As a horse owner who once suffered the problems of a crib-biting horse, this research caught my eye. From the survey, about 5% of horses had this vice. This fitted in approximately with my personal experience.

Thoroughbreds were twice as likely to crib bite as any other breed. Again, my horse with this problem was a thoroughbred racehorse. 55% of owners surveyed though environmental factors were to blame, about 40% thought environmental and genetic were to blame, and 5% thought there were genetic factors. I’m with the majority here as I think that boredom in stabled animals is mainly to blame.

50% of owners thought horses copied anormal behaviour but only 1% of horses started to crib when one was introduced to a yard. I was quite concerned when I had some youngsters stabled and grazing with my cribbing horse but none of my horses copied this behaviour.

The main problem with my horse was his ability to crib on most of the fence posts in his field, which meant we were continually doing fence maintenance. Electric fencing would have been very useful but it really wasn’t used much for fencing horses 20 years ago in the UK.

As a massive Cesar Millan fan, I regularly watch the Dog Whisperer episodes on TV. Last week he joined up Horse Whisperer Pat Parelli to work on separate dog and horse problems on an LA ranch. It was great to see the similarities in their approaches to communicating with animals in their own language and modelling their natural behaviour.

I thought the most telling bit of the programme was at the end when they were talking about their work and saying they were really in the people business - as in most cases they are teaching people how to better communicate with their animals. If you haven’t seen the shows, you would expect them to describe themselves as being in the animal business, but you only have to watch a few Dog Whisperer episodes to see this is not the case.

I think for a future episode, they should find a situation involving dogs, horses and children problems. They could then get The Nanny involved as well. I’m sure there would be additional similarities here too.

We have had a number of problems with getting horses on trailers over the years. We usually used a car and double box trailer for travel to competitions rather than a small box wagon. Initially these were walk-on and back-off type trailers, rather than the modern ones where you have a separate front ramp and can lead the horse forwards off the trailer.  Box trailers (like the Ifor Williams one we had) often have poor shock absorbers and are surprisingly bumpy to travel in so I’m not surprised that some horses take a dislike to travelling long distances in them. Modern box trailers and wagons are much improved.

Most of these boxing problems can be sorted out with regular practice and some tips that worked for us:

• If the horse walks past the side of the ramp, then position the box trailer next to a building or in an alley to block off one or both side of the trailer. Another option is to place gates on each side of the trailer ramp.
• Lead the horse slowly towards the centre of the ramp. If the horse stops at the bottom of the ramp, get someone to approach from behind to encourage the horse forward.
• Do not turn to face the horse and pull on the lead! He will just pull backwards against this.
• Gradually encourage the horse to walk up the ramp. This may take some time and the horse may stop several times.
• If the horse is unfamiliar with trailers, rather than just misbehaving, you may want to feed it on the ramp. You will need to continue to practice regularly until the horse will stand quietly inside the trailer.
• It can help to put another horse in the trailer but this can make the available space smaller, so will not be useful in all cases.
• If you have a front-unload horse trailer, I would suggest lowering the ramp so the horse can see through the trailer and practice walking through it.

I have had occasional problems with catching horses but my current horse goes through regular phases of being difficult to catch. This usually happens in the summer when he would prefer to be grazing and he is much worse now that he is almost retired, so he is not being regularly caught. You can often get near to him but he turns or runs away before you are able to catch him. He will be caught if the other horses are coming in also or if he’s hungry, but otherwise it is pot luck.

We have found various ways around this but no permanent answer:

• We leave a headcollar on him to help with catching but this is not sufficient to hold onto him if he decides to run away
• We usually approach him with a handful of food or a bucket of his favourite horse food. A bucket will often attract the other horses which can cause additional problems
• We avoid eye contact and do not look look directly at him when approaching
• We avoid trying to catch him when he’s just started grazing but this is difficult to when you do not live on the premises
• We have separated him from the other horses into a different adjoining paddock or create a small area with electric fencing
• We usually get someone to help to catch with the other horses
• It is very difficult not to become annoyed but this just makes the situation worse so stay as calm and relaxed as possible - this is much easier said than done!
• Set extra time aside to keep walking after him until he gets bored and eventually gives up. This once took 45 mins the first day, 25 mins the second day and 5-10 mins each day after this. He was already isolated in a small separate area of the field away from the other horses and it would had taken much longer if he was in a group of horses.

I am a big fan of the Dog Whisperer Show on the National Geographic Channel. Cesar Millan has worked closely with dogs for many years and studied the behaviour of dogs, particularly in packs. One of his key phrases is pack leader and this should be the owner not the dog! His formula of exercise, discipline and affection are successfully repeated over and over again with a range of problems. It is amazing to see how quickly most dogs respond to his methods. He is also very good at breaking the bad news to people that their dog’s problem is often created by their behaviour, and does this in such a way that they listen to and accept his advice.

I have seen occasional TV programmes and read a book about The Horse Whisperer about his approach to breaking in horses. His methods are based on a close study of the behaviour of horses in the wild. I have not seen his methods applied to some of the common horse vices.

I would be interested to see how well Caesar’s methods or ideas could be applied to horses as they are also pack animals. Horse owners recognises that there is a pecking order in every group of horses and this is evident when watching horses out in a field, particularly at feeding time. While many owners do spoil horses to some degree, this is not usually to the same extent as some dog owners. Horses also usually get regular exercise so that leaves discipline as the potential cause of many problems. Certainly horses do develop bad habits and vices over time.

I go through spells of having difficulty catching my horse, usually in the summer when grass is much more interesting than exercise. As I follow him around the field, I can’t ignore he fact that he has the upper hand and is the pack leader. There is certainly no-one else to blame as I’ve owned and looked after him since he was a 3 months old foal! I have often wondered what advice I would receive from the animal behaviourists on how best to correct this plus how I helped to created this problem.