Three things to watch before you open the stable door

The facts

Source

Your Horse, published 22 September 2026

Expert

Renate Larssen, equine ethologist

Where she was speaking

A World Horse Welfare Wednesday Webinar

Cost of the webinars

Free to watch, including the back catalogue

The framework

Three things to read: approach or avoidance, energy level, facial expression

A horse is always behaving. Standing, dozing, walking away from you at the gate - all of it is information, and all of it is driven by an underlying emotion. That is the starting point Renate Larssen, an equine ethologist, set out in a World Horse Welfare webinar reported by Your Horse on 22 September 2026. Behaviour you do not understand is not meaningless. It is a message you have not decoded yet.

Her practical method has three parts. First, is the horse moving towards the thing or away from it? That tells you whether it is liked or disliked. Second, is the behaviour high energy or low energy? That indicates how strongly the horse feels. Third, what is the face doing? Larssen makes the point that behaviour on its own is ambiguous, and the face usually carries the detail that resolves it. Ears, eyes, muzzle, nostrils - the fine print.

The safety case is blunt. Kicking, biting, rearing and bolting are all behaviours that can hurt a person, and they rarely arrive without something quieter coming first. Horses evolved to negotiate complicated social lives in groups, and the vocabulary they use for that is physical: posture, expression, sound, scent. Our noses are no use to us here, so the load falls on what we can see and hear.

The part worth sitting with is that communication runs both ways. If a horse's behaviour is aimed at you, watching it passively is only half the job. A response is expected. That is a different habit from the usual one of noting that a horse is unsettled and carrying on with the headcollar anyway.

What this means for you

Anyone who handles a horse daily

You already have the data. The change is deliberately checking three things - direction of movement, energy level, face - before you commit to an interaction, rather than reading them backwards after something goes wrong.

Owners of a horse with a dangerous habit

Kicking, biting, rearing and bolting are the end of a sequence, not the start. Looking for the earlier, quieter signals gives you somewhere to intervene that is not a crisis.

Pony Club and riding-school families

A free, structured way to teach children what to look at, rather than telling them a pony is grumpy or being naughty. The three questions are simple enough for a ten-year-old to use.

Anyone on a budget

World Horse Welfare's Wednesday Webinars cost nothing and the previous episodes are available to watch. No membership, no ticket.

What to do

1. Pick one routine moment - catching, tacking up, rugging - and spend a week noting only whether your horse approaches or avoids. Nothing else.

   Start this week

2. Add energy level and facial expression to that same moment once the first habit sticks.

3. Watch a World Horse Welfare Wednesday Webinar from the free archive and pass what you take from it to anyone else who handles your horse.

   Before the clocks change and yard routines shift

4. Write down the earliest signal your horse gives before any behaviour you find difficult, and share it with your sharer, groom or instructor so everyone is reading the same thing.

5. If a behaviour is new, escalating, or does not fit the horse, book a vet check before treating it as a training problem.

   Promptly