Hillydale Horse Welfare and Research

06/06/2026

World Horse Welfare has just released the results of its fifth annual survey of the UK public's views on the use of horses for sport and recreation. They are to be commended for undertaking this research and sharing the findings. Because they are not good for the sport.

The survey shows declining support for the use of horses in sport.

The majority of people want welfare put ahead of performance, most reject training that causes pain for a result, and a growing number no longer think the use of horses for sport is acceptable in any form.

Equitation science keeps showing those instincts are sound.

Whipping tired horses in races.
Tight nosebands
Hyperflexion
Blue tongues
Oral lesions
Gastric ulcers
Stereotypies
The conflict behaviours that don't get in the way of gold medals or that are the just normal business of riding.

So what did World Horse Welfare's own forum largely conclude?

That the problem is communication.

That the public is urban, uninformed. So dismissible. Nothing to learn here.

People are worried about what happens to horses.

The evidence says they are right to be.

And the industry keeps answering a welfare question with a PR strategy.

You cannot communicate your way out of a problem the science, and the evidence of your own eyes says is real.

Our charity will reveal results of annual YouGov opinion poll at a briefing for horse sport leaders and the media on 3rd June.

13/05/2026

We use hardness to make horses soft.
The standard route to a "soft" horse, one that yields to the rein, flexes at the poll, accepts a "contact" is through the application of pressure to the mouth.

Sometimes steady pressure. Sometimes pressure that comes on and off. Sometimes escalating pressure. Sometimes pressure the horse cannot escape, because the rider's hands, the side reins, the bit crushing the tongue or stretching the lips make sure of it.

The horse eventually flexes, yields or gives, depending on the terminology. The tension in the rein drops. We call this softening.

Many training methods claim it is essential- give to the bit, give the face, lateral flexion at the halt and more besides.

But softening is our word for what happens to the tension we feel in the rein, not what the horse experiences.

What the horse did when it felt the bit, was learn the response that turned off the pressure and the pain it caused.

This is negative reinforcement which we know works. It is also, depending on the pressure used and the horse's capacity to escape it, a route through pain, confusion, stress to a head and neck position that we have decided looks correct.

Softness in the rein is not the same as softness in the horse. It is just a horse learning to escape and avoid the pain and pressure we deliberately cause in service of our riding or training goals.

There's zero about it that is "correct" for the horse.

27/04/2026

This writer gets it about not seeing what we actually see when we observe horses in competition. This piece is focused on dressage but it is equally applicable to most equestrian sport.

https://dressageforthefuture.substack.com/p/gaslighting-in-dressage?

Don’t Believe Your Eyes

24/03/2026

Can we ever be trusted to genuinely safeguard our horses' welfare when every time we get on one, our ego, our dreams, our goals and what the horse wants and needs conflict.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

01/03/2026

Something so very ordinary about the post shown below, and so very ordinary about one of the reactions.

So much that's available to see, but isn't. So much evidence we've trained our eyes not to see, our brains not to process.

That allows us to create these narratives, these well meaning and genuine explanations desiring to inform, educate, inspire.

All the while blinding us to what is there in front of our eyes. The seen and yet unseen horse, missing in plain sight.

If we consider things from the horse's perspective, what choice does it really have here?

Spurs digging into its side with such force the skin and fascia underneath are being visibly displaced.

Such force applied to the reins that the lips are stretched and distorted. Excess saliva foaming and dripping because the horse is unable to swallow due to the disabling of the function of its tongue, crushed under the pressure of the bit.

There is no escaping the pain for this horse, only a choice between which pain is greatest- pain in its mouth or pain in its sides. Seems pain in the sides is the winner, because despite all the pain in its mouth, it is continuing to move forward.

Or perhaps it has learnt that the pain in its mouth is inescapable and reacting to that pain will only deliver more pain, such as even more pain from the spurs?

I am not posting this to shame any one rider, any one equestrian facility offering advice, or the person who comments that they love the harmony they are seeing. This is simply the latest of this genre of post that fills my feed. I have no doubt the rider, the poster, the commenter all want what's they believe is best for their horses.

