(13 October 2012)

Last Thursday morning, at Uggiate in the province of Como, a horse suddenly escaped from the field where he was being "trained" and started running desperately.

He jumped the fence around the stable, then a hedge, then a railing above a garage. But after the last jump he found a drop of four meters: the crushing blow was fatal.

We don’t know - and we will probably never know – what caused the horse to panic and run. This is not a normal reaction for a horse that is calm and peaceful. Surely something happened, related to the field work and perceived by the horse as such a threat to his safety that he preferred to deal with the risk of the unknown rather than to stay there.

As a highly social animal, it is a horse’s nature to be in the company of his fellows, and not to run away, into the face of possible danger.

This story should make us reflect at length on the way horses are handled, often through highly incorrect methods: long-established practices, but based on a lack of knowledge of these animals’ ethological characteristics and totally unaware of how to manage them from a psychological point of view.