Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

In recent years the interest of bitless riding has increased, yet this increased interest is seldom reflected in the head gears used at riding schools. It is of importance that the training conducted with animals is anchored in science, yet the subject of bitless riding is still largely unexplored. This study is a part of a larger project aiming to investigate the usage of both bitted and bitless bridles in correlation to welfare. The aim of this study is to investigate how a transition to bitless bridle affects the horses’ behaviour, together with how the transition is percieved by different actors – students and instructors – at riding schools.
The material used to answer these questions consisted of questionnaires completed by riding instructors and students. A total of six riding schools and 13 horses participated and were studied during about six weeks. After every riding lesson with one of the participating horses both the instructor and student were asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding the lesson. All respondents got to rate the horses’ expressed mindset and how hard the rein tension was percieved on a scale of one to ten. The instructors were also asked to rate how well the student performed the exercises and the students got to rate how safe they felt with the horse. Through open ended questions the responents were given the oppurtunity to describe specific behaviours and any communication problems they experienced. The questionnaires have been analysed through both parametric statistics and thematic analysis.
The results from the questionnaires imply that both students and instructors percieve the horse as putting more preassure in the reins during bitless riding, and that problems with control and ridability were present. Despite this the students rated themselves as generally safe, which implies that the problems with control was more of a question of precision rather than a safety issue. Many of the respondents described the horses to be in a good mood. No change over the six weeks in the instructors’ numeric answers could be observed. In the students answers, a weak sinking trends showed on all questions. A moderately strong trend (Spearman-correlation of -0,294) was observed in the students answers regarding rein tension, with a mean value week one of 6,96 that sunk to a mean value of 4,81 by week six. In summary the precision seems to be lowered when transitioning to a bitless bridle, at the same time as the horses were percieved as relatively happy when ridden on the sidepull.