It is to highlight how much we lose sight of the horse when we use it. How we compartmentalise it into its various body parts and functions- its head and neck position, the height of its forelegs, the duration of the suspension phase, the extension or flexion of joints.

How in doing so we lose sight of the whole horse. The horse that feels, has preferences, experiences joy and fear and pain.

The horse we turn into a symbol, a vessel to fill with our hopes, our dreams our identity. The horse that we experience through those perspectives.

The horse whose obvious pain we can't see. Whose pain is the predictable, inevitable consequence of using bits and spurs to make compliance with our demands the horse's only choice.

A "choice" we explain in terms of biomechanics, training, "accepting" the contact and all the other comforting fictions we use to hide the reality of what our dreams authorise us to do to horses we say we love.

If we are genuine in about being the guardians of our horses' welfare then we need to actually see the horse. Not the dreams, not the training goals, not the medals, the prizes, the status, the kudos, the expert knowledge.

See the horse, as a horse, experiencing what we do to it and demand of it, from the horse's perspective.

25/02/2026

Major new paper about how to think about animals and their welfare.

Extends the five domains and provides all who care for, use or are concerned about animals a coherent and structured way to understand animals and their welfare.

Provides the theorectical basis for how to understand and over time, implement "equi-centric" welfare pratcices

Very proud to be a co-author on this paper but all credit to Cristina Wilkins for her groundbreaking insights that have led to this groundbreaking contribution to animal welfare science.

Free to read.

This paper introduces the teleonome as a unifying biological construct that clarifies the goal-directed organised system by which organisms engage in adaptiv...

20/02/2026

Could a lack of sleep quality impact your horse's ability to learn? In this study, horses with more REM sleep persisted longer with a reversal learning task. This is a task the requires horses to be flexible and adapt their behaviour as the rules of the task change-something we rely on a lot when we retrain our horses.

The study used a food rewarded task (positive reinforcement) so it remains to be seen if the same is true of aversive learning tasks (that use equipment that applies aversive pressures- bits, leg cues, whips, spurs, halters etc).

Just as for humans, sufficient sleep supports learning and coping for horses. A recent study at the University of Helsinki indicates that short periods of REM sleep impair horses' perseverance and performance in demanding learning tasks. In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, an ent...

11/02/2026

Little teaser: impending publication about how to understand animals and animal welfare that will revolutionise how we do things with animals, including research, training, competition, production, conservation.

Proud to play a tiny part but all credit to Cristina Wilkins for her vision and outstanding scholarship conceiving and developing this exciting new concept which will make a positive difference to the welfare of the animals in our lives.

The full paper will be available very soon.

This paper introduces the teleonome as a unifying biological construct that clarifies the goal-directed organised system by which organisms engage in adaptiv...

05/02/2026

Last month I was so lucky to have my good friend and colleague Dr Cath Henshall here with me.

Cath isn’t just a scientist. She works right at the intersection of neuroscience, behaviour and training, helping us understand how horses actually think, feel and learn.

We spent days talking about connection. About what’s really happening inside a horse when they don’t choose you. And why so many training challenges aren’t a training problem at all, but a nervous system and learning problem.

Cath has this incredible ability to explain things like emotional states, stress, learning and decision making in a way that completely changes how you look at horses. Not as something to influence or control, but as thinking and feeling beings constantly responding to their world.

Those conversations deepened so much of what I already believe. That real training starts with understanding how a horse experiences pressure, clarity, safety and choice.

That way of thinking sits right at the heart of Eohippus. It’s not just about what to do with your horse, but why it works, and how the horse’s brain and nervous system are part of every interaction.

If you want to understand horse behaviour on a deeper level and use that understanding to create real connection in your training, this is exactly the work we explore inside Eohippus. Book a call with me to discuss your horse and your needs 👉 https://link.conniecolfox.com/widget/bookings/2025callwithconnie

05/02/2026

This is another excellent example of horse-centred training in action. Avoiding punishing the horse for simply doing horsey things, being aware of what matters to him and working with that, not against it to get calm training outcomes with the minimum of pressure.

Connie runs an online course where she personally takes people through the training journey, giving you direct access to her knowledge and experience. Highly recommended.