Is Your Horse Telling You It Hurts? Reading Pain, Stress, and Frustration Through Equine Body Language

There is a conversation happening every time you are with your horse. It started the moment you walked into the stable, and it continues through every minute of grooming, tacking up, mounting, and riding. Most of it happens without a single sound.

Horses are prey animals who evolved to conceal weakness. In the wild, a horse that shows obvious pain or distress becomes an easy target. This hardwired instinct to mask suffering does not disappear in domestication — it simply means that by the time a horse's discomfort is obvious enough for most people to notice, the animal has often been communicating it for weeks or months in subtler ways.

This article bridges the gap between what modern equine science knows about horse communication and what Arabic-language equestrian content has almost entirely failed to convey: how to read your horse's signals accurately, distinguish pain from behaviour, and use scientifically validated tools that can save your horse from unnecessary suffering — and save you from misidentifying a medical problem as a training problem.

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Part One: The Foundation — How Horses Communicate

Horses Are Not People

The most important thing to understand about horse communication is that it is not human communication. Horses do not sulk, hold grudges, or act difficult out of spite. When a horse repeatedly refuses a jump, pins its ears during grooming, or becomes tense and resistant under saddle, it is not being "naughty." It is communicating something specific — and the message is almost always one of the following:

1. Something hurts
2. Something is frightening
3. Something is confusing or contradictory
4. Something has happened previously in this context that caused pain or fear

Understanding which of these four is operating in a given moment requires you to read the whole horse — not just one signal in isolation.

The Five Channels of Horse Communication

Horses communicate through five main physical channels simultaneously. Reading body language correctly means reading all five at once:

1. The ears — the most obvious and widely understood channel

2. The eyes and facial expression — often underread, scientifically crucial

3. The muzzle and mouth — carries far more information than most riders realise

4. The body posture and muscle tension — the whole-body canvas

5. The tail — a direct emotional barometer

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Part Two: Reading Each Channel in Detail

The Ears

Ears are the horse's most expressive and mobile feature — a horse can move each ear independently through nearly 180 degrees.

Ear Position	What It Typically Means
Relaxed, slightly to the side	Calm, resting, content
Forward, pricked	Alert, curious, interested in something ahead
Forward + tense body	High alert, potential flight response
Rotating separately	Listening to multiple stimuli, processing
Rotating rapidly back and forth	Heightened anxiety, overwhelmed by stimuli
Turned back (not pinned)	Listening to something behind, or to the rider
Pinned flat against neck	Aggression, severe pain, or extreme fear — a warning

The most important distinction: Ears turned back are not the same as ears pinned flat. Turned-back ears are often simply attention — a horse listening to its rider. Pinned ears, where the ear is held rigidly down against the neck, are a serious signal requiring immediate attention. The context of the whole body tells you which is which.

Under saddle: Research by Dr. Sue Dyson and colleagues at the Animal Health Trust in Newmarket found that horses showing pain under saddle very commonly have ears held persistently back or back-and-forth during work. If your horse's ears are regularly back during riding — not turning to listen, but held back — this warrants a pain assessment, not a training correction.

The Eyes

The eyes are the most underread communication channel in horses, yet they carry some of the most precise emotional information available.

Soft, half-closed eyes with slow blink: Deep relaxation, trust, contentment. A horse that closes its eyes during grooming and lets its lower lip drop is showing maximum comfort.

Wide open, with white of eye visible: The "whale eye" — a classic fear or extreme stress signal. The visible white rim (sclera) around the iris, combined with a wide-open eye, indicates a horse that is frightened or overwhelmed. This is not an aggression signal — it is a vulnerability signal.

Hard, fixed stare: A horse staring rigidly at something with a tense, unblinking eye is in a state of heightened vigilance. It may be about to spook.

Tense, tight skin around the eye: This subtle sign — where the skin above or around the eye appears tight and slightly wrinkled in a specific pattern — is one of the key features in the scientifically validated Horse Grimace Scale (HGS). Research published in PLOS ONE (Dalla Costa et al., 2014) demonstrated that this "orbital tightening" correlates strongly with pain states. It appears before more obvious pain behaviours and is one of the earliest detectable signs.

Asymmetry: One eye showing more white than the other, or one eye behaving differently, can indicate a unilateral problem — an issue on one side of the body, a dental problem on one side, or environmental stimulus from a specific direction.

The Muzzle and Mouth

The soft tissue of the muzzle and lips is extraordinarily expressive in horses and is hugely underused as a reading channel.

Loose, floppy lower lip: One of the clearest relaxation signals. A horse whose lower lip hangs slightly open during rest is in a state of deep calm. This is normal and healthy.

