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Mounted police horses have to cope with challenging, unpredictable situations when on duty and it is essential to gain insight into how these horses handle stress to warrant their welfare. The aim of the study was to evaluate physiological and behavioral responses of 12 (six experienced and six inexperienced) police horses during police training. Horses were evaluated during four test settings at three time points over a 7-week period: outdoor track test, street track test, indoor arena test and smoke machine test. Heart rate (HR; beats/min), HR variability (HRV; root means square of successive differences; ms), behavior score (BS; scores 0 to 5) and standard police performance score (PPS; scores 1 to 0) were obtained per test. All data were statistically evaluated using a linear mixed model (Akaike's Information criterium; t . 2.00) or logistic regression (P , 0.05). HR of horses was increased at indoor arena test (98 6 26) and smoke machine test (107 6 25) compared with outdoor track (80 6 12, t 5 2.83 and t 5 3.91, respectively) and street track tests (81 6 14, t 5 2.48 and t 5 3.52, respectively). HRV of horses at the indoor arena test (42.4 6 50.2) was significantly lower compared with street track test (85.7 6 94.3 and t 5 2.78). BS did not show significant differences between tests and HR of horses was not always correlated with the observed moderate behavioral responses. HR, HRV, PPS and BS did not differ between repetition of tests and there were no significant differences in any of the four tests between experienced and inexperienced horses. No habituation occurred during the test weeks, and experience as a police horse does not seem to be a key factor in how these horses handle stress. All horses showed only modest behavioral responses, and HR may provide complimentary information for individual evaluation and welfare assessment of these horses. Overall, little evidence of stress was observed during these police training tests. As three of these tests (excluding the indoor arena test) reflect normal police work, it is suggested that this kind of police work is not significantly stressful for horses and will have no negative impact on the horse's welfare.

BackgroundEventing is generally recognized as a challenging equestrian discipline and wastage figures for this discipline are relatively high. There is a need for information that provides insight into the causes of wastage and withdrawal from competition, for animal welfare and economic reasons. The aim of the present investigation was to conduct a prospective study following the entire national selection of event horses (n = 20) and ponies (n = 9) in the Netherlands that prepared for the European Championship in 2010 (ponies) and 2011 (horses), noting causes of withdrawal and monitoring fitness using standardized exercise tests (SETs), with heart rate (HR; beats/min), speed (V; m/s) and plasma lactate concentrations (LA; mmol/L) as measured parameters.ResultsIn SET-I, performed at the beginning of the season, horses (n = 17) had a mean VLA4 (V at LA 4 mmol/L) of 10.3 ± 0.4 m/s with a mean V200 (V at 200 beats/min) of 11.4 ± 0.8 m/s and ponies (n = 9) a mean VLA4 of 7.8 ± 0.9 m/s and V200 of 9.6 ± 0.7 m/s. Before SET-II, performed six weeks before the European Championship, 16/20 horses and 6/9 ponies were withdrawn. The most common reason for withdrawal was locomotor injury (9/16 horses, 4/6 ponies; P < 0.001 and P = 0.011, respectively). Other reasons included an animal ‘not meeting the competition criteria’ (4/16 horses, 2/6 ponies) and being sold (3/16 horses). Animals were divided on the basis of VLA4 and recovery-HR during SET-I into good and average performers. Average performers were significantly more likely to be injured (50.0%) than good performers (0%, P = 0.05). In a subpopulation of ten horses, in which all condition training sessions were evaluated for HR and speed, HRpeak was significantly lower in horses that stayed sound (186 ± 9 beats/min) compared with horses withdrawn from training and competition because of injury (201 ± 5 beats/min; P = 0.016).ConclusionsOf the national selection, 45% of all animals were unavailable for the European Championship because of locomotor injuries. Field tests were useful in assessing the potential injury risk, as individuals with better fitness indices (good performers) were less likely to become injured than average performers. Furthermore, monitoring of training sessions showed predictive value for future injuries, as horses withdrawn because of injury later on showed already higher peak HRs during condition training than horses that stayed sound. Therefore the increase in peak HR seemed to precede visible lameness in a horse.