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The horse´s visual field

The horse´s visual field is something else we should take into account when riding. Horse´s visual field is of around 357° aprox. Of those, he has 146° aprox. of monocular vision on each side, plus at around a 65° of binocular vision in front of him, as seen in the picture.

Naturally the horse´s visual field right in front of its nose is very restricted due to the position of the eyes and the long face; that means that the horse can not see from the muzzle down unless he moves his head ( that is one of the reasons of when we are right in front of a horse´s head and we move our hand directly towards his head to pat it, he may move the head away, not necessarily shying away from us, only trying to adjust the vision field so he can see us).

So, how does this affect us and the horse when riding? well, if we restrict the horse´s head badly with our hands (what we understand by rollkur) besides hurting the horse´s muscles,skeleton, ligaments and crushing the paritod glands (next time we will talk about these!), we also reduce to none the vision of the horse, the horse can only see his chest or right in front of his front legs.

So here we have a reason more to make us think thoroughly what we ask of our horses and how we do it.

Besides the obvious, going around without being able to see may also affect the horse´s behaviour. Horses are spooky by nature, not being able to be aware of their surroundings and having constant tension from the riders hands may provoke them to get frightened more often and more suddenly.

It’s a mistake to think that horses see the same way we do. It’s important to understand how they perceive the world, and why they react the way they do to shadows, changes in light and understand the extent of their close-up and distance vision. When we’re doing things like designing jumps, pastures or stables, loading up on the trailer or riding out on trail, it helps to understand what those things look like from the horse’s point of view, in this way we can be more sympathetic and can adapt and react adequately.

The horse´s visual field is something else we should take into account when riding. Horse´s visual field is of around 357° aprox. Of those, he has 146° aprox. of monocular vision on each side, plus at around a 65° of binocular vision in front of him, as seen in the picture.

Naturally the horse´s visual field right in front of its nose is very restricted due to the position of the eyes and the long face; that means that the horse can not see from the muzzle down unless he moves his head ( that is one of the reasons of when we are right in front of a horse´s head and we move our hand directly towards his head to pat it, he may move the head away, not necessarily shying away from us, only trying to adjust the vision field so he can see us).

So, how does this affect us and the horse when riding? well, if we restrict the horse´s head badly with our hands (what we understand by rollkur) besides hurting the horse´s muscles,skeleton, ligaments and crushing the paritod glands (next time we will talk about these!), we also reduce to none the vision of the horse, the horse can only see his chest or right in front of his front legs.

 

So here we have a reason more to make us think thoroughly what we ask of our horses and how we do it.

Besides the obvious, going around without being able to see may also affect the horse´s behaviour. Horses are spooky by nature, not being able to be aware of their surroundings and having constant tension from the riders hands may provoke them to get frightened more often and more suddenly.

It’s a mistake to think that horses see the same way we do. It’s important to understand how they perceive the world, and why they react the way they do to shadows, changes in light and understand the extent of their close-up and distance vision. When we’re doing things like designing jumps, pastures or stables, loading up on the trailer or riding out on trail, it helps to understand what those things look like from the horse’s point of view, in this way we can be more sympathetic and can adapt and react adequately.

 

 

Here is the right way of working the horse: On the first pic the horse´s head is forward down and with its head out the vertical, and on the second one the horse is nicely holding his head up, pocking its nose slightly out of the vertical. On both cases, the horse is allowed to see and its head is not fixed.

 

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