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Put on your happy face at the barn

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 12:54 am
by StraightForward

Re: Put on your happy face at the barn

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 4:31 am
by Kyra's Mom
I believe ;) .

I used to get to the barn harried, hurried and then if horsey put a hoof wrong...angry. It didn't work (duh). I have worked very hard on leaving all the stressful trappings of the day in the car and yes, put on my happy face. She is a much more willing partner if I do.

Today was trying. I wasn't happy with her for tearing down the fence between her and the neighbor (AGAIN). When I brought her in to doctor her legs and tack her up, she was pinning her ears at me. Oooh. Needless to say, for that display I didn't put on my happy face. She got a lecture and a smack on the shoulder. She knew she was naughty but that was the end of it. I wasn't sure I even wanted to get on Ms. Stinkface but we both did an attitude adjustment (to our happy faces) and we had a very nice ride.

Susan

Re: Put on your happy face at the barn

Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 6:37 pm
by LeoApp
OK so HOW did the horse behave accordingly when it recognized the person making a face in a photograph???? Ugh I hate articles that leave out huge swaths of information!
I am always happy at the barn.

Re: Put on your happy face at the barn

Posted: Wed May 02, 2018 2:35 am
by Chisamba
LeoApp wrote:OK so HOW did the horse behave accordingly when it recognized the person making a face in a photograph???? Ugh I hate articles that leave out huge swaths of information!
I am always happy at the barn.


Totally with you. I really accept that horses recognize facial expressions. I completely disagree that they recognize people from a photograph

Re: Put on your happy face at the barn

Posted: Wed May 02, 2018 8:08 am
by Kyra's Mom
I don't know but my horse knows my car. She sees my car coming when I am about 1/4 of a mile away (her pen borders a hay field so it is open and she can see the road). I mean MY car. Many other white cars and trucks drive down that road and she just stands there. My car...she whinnies and meets me at the gate. Faces, cars?

Susan

Re: Put on your happy face at the barn

Posted: Wed May 02, 2018 9:58 pm
by Chisamba
A car has distinctive color sound shape and smell. Easily identified

Re: Put on your happy face at the barn

Posted: Thu May 03, 2018 4:03 am
by StraightForward
LeoApp wrote:OK so HOW did the horse behave accordingly when it recognized the person making a face in a photograph???? Ugh I hate articles that leave out huge swaths of information!
I am always happy at the barn.


Horses in the experimental group that had been shown the angry photo spent more time engaging in displacement behaviors (scratching, floor sniffing, and performing a species-specific behavior termed “lick and chew”) when viewing the live neutral person than did those that had been shown the happy photo (mean ± SE = 12.5 ± 3.5 s versus 3.6 ± 1.6 s, t1,15.5 = 2.30, p = 0.036, r = 0.42; see Figure 2D). Looking at additional stress-related behaviors, only one horse showed avoidance behaviors and two showed nostril dilation during the test (all in the angry condition); thus, no statistical analyses were performed on these measures. There were also no differences in the number of horses that approached the live model (Fisher’s exact test [FET] n = 23, p = 0.68).


The full text of the journal article is here: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fu ... 60-9822(18)30364-6

Sorry, I wasn't able to follow this link when posting from my phone earlier.