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The
Natural Horse Group was established in 2001.
It aims to provide
information that enables people to explore ways of keeping and managing
equines that enhance wellbeing and encourage a natural lifestyle
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Articles
Liberating Luxor
By Jordan Hodgson
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I can’t say the cribbing was the first thing I noticed when I met Luxor almost two years ago. He exhibited a general disinterest in me as I opened his stable door and peered into the dismal darkness trying to make out his outline on what was a beautiful spring day outside. His stable didn’t get much natural light and had a full upper door grille, leaving him no way of seeing or communicating with other horses, or people for that matter. The school’s justification for keeping him in this appalling confined condition was that he could not crib-bite. Luxor just seemed dejected, but I can remember feeling that he was still hanging on to life with a grim determination.
Luxor was a 10 year-old 16.1hh black Dutch Warmblood gelding who had been entire for the majority of his life, until his arrival in the north west of England from Scotland and previously Holland. He had been purchased by a local dealer to sell on to a show-jumping client, but when the she saw him cribbing she was not interested. By an odd twist of fate, he ended up at the local riding school, which just happened to need a good jumping horse for giving lessons.
The next time I saw him, he was grazing happily alongside other school horses on a sunny evening. It was only a few weeks later that I became aware he was no longer being turned out due to his cribbing on the fence posts and allegedly biting the other horses. They apparently tried muzzling him but then he couldn’t eat and finally he was no longer let out at all, other than into the small dirt “playpen” with high electrified fencing. Some people at the school judged him by his previous job, rather than as an individual, insisting he would not socialise with the other horses, having been a breeding stallion for nine years. Yet it was downright obvious to me that he was craving equine company and was not in the slightest bit aggressive towards other horses, only people, and then it seemed more in defence.
I decided to take Luxor on loan. The arrangement was that he would still be used by the riding school but I also had use of him. Unfortunately I was limited in what I could do to help him and it came close to breaking my heart. Every day I promised him things would change. I paid my loan amount each week, not to ride but to buy him some freedom to be a horse. He wasn’t the easiest animal to be around, very aggressive with people one moment and the next he would let his protective mask slip with me and be incredibly gentle, however there was no consistency in his behaviour.
Soon he began to acknowledge me and await my arrival with something that felt to me like a sense of hope. He was incredibly head shy and the slightest sharp movement would send him flying to the back of his stable but, despite his obvious fear, he would still have a “don’t you even dare!” look in his eye! It was the fight in him that made me determined to get him out to a fairer existence. He hadn’t given up and I admired the stallion-like determination to retain his dignity.
It was clear he had suffered abuse at one or more of his previous homes. Despite being an outstanding jumper, he was absolutely terrified of humans in connection with whips, raised hands or voices, or sudden movement directed toward him. I still believe that the head shy behaviour he sometimes still exhibits - usually in his stable - is down to him having been continually slapped across his face for cribbing on the door.
I decided I would have to buy Luxor and move him away from the riding school. From the moment I turned him out with other horses, wherever we have been, he has never shown any aggression and has integrated easily with colts and geldings. At the farm where he currently lives, the horses are not segregated by gender and he is incredibly gentle and almost paternal with the mares and filly foals who seem drawn to stay close to him by choice.
However, I was naive in thinking that once I moved Luxor away from the narrow-minded school environment all our worries would be over. This initial sense of hope was increased by our first port of call being someone who is a member of the NHG and a wonderful caring horsewoman. Certainly, Luxor did become a changed horse overnight when I moved him to a friend’s ‘free-range’ yard, though the cribbing continued. However, on my moving Luxor to a livery yard to get him a bit closer to home, I found his original behaviour patterns slowly returning; increased and more intense cribbing and more surprisingly, his aggression toward people began to reappear. It wasn’t lost on me (and obviously not him) that there were people at this yard who judged him entirely by his cribbing and did things like put Cribbox on his door when I wasn’t around, chastise him or just look at him like he was an alien life form. The day I turned up to find human spit on his head, neck and rug broke my heart. His behaviour had been saying it all, I had finally heard him and we moved on to a nearby farm.
The change in him was as I had predicted. It was exactly the same reaction he’d had when we moved to my friend’s the summer before. He was a changed horse, no aggression, no stress, just very chilled and gentle. The soft look returned to his eye overnight and he has become an absolute pleasure to be around. He has recently taken to mutually grooming me after learning this process from a 7 month-old filly foal at the farm. The cribbing is still present, but more as an afterthought or during or immediately after eating.
In November I took him to Liverpool vet school to check the cribbing wasn’t down to ulceration, particularly bearing in mind his past as a performance horse/stallion. However, the test results came back clear and I was told that the sugar and cereal free, forage-based diet I had switched him to, along with a more natural environment, was probably the best course of action I could take. Ironically, one of the interns at the hospital was Dutch and she explained that it was likely Luxor had been weaned at a painfully young age, kept in solitary with no door or window and given relatively little, if any, turnout.
This was originally where my article was to end. However, after just two weeks at the small, relaxed farm, my joy at having found sanctuary for my well-deserving friend was shattered and I realised with intense clarity that cribbing is more of an issue for other horses’ owners than it is for Luxor or myself, or ironically the actual yard owners. On Christmas Day, I was verbally attacked by a mother whose daughter keeps her ‘Horse of the Year Show’ pony at the farm. She screamed at me how much her precious little pony was worth and that she had no intention of losing money on it should it start to copy Luxor’s cribbing. She tried to bully me into doing futile things to prevent Luxor cribbing and insisted I withhold his freedom to prevent her horse from seeing any such behaviour. She talked about my beautiful and talented horse in an appalling manner and, despite me trying to calmly explain equine behaviour patterns to her, she would not listen, she knew best and I was quite simply a naive idiot and, in spite of my 37 years, I was apparently back to being 7 years old. When she, along with her family, had gone, I trudged alone down to the sand paddock where I had taken Luxor out of her way so she could pay her usual flying visit to her precious possession. My horse stood there in a snow blizzard looking at me, puzzled as to why I had put him out in a foot of snow in the first place and I just started to cry.
The experience has made me realise that, in order for me to remain crucially consistent for Luxor, I really have no option other than to keep him under my own rules because no matter where I move him, there will almost always be someone who will judge him, someone who will make both of us scared to breathe, someone who will make me feel like I am betraying my horse by asking me to modify or check his behaviour in a futile way, which is for me a totally unacceptable path to take. I am now left with the rather unplanned task of looking for a piece of land or a house with land to lease or buy so that both of us can relax. But for now we are staying were we are; he is happy and I am making a determined attempt to be thick-skinned and not allow my emotion to be transferred to him. The father of the said HOYS pony has still not spoken a word to me, but just glares at me. If these neurotic horse owners could see how far Luxor has come over the last eight months since I first moved him from the school, they would be amazed, but such people don’t care; they only want that which is already perfect. Since our escape to freedom Luxor cribs much less, hardly at all when he is out in the field, and the way in which he does it is no longer as desperate, more habitual and food related. I never stop him from cribbing in the stable (since I feel he his not really designed to be in there in the first place) be it on the door or more popularly the Haybar I recently bought him. For me, more than him, the Haybar is a welcome relief from third party interference as its location means no one can see him doing it. The irony of it is, the more Luxor relaxes, the less he cribs. The more people put pressure on him or me, the more stressed he gets, the more he cribs. The more dejected he looks, the more my heart goes out to him and the more I realise just how much of a minority people like us - people who are more inclined towards natural horse care and more educated about horse behaviour - really are. |
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