09/07/2025
Your horse didn’t sign up for this 🐴
My friend recently sent me an article that was basically just belittling anyone trying to be more ethical with their horses, a running theme within the article was the idea that horses have entered into a “mutually beneficial” contract with us at some point. Because we feed them they must work for us and if we do silly things like groundwork and don’t ride them we are doing them a terrible disservice because you absolutely cannot treat a horse like a pet and do ridiculous things like cuddle them and give them treats. They're there to work!
Well I must’ve missed the memo because my boys definitely didn’t sign anything.
You can’t call something an agreement when one party has no choice in the matter. Regardless of how kind or ethical we try to be with our horses the truth is, unless we are turning our horses out on acres and acres of land and essentially leaving them to be feral, we control every aspect of their lives. Where they live, where they go, what they eat, when they eat, who they live with. Very few horses get to opt out of being ridden or jumping or dressage or hacking or whatever else we decide to do with them.
It is not your horse’s responsibility to stay sound and be a good jumping horse just because a bunch of humans decided that was his designated job and you paid £10k for him, and it is not fair to reduce his quality of life for your convenience. Unfortunately the industry is still full of people who think a horse’s life only has value if they can be ridden and some people seem to project this onto the rest of us who love our horses for who they are and not just what they can do for us.
When we understand the body and how taxing being ridden actually is for a horse, the idea that riding them is doing them some sort of favour becomes a bit ridiculous. It takes much patience, care and consideration to ride a horse in a way that isn’t detrimental to their body, they certainly aren’t designed to be ridden. I am so happy that people are taking steps to further their knowledge and try to become more ethical in their interactions with horses and I’m sick of people who are threatened by this trying to shame them out of it.
Feeling like our horse owes us something because we have spent x amount of money or given them what we deem to be the “perfect life” just breeds frustration. No matter how much money or effort you have put in, your horse cannot understand this. He is just out there being a horse and responding to the world the only way he knows how to.
So next time you’ve spent hours caring for your horse, just paid off your last vets bill, he’s broken his 6th rug of the season and he just will not “do the thing” in your training session, remember he is oblivious to all of this. He is just doing the best he can with the information, experiences and body he has available to him. The more we can learn about equine behaviour and healthy movement, the more we can empathise and move through these issues without feeling so hard done by.
Training becomes much more pleasant for us and horses when we start seeing issues as interesting puzzles to solve rather than feeling frustrated at a lack of compliance and feeling a need to make the horse “do the thing”.
And if you want to spend your time taking your horse for walks like a dog or teaching them to jump through hoops because that is what brings you joy then more power to you. Do not let other people’s nonsense justification for the way they treat their horses make you doubt yourself for a second. Friends, forage, freedom to move, freedom from pain and feeling safe, none of this requires you to sit on their back. 🐴
