Most horse management practice still lags behind the science. Equine Voice — a new app by equine behaviourist Nicky Ross — bridges that gap, giving everyday horse owners the same observational rigour as a trained behaviourist, grounded in the Five Domains Model and the Teleonome framework.
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Most of us notice things about our horses. But noticing is only the beginning of observation — and observation without a framework is just watching. Equine behaviourist Nicky Ross explores how structured tools, grounded in welfare science, change what we can see, hear, and understand.
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Ask a farrier what’s wrong with your horse and the answer starts in the feet. Ask a nutritionist and it starts in the feed bucket. It’s funny because it’s true — and it’s true because it’s biology. This article explores how your experience and expertise shape what you detect in your horse, what you miss, and why a whole-horse welfare assessment process changes everything.
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We assess animal welfare by measuring stress hormones, counting behaviours, and checking for disease. But what’s missing is a way to evaluate these data from the animals’ lived experience. A new framework — the teleonome — offers a biological north star for welfare science, grounded in each species’ own evolutionary logic.
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You’ve seen it. The horse pacing the fence line, wearing a track in the ground. The one who calls out, again and again, when stabled alone. We call these problems. But most of us have a quieter sense that something else is going on. That quieter sense is correct — and now there’s a word for what it’s pointing at.
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Across the UK, riding schools are rethinking welfare from the horse’s perspective. The Riding School Futures Project shows how integrating the Five Domains Model, equitation science, and staff education is reshaping everyday practice — not through rules, but through cultural change.
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