Monty Roberts’ Public Demonstrations: Preliminary Report on the Heart Rate and Heart Rate Variability of Horses Undergoing Training during Live Audience Events

摘要

Simple SummaryMonty Roberts is a famous horse trainer, commonly referred to as a ‘horse whisperer’, who shares his training methods all over the world, including through large public audience events. These events have the potential to compromise the horse’s welfare since the horses have usually been transported to the event on the day and stabled in an unfamiliar environment before being used in demonstrations watched by hundreds of people. This paper describes the opportunistic collection and analysis of heart rate (HR; beat-to-beat intervals) and heart rate variability (HRV) of horses being trained during Monty Roberts’ public demonstrations within the United Kingdom. HR and HRV measured during the demonstrations were lower (indicative of an increase in heart rate as measured in beats-per-minute) than recordings within the stable and consistent with low-moderate exercise intensities used during training. The HR and HRV during a specific training method known as “Join-up^®” were comparable to other methods of training used by Monty Roberts during public demonstrations. In conclusion, training of horses during public demonstrations is a low-moderate physiological, rather than psychological stressor for horses, with the stress response comparable or less than those previously reported in the literature for horses being trained outside of public audience events. Furthermore, we found no evidence that Join-up^® alters HR and HRV in a way to suggest that this training method negatively affects the psychological welfare of horses.