Tightened, pursed muzzle: Tension in the muzzle — where the lips draw slightly inward, the chin looks more defined, and the whole muzzle appears tighter — is a stress or pain signal. It often appears before the ears pin or the tail swishes.

Licking and chewing: Commonly seen after a period of concentration or mild stress, often interpreted as "the horse understood" in training. This reading is partly correct — licking and chewing is a parasympathetic response, meaning the nervous system is shifting from activation back to rest. But it is a release from something, not evidence of comprehension. The question is: what was it releasing from?

Yawning: Like licking and chewing, yawning is often a release behaviour after stress. Horses that yawn repeatedly and excessively — particularly after work, or during certain types of handling — may be releasing accumulated tension. Repeated yawning can also signal gastric discomfort (ulcers), as the movement of the jaw may provide momentary relief from stomach pain.

Teeth grinding (bruxism): A very significant signal almost always indicating pain or severe chronic stress. Horses that grind their teeth — an audible, rhythmic grinding of molars — during or after riding, during tacking up, or at rest need a veterinary evaluation. Common causes include gastric ulcers, dental pain, musculoskeletal pain, or chronic anxiety.

Mouth opening during riding: A horse that repeatedly opens its mouth, shows teeth, or evades the bit by opening wide is often showing pain — from the bit, the noseband, dental issues, or musculoskeletal discomfort. This is one of the 24 behaviours in the Ridden Horse Pain Ethogram (covered below).

Snapping (foals only): Young foals will snap their lips together in a rapid "clacking" motion when approaching unfamiliar adults. This is a submissive signal — "I'm small, I'm not a threat, please don't harm me."

Body Posture and Muscle Tension

A horse's whole body is a canvas of information. The key is to develop the habit of reading the body as a whole, not as individual parts.

Relaxed resting posture: Weight distributed evenly, or resting one hind leg (cocking a hind limb), neck relaxed and slightly lowered, muscles visibly soft. This is the baseline you want to know for your individual horse.

Square, alert stance: Weight distributed evenly on all four legs, head raised, ears forward, muscles slightly engaged. The horse is attentive but not frightened.

High head carriage + tight back: A horse carrying its head unusually high with a tight, rigid back is in a state of tension — either fear-based or pain-based. A horse in back pain will often hollow its back and raise its head to try to reduce the load on the painful area.

Weight shifting and restlessness at rest: A horse that constantly shifts its weight, picks up feet repeatedly, or cannot stand still in the stable may be experiencing pain in its limbs, hooves, or abdomen. This is distinct from a naturally "spooky" or energetic personality — look for the pattern and context.

Muscle asymmetry: If one side of your horse's neck, shoulder, or hindquarter appears noticeably more muscled or more tense than the other, this asymmetry may reflect a compensation pattern — the horse favouring one side due to pain or discomfort on the other.

The Tail

The tail is a direct emotional barometer and is one of the fastest-responding channels.

Tail Position/Movement	What It Typically Means
Gently swaying, relaxed	Calm, content
Raised (especially in young horses)	Excitement, playfulness, showing off
Clamped tightly down	Fear, anxiety, submission, cold
Swishing — slow, fly-swatting	Normal response to flies or insects
Swishing — rapid during riding	Irritation, frustration, pain
Wringing (circular motion during work)	Significant discomfort or conflict
Tail held out and rigid	Heightened excitement or tension

The key distinction for riders: A horse that swishes its tail during a specific moment — when you apply a leg aid, when you ask for canter, when you pass a certain point in the arena — is telling you something about that specific moment. Document when and where the swishing happens. If it consistently correlates with a specific movement, girth area, leg aid, or location, it is communicating a specific discomfort, not a general personality trait.

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Part Three: The Science — Two Tools Every Rider Should Know

Tool 1: The Horse Grimace Scale (HGS)

The Horse Grimace Scale is a scientifically validated pain assessment tool developed by Dalla Costa and colleagues in 2014 and refined in subsequent research. It identifies six specific facial action units that correlate with pain states in horses:

1. Stiffly backward ears — not relaxed-back, but rigidly held back with tension in the ear muscles

2. Orbital tightening — tension in the skin around the eye, giving a tight, "hard" appearance to the eye area

3. Tension above the eye — a specific wrinkling pattern in the skin above the eye, particularly medial (toward the nose side)

4. Prominent strained chewing muscles — the masseter muscles on the side of the jaw appear tense and prominent, visible as a slight bulging

5. Mouth corner pulled back and/or strained — the corner of the lip is drawn back, and the area around the muzzle appears strained

6. Chin and lower lip strained — the chin area appears tense and the lower lip loses its floppy quality

Each of these features is scored as absent (0), moderately present (1), or obviously present (2), for a maximum score of 12. Higher scores indicate greater pain. The scale was originally validated using horses undergoing castration with and without pain relief — horses given effective analgesia scored significantly lower.

