Monitoring acute equine visceral pain with the Equine Utrecht University Scale for Composite Pain Assessment (EQUUS-COMPASS) and the Equine Utrecht University Scale for Facial Assessment of Pain (EQUUS-FAP): A validation study.

This study presents the validation of two recently described pain scales, the Equine Utrecht University Scale for Composite Pain Assessment (EQUUS-COMPASS) and the Equine Utrecht University Scale for Facial Assessment of Pain (EQUUS-FAP), in horses with acute colic. A follow-up cohort study of 46 adult horses (n = 23 with acute colic; n = 23 healthy control horses) was performed for validation and refinement of the constructed scales. Both pain scales showed statistically significant differences between horses with colic and healthy control horses, and between horses with colic that could be treated conservatively and those that required surgical treatment or were euthanased. Sensitivity and specificity were good for both EQUUS-COMPASS (87% and 71%, respectively) and EQUUS-FAP (77% and 100%, respectively) and were not substantially influenced by applying weighting factors to the individual parameters.

A comparison of sympathetic and conventional training methods on responses to initial horse training.

In 'sympathetic horsemanship' the importance of the natural behaviour of the horse and the use of body language in communication is emphasised. However, it is unclear what effect sympathetic horsemanship has on the welfare of horses. During a 5-week starting period the effect of a sympathetic (ST) versus a conventional (CT) training method was studied using 28 young Warmblood horses. Behavioural observations during the starting period as well as during a standardised final riding test were performed by trained observers. A Wilcoxon matched-pair test was used to detect differences within groups, Mann-Whitney-U to test differences between groups, and principal component analysis (PCA) to evaluate the effect on multiple variables simultaneously. A human-approach test showed that ST horses snorted significantly less compared to CT horses (P=0.006) after the training period. Furthermore, CT horses showed more fear and stress-related behaviours during training such as 'body tension' (P<0.001), 'high head carriage' (P<0.001), 'lip movements' (P=0.008) and 'teeth grinding' (P=0.03). Principal component analysis demonstrated that horses showed consistent differences in a range of behavioural and heart-rate parameters between groups. Behavioural parameters and technical performance during the standardised final riding test did not differ significantly between groups, but mean heart rate was higher for CT horses (P<0.001). The results suggest that applying a sympathetic training method when starting young horses did not compromise technical performance, but seemed to reduce stress during training compared to a conventional training method.