demand, face-on in the center of a familiar arena. If he can’t do it, he either has not met the horse before, or is beating it up when he does. Some horses are so obviously avoiding the chain on the

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very desirable trait because it means that your horse behaves with consistency and copes with new experiences. Insecure horses worry and turn inward, not responding well to stimuli. Their single goal is to return to their comfort zone, which can be either their stable, or their equine companions. They don’t like being left alone in the field, find busy yards stressful, and can be upset by routine changes. The classic sign of a very insecure horse is box-walking.

To teach these horses skills you must have a solid management routine that keeps them settled. We found in a large yard that the insecure horses had to have their own fixed stable, while the secure ones changed hotel rooms regularly to make room for temporary guests. For an anxious horse the only route forward is for the handler to turn himself into the comfort zone. Then with careful development the nervous horse can be convinced to acquit himself very well with a person he trusts. It is undoubtedly a personally rewarding experience for the trainer of a nervous horse when he gets it to achieve results that might not have appeared possible at first. However, I usually found the glow of satisfaction vanished abruptly when I was confronted with lots of little anxious, quivering offspring all of whom required the same vast investment of time and energy to get results. Where breeding is concerned perhaps middleaged pragmatism makes for better results than the teenage romance of the horse that will only perform for one dedicated person.

Averagely secure horses don’t display obvious signs of stress in strange situations except that they usually perform much better at home than

at competitions, which is the most common complaint of competitors about their horses. There are a lot of options to increase their security by training through getting them to treat you as their comfort zone and introducing them slowly and carefully to new experiences and ensuring that it is not your own nervousness in show situations that is holding them back. The opposite can be achieved by

…

faux charisma. Tension in any other area of equestrianism is undesirable mainly because decreasing a horse’s security is unsafe: it makes the horse more likely to bolt or attack. We can actually see the bolt/attack reflex regularly in the halter arena when handlers are “schooling” their horse for the pose and their horse flings itself either backwards trying to get away or half leaps forward considering attack. We should not

THE CHERRY ON TOP

excessively ambitious teaching programs or by an inconsistent human response to the horse’s behavior, which raises stress levels and shrinks the comfort zone. I specifically object to the intimidation system of training horses to pose for halter, because it is based on decreasing a horse’s security level to produce tension. Tension is desirable in a posing halter horse because it masquerades as 6 ▪ ARABIAN HORSE WORLD

—

CHARISMA .

be blasé about this — it is not horse training and the only place in which it is appropriate behavior is the Roman arena where terrorism was regarded as sport.

The interaction between security and dominance is possibly the most important trade-off in a horse’s character — the most complicated variety of horses I have met are those which are highly dominant but also insecure. Their

dominance means they favor dismissing your advice while their insecurity makes them exaggerate potential threats, so their behavior can swing wildly between overconfident and totally failing to cope.

Horses who are insecure and not very dominant are much more trainable.

Once you have convinced them to trust you, they will delegate the responsibility for assessing the safety of situations to you. However, I find the most able category of horse seems to be those that are very secure and reasonably dominant because they are both bold and safe; although the very secure horse which combines security with a very dominant personality can be rather an effort as it is not bothered either by the outside world or your efforts to reward or discourage different behaviors.

Despite all the levels of human intervention, it is definitely the case that horses vary widely with respect to security in an inherited form. Breeding a fretting mare to an insecure stallion is one of the easiest ways to keep the outside world regarding Arabians as crazy — with some justification.

We also have to consider how energetic a horse is. It is desirable for the horse to be energetic or even excitable — but not to the extreme edge of the trait and certainly not when in combination with insecurity.

Excitable horses are alert and attentive, and because they notice and respond to stimuli fast they are easy to teach.

Energetic horses are also very expressive and this makes them easy to show and exhibit a forward-going ride that does not require shoveling along. However, just how desirable excitability is depends on the security of your horse. A secure horse can use all his energy to produce free-flowing cadenced rhythmic paces,

and listen to his handler/rider and be aware of his environment all at the same time. Crucially, secure horses are relaxed through their backs even when their tails are right up. These horses are, alas, not quite as common as one would like.

