Date of Award
2015
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Department
Agriculture
First Advisor
Katherine Koudele
Abstract
The goal of this study was to determine if there was a relationship between horse temperament and incidence of misbehavior due to the stress of being ridden by riders with a wide range of ability during the course of a summer camp session (9 weeks). It was hypothesized that horses with a social or aloof temperament would be able to adjust with more ease, while those with a fearful or challenging temperament would have a higher incidence of misbehavior. Each horse was evaluated for temperament at the beginning of the summer camp season. In the following weeks every rider was evaluated for rider skill level; their skill level, their lengths of trail rides, and incidences of horse misbehavior on those rides were all recorded. The rider skill level was multiplied by the length of the ride in minutes to develop a stress index. A significant relationship (p <.0001) between equine stress levels and the level of misbehavior was shown to vary by temperament with lower incidence of undesirable behavior exhibited by the social and aloof horses.
Recommended Citation
Huffman, Taylor, "Equine Misbehavior and Its Relationship to Temperament and Rider Induced Stress" (2015). Honors Theses. 103.
https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/honors/103
Subject Area
Horses--Behavior., Horsemen and horsewomen.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.