27/12/2024
Advocating for your horse 🐴
Your horse cannot advocate for themselves, they have to live in our world and rely on us to care for them.
Unfortunately in the horse industry pain/stress behaviours are normalised and seen as quirks/personality/behavioural problems. Many horses are managed in a way that is so far removed from their basic needs that we are used to seeing incredibly stressed and compromised horses, it has become the norm. Behaviour we should find alarming isn’t even noticed. People are taught to ignore the horse’s subtle communication and then when they shout louder it is seen as a problem behaviour that needs to be fixed.
The problem is the people who we’re told to look up to are still singing off their old hymn sheet. When you’re new to horses you’re supposed to be able to trust the yard owner who’s had a BHS approved livery yard for 40 years, or the natural horsemanship trainer everyone says saves horses lives or the eventer who’s competed at 4*. Surely all of these people understand horse behaviour, know how to give horses a species-appropriate lifestyle, can recognise signs of stress and train in the most ethical way possible right? That should be the case, but most of the time it just isn’t.
I remember being a horse-obsessed child at the riding school and being told to smack and shout at ponies who were nipping at me when being tacked up, “show them who’s boss.” These ponies stood all day tied up in stalls with no food, unable to turn around or see their friends, this was a BHS approved yard to the highest standard, as a ten year old child this was my introduction to horses and who was I to question these qualified professionals? I was told that horses were lazy, grumpy, naughty, bad-tempered, “just trying to get out of work”, cheeky, stupid etc. I’m sure we all have similar stories.
I remember handing my horse over to a trainer I looked up to and watching them continuously trot my horse on a small circle for 45 minutes to “soften them” and thinking, well it must be okay, they’re a top trainer and they seem confident and now the horse is looking softer.
I remember the exact moment the rose-tinted glasses really started to crack for me. I was doing a jumping exercise I had been given in a lesson on my horse Dan to make him more careful, it consisted of essentially setting him up to crash through a fence until it sharpened him up. I felt so uncomfortable about it but it took him crashing through it and falling to his knees twice for it to actually get through to me. I turned to my friend and just said I wasn’t going to jump him any more and I was worried he was going to get hurt. This was of course framed as me just being a nervous rider, but it was a pivotal moment for me.
I then pretty much quit horses and worked in London for 5 years while my horses were turned away and I went for the odd hack on my days off. I think being out of the industry completely made it much easier for me to have an open mind when I came back. I started learning about all of this stuff I’d never heard of like behavioural science, posture, pain ethograms and positive reinforcement training, all things I didn’t have a clue about despite working professionally in the industry on many different yards for a decade.
New horse owners are some of my favourite clients, they are fresh, they are excited to learn and they are yet to be indoctrinated into the stifling and unhelpful conditioning most of us have been through in the horse industry. I have come to the uncomfortable realisation that most professionals, whether they’re aware of it or not, are operating through a lens of how to make the horse comply so we can use them, rather than understanding the whole horse, what they need and what their body needs.
If all you see day in day out are horses with compromised posture being ridden into tight contacts, you’re going to think that’s what horses are supposed to look like. If all you see are horses living in less than ideal environments showing “bad” behaviour, you’re going to think that’s just how horses behave, you have nothing to compare it to so why would you blame the environment?
I suppose the point of this post is to give people who are doubting themselves the boost to continue speaking up for their horses. The amount of people I meet who have been belittled by vets, farriers, trimmers, bodyworkers, trainers and the yard expert when trying to do better for their horse makes me really cross.
It doesn’t matter if someone is “more experienced” than you. Experienced in what? Keeping horses in really stressful living situations for decades? Making horses do stuff despite their protests? Ignoring a horse’s communication of discomfort?
You are ultimately the only person who can really advocate for your horse. It doesn’t matter if you just met a horse for the first time yesterday, he is relying on you and if it doesn’t feel right it probably isn’t. There are lots of horse-centred professionals out there now, you may just have to sift through a bit. My inbox is always open if you’re struggling for support. 🐴
www.lshorsemanship.co.uk
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Kind, horse-centred training and support
