About Horses
Unlike any other 'vehicle' on the road, a horse is a living,
breathing animal with instincts, thoughts and feelings.
They outweigh
and outmuscle their riders, often by a factor of 10x or more. Through
training and trust, a horse can perform amazing tasks for its rider,
but it is also a timid and fragile creature by nature.
Why Horses React to Traffic
The horse's main mechanism for survival is flight; it is a prey
animal that runs from any perceived danger. This flight instinct is
often triggered by the horse's keen senses of hearing and eyesight.
Even though horses have been domesticated for nearly 6000 years, this
doesn't override millions of years of instinctive behaviour.
The Horse's Senses
A horse has amazing senses that in many ways outstrip any human's,
but they are not the same as ours. When both sight and hearing senses
are affected the horse is much more likely to react e.g. a flapping
tarp on a trailer is both noisy and fast moving. Like most animal's the
horse also has a very good sense of smell, this can also trigger
reactions to things that we as humans cannot see or sense.
Eyesight
Horses do actually need to move their heads up and down in order
to use their eyesight effectively, when being ridden they are often
stopped from doing this and therefore take more cues from their rider
(and have to trust them).
Designed for scanning the horizon and detecting predators
- A horse's eyesight is designed to scan wide areas for fast moving objects, a horse can see almost 360 degrees!
- However, horse eyesight is not very focused. There is only a small
area of binocular vision in front of the horse, which starts from about
2m in front of the horse.
- One of the places that horses have trouble seeing (with their head up) is their own feet and lower legs
Light conditions matter
- A horse has difficulty seeing in bright sunlight (although very good eyesight in low light and at night).
- A horse has difficulty with high-contrast between light and
shadow. It cannot tell shadows from a 'real' object. To a horse black
and white stripes on a road look the same as a cattle grid or even a
bridge with gaps between the steps. This is why a horse may be
frightened of an object it has seen many times; changes in light make
the object completely different!!
- A horse's eyes react slowly to changes in light (moving from shadow
to bright light or vice-versa). A human eye adjusts in a few seconds,
a horse's eye takes minutes.
Designed to move first and ask questions later
- A horse is almost hardwired to react (move its feet) to fast moving
objects in it's vision area. It must be trained to not instantly
react, but any training is always at odds with the horse's instinct.
- Like most animals, a horse is a natural athlete with reaction times
faster than a human's (this is where the first point comes in, humans
think then react, animals react then think. They don't need the 2
second rule!)
- To escape a predator it doesn't matter which way you run or leap,
as long as you do it quickly. This is bad news if the oncoming
predator is a car or bike, a horse is almost as likely to leap into the
traffic as away from it. It is not a human - it doesn't have our
intelligence or traffic sense to know that the thing it saw coming at
it will stay on the road.
Hearing
- A horse has extremely good hearing, and can hear many noises that we cannot.
- They hear both in higher and lower pitch ranges than humans, and
can swivel each ear independently over 180 degrees to focus on noises
in any direction.
- Windy conditions often make horses nervous, because they lose the
ability to hear well above the wind noise (and everything is moving
fast).
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Motorists,
cyclists, pedestrians and horse riders all have a right to use the
road.
They also share a responsibility to consider each other's needs.
This site has been created to help all road users understand the
special requirements of horses and their riders, and to remind horse
riders about safe riding practices on the roads.
About Roads
Roads have existed for thousands of years, and are for people to get from place to place. A road is for pedestrians, horses, cycles and pretty much anything else you can think of.
Motorised vehicles are relative newcomers; and the road rules that apply to them are often based on keeping other road users safe from them. The motor vehicle does not have any special right to be on the road, nor does it's driver . The only roads specifically designed and allocated to motorised vehicles are motorways.
| About Riders
The rider you meet may be a pensioner on a tight budget, a farm
worker, a working mum, a schoolchild, a banker or executive. Horse
riders and owners come from a wide variety of backgrounds, age groups,
and experience. Horse riding is often perceived as a pastime of
the idle rich, but this is not usually the case in New Zealand where the
costs of keeping a horse are similar to many other sports or hobbies.
Everything a rider does and even thinks (because
thoughts unconsciously change our muscles, not because horse's are
psychic) is transmitted to the horse. Even through the saddle a horse
feels the riders body, where the weight it positioned (even which way a
riders head is looking), and whether the rider is calm or nervous. So
most rider behaviour is about communicating with the horse, to keep
them, the rider and everyone in the vicinity safe.
- A rider sitting tall in the saddle is not trying to be superior to
others, this is the best balanced riding position. It distributes the
riders weight evenly on the horse, and the rider carries some of
his\her own weight instead of sitting heavily on the horse's back.
- Getting down off the horse is not always the best way to control a
scared horse, and in some cases may be more difficult than staying
onboard.
- It is not possible to tell the age of the horse from looking at it,
and it's age may not be relevant to its experience. A horse that is
perfectly happy to walk calmly alongside a busy road, may be terrified
of umbrellas, alpacas or other things that we don't think it should be.
- The age of the rider does not necessarily tell you how much riding
experience they have or how confident they are with that particular
horse. A fall, or other riding accident or even a break from riding
can affect a rider's confidence a great deal. Equally, young riders
may over-estimate their abilities or under-estimate their affect on
others due to their inexperience socially (they are young!).
- Riding a horse does not give the rider a personality or
intelligence transplant. Riders, are as diverse a group as exist in
any other sport or activity.
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Because the horse can tell how the rider is feeling, many riders
learn to bluff well. When the horse is nervous the rider puts on an
air of total confidence and the horse will be happy to follow the
orders of this 'leader'. This may include a loud voice or apparent
minimisation of others concerns (voicing what they are wanting the
horse to feel - "that's nothing, walk on!").
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Because horses follow the orders of strong leaders (in their own
herd) a good tap with a whip or loud confident voice may be used to
tell the horse to ignore their fears. This is not because the rider
doesn't care for the horse or is a generally uncaring person, this is
all about conveying confidence to the horse. Riders are like
sergeant-majors in the army, potentially they are outmuscled by all the
army recruits but their swagger and loud voice means they are rarely
challenged - even when the recruit is scared, he does what he is told
believing the sergeant-major will not get him killed.
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Sometimes motorists or others may be offended if the rider does
not give them a wave of thanks or acknowledgement. In some situations
the rider is in more danger than may be apparent to those on the ground
(sitting on an unexploded bomb). Both hands may be required, and the
rider may need to keep looking away from the danger (a horse will look
where the rider is looking) and pushing the horse forward. All riders
should be able to thank you for courtesy shown, but they may be busy
trying to make sure that you, and they, remain uninjured.
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