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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Anim. Sci.
Sec. Animal Physiology and Management
Volume 5 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fanim.2024.1416503
This article is part of the Research Topic Sustainability of Horse Production View all articles

Whip use in trotting racingeffects on speed change and finishing position

Provisionally accepted
Agneta Sandberg Agneta Sandberg Adam Flöhr Adam Flöhr Mirielle Melani Mirielle Melani Jenny Yngvesson Jenny Yngvesson *
  • Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The whip is used in several equine sports. This is intensely debated from a horse welfare perspective and putting the equine sports' social license to operate at risk. Trotting racing is one of the sports where whip use is allowed. The whip is used for making the horse accelerate (encouragement) and correction. The aims of the study were to investigate if finishing position among top three horses is affected by whip use, the effect of whip strikes on changes in speed at the end of trotting races and if whip strikes potentially comply with the training principle of negative reinforcement. Race videos were analyzed retrospectively, whip strikes were registered and compared with changes in speed, which could be read out of position data from the same races. The top three horses (n=48) in 16 races were studied. The number of strikes per horse ranged from 0 to 16, with a mean of 5.6. There was no difference in number of strikes received between horses in finishing positions 1-3, and whip strikes were most often followed by deceleration. Whip strikes followed by deceleration may be an example of negative reinforcement. Whip strikes to encourage trotting horses to run faster at the end of a race should be avoided from a horse welfare perspective. The safety aspects of whip use in trotting racing need to be investigated further.

    Keywords: Equine, welfare, Negative Reinforcement, Positive punishment, operant conditioning, trotting racing, Harness racing

    Received: 12 Apr 2024; Accepted: 16 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Sandberg, Flöhr, Melani and Yngvesson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jenny Yngvesson, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, 75651, Uppsala, Sweden

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