How to use it practically: You do not need to be a researcher to benefit from this scale. The principle is: look at your horse's face during work and handling, and learn what "relaxed face" looks like for your individual horse. Then compare to moments of work, veterinary examination, or post-exercise. Consistent changes in any of these six areas — particularly orbital tightening and strained muzzle — are worth discussing with your vet.

Important limitation: Research has shown that HGS is most sensitive to acute, moderate-to-severe pain such as post-surgical pain or acute lameness. It is less sensitive to chronic low-grade pain, such as gastric ulcers. For chronic discomfort, the Ridden Horse Pain Ethogram is more useful.

Tool 2: The Ridden Horse Pain Ethogram (RHPE)

Developed by Dr. Sue Dyson and colleagues, the Ridden Horse Pain Ethogram is a checklist of 24 behaviours observed in horses during ridden work that correlate with musculoskeletal pain and lameness. Research has shown that horses displaying 8 or more of these behaviours during 5–10 minutes of ridden work are likely experiencing discomfort.

The 24 behaviours fall into several categories:

Head and neck:

• Head tilting or tilting repeatedly
• Head tossing up and down or side to side
• Head position above or behind the vertical (persistently)
• Nose behind vertical in relation to the vertical plane of the face

Facial expression:

• Ears back persistently (>10 seconds) or back-and-forth repeatedly
• Intense or glazed expression (staring, fixed gaze)
• Eyes closed
• Mouth open (>10 seconds)

Mouth:

• Bit contact avoidance
• Tongue out of mouth or repeatedly crossing the bit
• Teeth grinding (audible during ridden work)

Body and gait:

• Reluctance to go forward, stopping, or running backwards
• Spontaneous bucking or kicking out
• Stumbling repeatedly
• Stiff or irregular movement
• Marked resistance to going in one or both directions
• Tail clamped or tail wringing

Response to aids:

• Excessive reaction to spurs
• Reluctance to strike off or maintain one canter lead
• Jumping asymmetrically over fences
• Refusing or running out from jumps without an obvious external reason

How to use it: During your next ridden session, have someone on the ground count how many of these 24 behaviours appear within a 5–10 minute window of work. If the count reaches 8 or more consistently across multiple sessions, book a veterinary lameness assessment rather than increasing training pressure or changing equipment alone.

Why this matters in an Arab world context: In many traditional equestrian cultures, including in Jordan and across the Arab world, resistance and reluctance in horses is culturally understood as a training problem requiring firmer correction. The RHPE reframes this: many horses that appear "difficult," "lazy," or "disobedient" under saddle are actually pain-signalling animals that need veterinary attention, not harsher training. This shift in understanding is happening in European professional riding at the highest levels — and it should happen here too.

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Part Four: Common Misreadings and What They Actually Mean

"My horse is lazy"

A horse that consistently lacks forward energy, requires repeated leg aids, or appears "switched off" during work may be:

• In chronic pain (gastric ulcers, back pain, hock issues)
• Genuinely fatigued (overworked, underfed, or recovering from illness)
• Poorly fitting tack causing discomfort
• Associating work with previous painful experiences

True laziness — a horse that is sound, healthy, correctly fed, well-fitted, and pain-free, but simply minimally motivated — is relatively rare. Rule out the above before accepting "lazy" as a character trait.

"My horse is spooky"

Chronic spookiness — a horse that consistently over-reacts to stimuli that most horses handle calmly — can have several causes:

• Vision problems: Horses with reduced vision in one eye may spook intensely on that side. This is more common than most owners realise, particularly in older horses.
• Chronic pain: A horse in constant discomfort has a heightened stress response and a lower threshold for reacting to stimuli. Pain makes everything more frightening.
• Ulcers: Gastric ulcer syndrome is significantly associated with reactive, anxious behaviour in horses. Multiple studies have found that treatment of ulcers correlates with behavioural improvement.
• Prior trauma: Horses have excellent memories, particularly for aversive experiences. A horse that was frightened or hurt in a specific context (trailers, farrier visits, certain arenas) will retain that memory.

"My horse is aggressive"

A horse that pins its ears, snaps, bites during grooming, kicks during tacking up, or reacts badly to being touched in specific areas is almost always communicating pain.

