These findings demonstrate how heart rate monitors can help us understand a horse’s emotional and physical well-being in different environments. The objects consisted of three elements that were placed 8 meter apart: the horse had to walk under an arch with ribbons, in between a row of flags and umbrellas and over a plastic floor cover.

It was hypothesized that HRV parameters obtained from HRM and ECG were not significantly different during exercise when corrected for artifacts.

Once the physical condition of your horse has been assessed, you can then plan their training in according to the level of fitness they are at currently. Furthermore, stress in horses may also lead to stress-related behaviors such as flight responses which may be dangerous to the human leading the horses during groundwork exercises. Interpreting the data from your horse’s heart rate monitor involves understanding the average heart rates for horses in various states of activity. The solid lines indicate the upper and lower limit of the 95% confidence interval, respectively and the middle line represents the mean difference. The authors would like to thank Quinten Nijenhuis for his contribution to the practical work and associate professor P.

In hot weather conditions, heart rate monitors assist trainers and riders in adapting training schedules to reduce the risk of heat stress and heat stroke. An unusually high heart rate may result from stress or weather conditions unrelated to exercise factors.These results confirm a recent study that showed that HRM in exercising horses provide accurate data ( 18). The heart rate monitor calculates the horse’s heart rate in beats per minute (BPM) by measuring the time intervals between these heartbeats. As expected, heart rate significantly increased and the heart rate variability significantly decreased during groundwork compared to baseline conditions.

With the democratization of measurement tools, this information is becoming more and more accessible to all riders and their horses, no matter their age or level, and this is great news. If your horse’s heart rate is elevated even when they are in the paddock or resting it can indicate chronic stress. Our accurate hand held Heart Check Vet Check Kit, includes; Hand Held Heart Check, Transmitter, and our Enduro Receiver Watch. The Bland-Altman plot for the mean heart rate in beats per minute during baseline measurement, with the difference between sampling methods ( y-axis) plotted against the mean of the two methods ( x-axis). HRV is a parameter that can be measured non-invasively in horses and, if it could be applied in practice easily, this could be a useful parameter for monitoring stress in horses.

The exact Kolmogorov-Smirnov one-sample test was used to check Gaussianity of the data and showed that for the HR, SDNN, and RMSSD, the differences between the two compared methods were normally distributed. In the event that your horse exhibits heart rhythm disturbances, it goes without saying that their training should be broadly adapted to not put your horse or yourself in danger. Our results on an increased SDNN during groundwork are in agreement with some studies that demonstrated increased SDNN during transport ( 49) and transrectal palpation ( 50), but in contradiction to other studies on backward walking ( 4), restraint ( 51) or novel objects ( 30).