Re: Re: Re: David Boggs?? How about Us???

["C.M.Newell" <reshan@deyr.ultranet.com>]

At 06:35 PM 9/21/99 -0700, you wrote:
>I'm glad to hear that I am wrong about the ability to compete without
>shaving a horse's feeler whiskers.
>
>As to the horse's need for those whiskers to detect objects close to his or
>her face, these are the books which led me to that belief:
>The Behavior of Horses by Dr. Marthe Kiley-Worthington (J.A. Allen, London
>1987) p. 15
>"The nose and nostrils in particular are well supplied with whiskers and
>sensory cells and the nerves to relay the messages to the brain.  Like those
>of a cat they are used to test and 'feel' objects.  Surely it is outrageous
>behavior therefore to cut off whiskers for cosmetic reasons, like showing?
>The degree of suffering is probably similar to that caused when a horse is
>docked, now illegal in Britain on welfare grounds."

	I don't see any evidence there, merely conjecture. In the pitch blackness,
I'm sure they are helpful. In broad daylight, eyesigight does fine.
	Non of my stock has, when trimmed sustained injury from bumping onto
anything, and they are out 24/7, except whan actually *at* shows.

	(BTW, tail docking and tail setting are both illegal in Massachusetts, as
well.)


>
>The Horse's Mind by Lucy Rees (Arco Publishing New York 1985) p. 29-30
>"The whiskers have a large and important nerve supply to the brain, but
>while they are known to be touch receptors we know little about their
>particular function in horses.  They certainly tell the horse how far the
>end of his nose is from any surface: foals with whiskers still crumpled tend
>to bump their noses on things, 

	Please. Neonates are relatively uncoordinated. They have not fully
developed fine motor control, and likely don't see really well for several
days, either. Positing the bumping as due to bent whiskers is quite a stretch.


and horses wise to electric fences have been
>seen to test the current with their whiskers before touching the fence with
>the rest of their body.

	If anything, this would seem to me to be a good argument *for* trimming
whiskers <G>.


  Whiskers probably also give a horse a good deal of
>information about textures, as when grazing, so they may be important in
>feeding.  Cutting a horse's whiskers off for cosmetic reasons means
>depriving him of one of his vital senses: 

Depriving him of a sense of touch? No more so than perhaps blunting it as
much as you might be in a pair of gloves. Are you sensorially crippled by
gloves?


>  The same holds true for the hairs inside a horse's
>ears which protect his delicate eardrums from dust and invaders: to shave
>them off is to ask for trouble."

	Whoa. You've jumped from facial hair to ear hair. Personally, I do not
trim the hair from the inside of my horses' ears, as they are out. However,
I have seen a *lot* of horses over 12 years as a DVM and many years as a
hunter/jumper groom/manager, and I have yet to meet one that has suffered
damage to the ear as a result of trimming the hair.
	

>
>I don't know of any studies which would dispute these conclusions. 

	Show me a study which supports it. What you have quoted above is opinion
and conjecture. 


 However,
>my central point was that so far as I know endurance does not encourage any
>activity which would be inherently bad for a horse. 

	There are a lot of horsepeople who would think that riding a horse 100
miles in less than 24 hours was more harmful than trimming its whiskers.


 Certainly, any given
>individual can harm any horse or any one else, but I think the sport itself
>is in the best interests of horses.
>

	Best interests? I hardly think so. A horse's best interests would likely
be served by good pasture, company, trims, and maintenace medical care.
	Endurance riding isn't anything a horse *needs*.


>Anyway, thank you for your response to my post and for letting me know that
>this practice is not mandatory for people who wish to show their horses.  I
>agree with you that most people just want to show off the horses they are so
>very proud of, and that motivation is natural and a good thing.
>
	True. I do have major objections to folks who sand the hooves to make them
patent leather shiny, and have said so to them when I see them doing it.
But clipping facial hair--which grows back very quickly, BTW, does not fall
into the category of abuse in my book.

				--CMNewell


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