The most common pain presentations misidentified as aggression:

• Girth sensitivity: A horse that snaps when girthed may have gastric ulcers (the stomach lies close to the girth area), back pain, or a poorly fitting saddle.
• Resistance to being touched on the back: Back pain, saddle fit issues, or muscle soreness.
• Ear pinning at feeding time: Gastric discomfort — the anticipation of eating triggers acid production, which can cause pain before the feed arrives.
• Defensive reactions to the leg: Skin sensitivity, previous spur injuries, or lateral body pain.

"My horse is being dominant"

The concept of dominance is widely misapplied to horses. Modern equine behavioural science has moved away from the idea that horses are constantly trying to "dominate" their handlers. Behaviours interpreted as dominance — pushing into space, not moving when asked, refusing to be caught — are more accurately understood as:

• Lack of clear, consistent communication from the handler
• Pain or discomfort making compliance uncomfortable
• Anxiety and poor confidence
• Learned behaviour from inconsistent handling

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Part Five: The Calming Signals — What Your Horse Does to Manage Its Own Stress

Horses, like many animals, have a repertoire of behaviours that function to self-regulate stress or signal non-aggression to others. Understanding these prevents misinterpretation:

Licking and chewing: As noted above, a parasympathetic release. It follows stress, not comprehension. If your horse consistently licks and chews at a certain point in training, identify what preceded it.

Yawning: Tension release. A horse that yawns repeatedly at the end of a session has been carrying tension through that session.

Turning away: A horse that consistently turns its hindquarters toward you when you approach its stable is not being rude — it is either fearful, in pain, or has learned that turning away delays an unpleasant interaction. Investigate the cause.

Head lowering: A self-calming behaviour. Horses naturally lower their heads when relaxing — the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, heart rate drops. You will sometimes see this in training sessions at moments of release.

Blinking slowly: Associated with relaxation and reduced arousal. A horse that blinks slowly and softly in your presence is comfortable with you.

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Part Six: Building the Habit of Reading — A Practical Framework

Reading equine body language is not a skill you acquire from a single article. It is built through deliberate, consistent observation over time. Here is how to build it:

1. Know your horse's baseline. Spend five minutes observing your horse at rest in the stable — not doing anything, just watching. Note the ear position, eye softness, muzzle tension, overall body posture. This is the "relaxed normal" you compare everything else to.

2. Observe before you interact. Before grooming, tacking up, or riding, pause for 30 seconds and read the whole horse. What is the energy level? What are the ears doing? How is the body held? This information changes how you begin the session.

3. Notice transitions. The moments where tension appears — when you pick up the girth, when you ask for a specific movement, when you pass a specific point in the arena — are diagnostically valuable. Document them.

4. Never punish the signal. If your horse pins its ears when you touch its flank, and you punish that response, you do not eliminate the pain causing the signal. You teach the horse that expressing pain leads to punishment, so it stops expressing it — until the pain becomes too great to suppress. This is how dangerous situations develop.

5. Investigate before correcting. Every new behavioural change in a horse — increased spookiness, new resistance, reluctance to load, change in appetite — deserves investigation before training pressure is increased. New behaviour is new communication.

6. Film your sessions. Review footage of your rides from the ground perspective. Things you miss in the moment — tail swishing at specific transitions, momentary ears-back at certain aids — are often clearly visible on video.

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A Quick Reference: Reading the Whole Horse

Signal	Likely Meaning	Action
Pinned ears + tense body	Pain or strong negative reaction	Stop, investigate cause
Whale eye + rigid posture	Fear or extreme stress	Reduce stimulus, give space
Tail wringing under saddle	Significant discomfort during work	Vet check: back, saddle, lameness
Teeth grinding	Chronic pain or stress (often ulcers)	Veterinary evaluation
Yawning repeatedly	Stress release (from what?)	Review what preceded it
Mouth opening during riding	Pain from bit, noseband, dental, or back	Full vet/saddle/dental check
Consistent head tossing	Resistance to bit, back pain, dental issue	Investigate systematically
8+ RHPE behaviours	Likely musculoskeletal pain	Veterinary lameness assessment

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Final Word

The horse cannot speak your language. But it speaks constantly, in a language that is precise, consistent, and learnable. The obligation is on us — the humans with the capability for self-reflection and deliberate learning — to do the work of learning it.

The science now gives us better tools than any previous generation of riders has had. The Horse Grimace Scale, the Ridden Horse Pain Ethogram, decades of ethological research — this knowledge exists. In Arabic equestrian culture, it is almost entirely absent from the conversation.

Bringing it in is not about judging traditional horsemanship. It is about giving horses a better chance of being understood, and giving riders a more accurate picture of what is actually happening between them and their horses.

The horse that seems difficult is almost always the horse that has been trying to tell you something. Learn to listen.