Equine “Pain Scoring” - Do We Need to Reconsider Its Use and Our Terminology?

For those who only want the highlights…

I believe scoring equine behaviour is a very usefull tool to identify and understand pain.

I believe equine behaviours may have different interpretations depending on context.

I think we need to consider positive, neutral and negative behaviours, rather than focus only on negative behaviours/pain as this may damage equestrian sports reputation.

I want to be totally clear on where I stand on this topic from the outset. I am not against scoring equine behaviour to help identify when equines are in pain! Far from it. It’s essential for owners, vets, other professionals and even researchers to be able to understand and perform this to ensure horses and ponies in pain get treated as soon as possible and appropriately to enhance equine welfare.

So why am I concerned? Horses exhibit behaviour. So does any living organism. Even bacteria and plants exhibit behaviour. And behaviour may be associated with positive or negative or even neutral events or outcomes.

There are several important factors we need to consider when assessing behaviour and making interpretation of pain. Firstly, context. Whether a behaviour is considered to be positive, neutral or negative (pain related) depends on the context in which the behaviour was observed. A horse putting its ears back is not necessarily exhibiting a negative or adverse or pain-related behaviour. If it’s heard a strange noise that might be considered a neutral behaviour. If it’s in response to a rider pulling back hard on the reins then there is a good chance we would consider that a negative behaviour.

We also need to consider individual variation; some horses will have lower or higher pain thresholds than others. So even with the same pain stimulus, some horses will react and others will not. Response to pain varies. Even with the same pain stimulus, two horses may react differently; exhibit different behaviour.

Truly understanding pain from a scientific perspective involves inducing pain and measuring the response either through physiology and or behaviour. Of when we know pain is present, e.g. after an injury, removing that pain (analgesia) and observing change in behaviour. For physiology, we might look at blood cortisol or heart rate. For behaviour, we observe and record what we see using ethograms; a list of specific behaviours which we record the frequency of occurrence. Now this is clearly not the type of study that should ever be undertaken lightly and the moral and ethical considerations today rightly restrict the number of such studies in most developed countries. But in the past for example, to understand the behavioural, physiological and biomechanical (gait) responses to lameness, investigators have used screws on horseshoes that are gradually tightened to induce pain and lameness to investigate diagnostic methods and pain management. But when we observe behaviour and place a value on it, such as saying “when a horse does X and or Y this means it’s experiencing pain is more an opinion than a direct outcome such as “We induced pain and 19/20 horses did Z”.

Much of the early “pain scoring” research in equestrian sport started out as observations of behaviour, with some behaviours being concluded to indicate pain or discomfort (e.g. Hall et al. 2013; Heleski et al. 2009; Mullard et al. 2017). The narrative has now shifted and the terminology is very much “pain” focussed. We also now have a situation where many non-scientists, ordinary horse riders, are adopting and applying “pain scoring”, often inappropriately in my humble opinion.

“Pain scoring” is emotive. Equestrian Social Licence is under threat. If many activist groups get their way, it won’t just be Olympic equestrian sport that goes, it will competing at any level, then riding, then even horse ownership. So personally, I would like to see a return to scoring behaviour rather than a focus purely on “pain” and scoring of both positive and negative behaviour, because at the moment, the way it’s going, if you are a non-equestrian you might get the impression that everything about riding is bad.

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References

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Hall, C., Huws, N., White, C., Taylor, E., Owen, H. and McGreevy, P. (2013) Assessment of ridden horse behavior, Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 8(2), p 62-73.

Heleski CR, McGreevy PD, Kaiser LJ, Lavagnino M, Tans E, Bello N, Clayton HM. Effects on behaviour and rein tension on horses ridden with or without martingales and rein inserts. Vet J. 2009 Jul;181(1):56-62. doi: 10.1016/j.tvjl.2009.03.011. Epub 2009 Apr 17. PMID: 19375959.

Mullard, J., Berger, J.M., Ellis, A.D. and Dyson, S. (2017) Development of an ethogram to describe facial expressions in ridden horses (FEReq), Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 18, P 7-12.

Scofield, R.M. (2014) Comparison of Behaviour Exhibited by Horses Ridden in Conventional Bitted and Bitless Bridles. MSc Thesis. University of Plymouth. https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/handle/10026.1/3051

Sellon DC, Sanz M, Kopper JJ, Mattei D. Pain severity scores for common equine disorders as provided by horse owners and equine veterinarians. Equine Vet J. 2022 Nov;54(6):1094-1102. doi: 10.1111/evj.13559. Epub 2022 Feb 7. PMID: 35034381.

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