| Featured Article - October 2005
In The Shadow of Equus The Rituals of Coming Home, Equine Style |
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| When a horse has been absent from its herd for a while, there seems
to be a process within the group by which it can be accepted back into
the fold. When our five-year-old Thoroughbred “Sunny” went away for breeding, she was gone for close to two months. But on her return, rather than being welcomed back into the group, she was forced to graze on her own for a week before the pony, Spike, went to graze with her and others low ranking in the band hung loosely nearby. When our two-year-old Thoroughbred “Jack” came back from training after being gone some six months, he too was kept isolated for more than a week until his half-sister, Daisy, joined him and they began grazing together. Like Sunny’s reintroduction, others low in rank hung near Jack until the new structure could straighten out its kinks. This fall, three-year-old Thoroughbred “Socks” also returned from training to the same cold shoulder and isolation factor. Several things seem to be going on that aren’t always apparent. When a horse leaves its band, its absence will signal to the group that a pecking order make-over is due. Nature, abhorring a vacuum, demands that the social space left vacant by the absent horse be filled by another, which triggers the reshuffle in the herd hierarchy. The integrity and security of the band must be intact at all times since all of them have a shared job of protecting the unit from predators. For a prey species like horses, living in a group is far safer than trying to go it alone. Horses’ facial structure, with their large eyes positioned on the side of the head, allows wide peripheral vision. As a group of horses graze, each animal is in a different position in relation to the others so that, as a collective unit, they have a 360-degree vision of their surroundings. Any strangers or strange movements are spotted immediately and all are alerted to a potential threat. |
For an individual horse, safety is dependent on being accepted into
the band. The trouble is, acceptance is at the discretion of the herd
leader, the dominant mare that may tolerate the returnee or the newcomer,
or drive him off. She decides when and where in her band the horse can
be absorbed. Socks’s return came at a time when the band had been restructured not only by his leaving but by the fact that we had returned our broodmare, Daisy, to the band and introduced her two-month old colt, Sham. As he had become more confident with his “extended” family, he ventured farther from Daisy to graze and play with others. “Others” also included his grand-dam, Maisie, who willingly babysat him while Daisy took some time out to graze in another part of the acreage. For herd boss, Fari, keeping order meant keeping busy. True to ritual, Fari kept him a good 200 metres away from the band, grazing in a free-access adjoining field. His efforts to break rank and run into the band to meet Sham were met with fierce opposition by Fari and Daisy and he frequently resigned himself to grazing with Penny, our 32-year-old Welsh Mountain Pony. Sham, though, was just as curious to meet Socks and his independent, adventurous spirit got the better of him one day when he trotted into the adjoining field to find Socks grazing behind a storage barn out of sight of the band. They quickly began sniffing noses, which soon led to mutual grooming. They were having a great get-together when Daisy, on the trot looking for her son, found the two of them, pinned her ears and swung her rump at Socks, herded Sham back to the band and kept him by her side for the rest of the day. Slowly since then, one or two of the lower ranking geldings, Socks’s half-brothers, have drifted from the group to graze with him while Fari has kept a stern eye and fleet foot while keeping Socks the required distance back from the group, chasing him off if he gets too close. In time, the last of the equine barriers will be dropped and Socks will be fully integrated once more. But in the meantime, it has been fascinating watching the rituals of “coming home.” Read Margaret Evans' column "In The Shadow Of Equus" each month in The Pacific & Prairie Horse Journal
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