If you have a horse with low security you had better hope it is not excitable or every candy wrapper will initiate an adrenaline blast that overrides all other considerations. While panic is a normal horse response, in the domesticated horse it has become a pretty undesirable feature. An excitable, insecure horse will treat you to all sorts of educational displays of useful behaviors for Neolithic equines who have possibly seen a sabertoothed tiger.

TENSION

IS DESIRABLE IN A

POSING HALTER HORSE BECAUSE IT MASQUERADES AS FAUX CHARISMA .

TENSION

IN ANY OTHER AREA OF

EQUESTRIANISM IS UNDESIRABLE .

A very secure horse with no excitability is also a useful horse in its place, the police horse that doesn’t bother much about much. There are not so many of this latter group about now because many breeders are trying to breed horses with charisma and thus always favoring excitable horses whether they are of the secure or insecure variety.

I think it is a problem in both Europe (where we select for ultra-animated horses that cavort about with their tails 7 ▪ ARABIAN HORSE WORLD

up, producing five strides of trot and lots of galloping in small circles) and in the States (where halter horses have to produce such an extreme level of tension while merely standing still). If you want to breed a showy horse, you cannot just carry on breeding excitable horses to excitable horses if they are not both of the secure variety, as you will quite likely end up with a suicidal weanling that would rather run into the wall than have a different-colored halter put on. At some point your cocktail needs a mixer if it is not to become spontaneously combustible; and you need to use blood with some stolid common sense even if fashion decrees that as passé.

A horse doesn’t have to be terribly intelligent to be nice, but once you start asking it more questions, then it is definitely a feature of its character. Some horses are just quicker at putting two and two together than others and can learn in a single experience situation.

This can be a good thing or a bad thing according to the rest of their personality and according to your consistency of behavior as teacher. Less bright horses seem to have difficulty discriminating between different forms of their own behavior and thus not understanding why one is praised and one is not.

Clever horses are aware both of the subtleties of their own behavior and of yours. Clever horses are frequently chastised for obeying small signals that an owner was not aware they gave, and if your horse is bright, you have to really concentrate on your communication with them. They also tend to continue to come up with alternative solutions to a problem you have set them so while they quickly learn the “correct” answer, ask them the same thing too many times and they will go past that

point and invent a new and usually undesirable response. A clever horse is undoubtedly a double-edged sword, but at times of crisis where the horse has to extricate both him and you from a nasty situation, its fast arrival at a plausible solution will always be appreciated.

The final category, which leads us back almost full circle to the beginning is willingness. Because horses are social animals they are on the whole willing to listen and to please. Asking a horse to do things that he is not physically or mentally capable of can damage this incredibly valuable trait. Most especially, if you ride a horse you should be very careful to make sure he is comfortable in his bit, in his saddle, through his back, and in his limbs and feet, or by asking him to confront pain you will train a horse to say “no.” Naturally unwilling horses do exist, but most often it is a result of their previous encounters and

IF

YOU WANT TO BREED A

SHOWY HORSE , YOU CANNOT JUST CARRY ON BREEDING EXCITABLE HORSES TO EXCITABLE HORSES IF THEY ARE NOT BOTH OF THE SECURE VARIETY , AS YOU WILL QUITE LIKELY END UP WITH A SUICIDAL WEANLING THAT WOULD RATHER RUN INTO THE WALL THAN HAVE A DIFFERENT - COLORED HALTER PUT ON .

before wrongly assigning a horse into the latter category it is very important to try and eliminate all physical reasons for its lack of performance.

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Different horses have different aptitudes and abilities, and fitting an individual horse into a home where his abilities are appreciated makes for an ideal world. However, only talented horses can reach the top in competitive spheres, and the horses that can’t reach these levels nearly all need to find homes as general riding horses. Ignoring temperament in breeding decisions and churning out flighty misfits because their pedigree looks saleable produces a negative effect on the marketability of Arabians to the rest of the horse world.

It is many generations since breeding mares were expected to share their owners’ tents, and we cannot rely forever on the mythology of the Arabian being more social than other breeds of horses because of his Bedouin background.

We have to make practical decisions in maintaining this sociability into future generations.