Positive Equine Welfare

Positive equine welfare is an emerging research area that shifts the focus from simply preventing suffering to actively promoting conditions in which horses can thrive. Traditionally, assessments of welfare centered on the absence of pain, injury, and disease, but current perspectives recognise that optimal welfare also depends on how horses feel, how they interact, and how well their environments meet their species-specific needs.

This multidimensional view weaves together physical health, affective state, behaviour, and ethology to build a fuller understanding of quality of life in horses.

This research topic aims to bring together research around the fundamental pillars of ethology, physical welfare, affective state, behaviour and personality with a focus on how these can be understood and optimised to enhance positive equine welfare. By curating a body of research across these dimensions it is hoped that further steps can be made towards promoting a life worth living that enables horses to experience comfort, pleasure, autonomy and social fulfilment across the contexts in which they live and work.

The scope of this research topic extends across the equine research sphere, including human-animal interactions, providing there is a link to enhancing positive equine welfare within the work.

We are interested in original research articles - including those derived from field-based studies, surveys, interviews and Delphi consultations - as well as systematic or scoping reviews and are happy to consider other types of manuscript not defined here.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Equine, Ethology, Behaviour, Welfare, Positive affect, Personality, Temperament, Human-animal interactions

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.