What is Stress and How Can You Recognise it in Horses?

Stress can be defined as the body's reaction to mental or physical pressure. Some stress is useful in a horse’s life to protect them from potential danger and allows a horse to learn and adapt to their environment. However, too much stress can cause a negative impact to their health and well-being.

The first step to reducing a horse's stress is to recognise the symptoms. However, the early signs of stress are often missed or ignored. Horses are all individuals and may show different signs of stress, they may also display more than one sign at a time. Horse owners and carers need to be able to recognise these signs to identify the cause and improve the horse’s situation.

The Horse Care & Welfare team at The British Horse Society have produced a really useful guide explaining what stress is, what causes it, how it can impact the horse, how to recognise signs of stress and what you can do to reduce it.

I have loved working on this project with the BHS and am so pleased this vital information is getting out to the wider equestrian audience. A massive well done and thank you to the BHS!

You can find the complete guide on the BHS website here.

I have a more in-depth guide to recognising equine stress in my course Understand Equine Body Language here.