Asking a young horse to leave the herd he’s grown up is an inevitable but challenging task when training a young horse, as some naive horses rely on herdmates for a feeling of safety and security. Some owners and trainers might use a herdmate to help keep the naive horse calm during training, but is this really the best tactic to take?

Elke Hartmann, PhD, a researcher in the Department of Animal Environment and Health at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Uppsala), recently undertook a study in which she and colleagues explored a training partner’s effect on teaching young horses to accept social separation.

The team used 32 Dutch Warmblood fillies–18 yearlings and 14 two-year-olds–that had no prior experience with social separation (i.e., they’d always lived in herd situations). The horses were split into eight groups of four, were housed on grass pasture 24 hours per day, and received a mixture of hay and straw each day after completing the experimental training sessions.

Prior to the start of the study, the researchers habituated the horses to wearing halters and being led and also to the test arena so a "novel environment" would not influence the test results