12/26/2024
2025 is the year we need to be the grownups in the room. Everyone in the horse world claims to love horses, yet there are irreconcilable differences between riders and horse owners regarding abuse and neglect that cause so many horses to suffer.
This situation is very similar to an ugly divorce where the children suffer as a result of their parent's inability to resolve conflicts. In these divorces, the parents need to try harder to do better for the sake of the kids. Likewise, today's horsemen and women need to do better for the sake of the horses.
Here are three of the top irreconcilable differences in today's horse world:
(1) Too many horses - Slaughter vs. Anti Slaughter
(2) Ban equipment vs. Learning how to use it correctly
(3) Drugging vs. Training horses & riders to be better
(1) Too many horses - is a tough issue because no one wants to kill horses. But when the numbers get out of control to the point that feed and care resources become so thin as to harm horses, what do we do? It doesn't matter if they are wild BLM horses or horses from a backyard accidental breeding. They all face the same vulnerabilities of starvation, untreated illness and neglect.
The two sides in this anti-slaughter versus slaughter argument are locked in a rigid conflict with the anti slaughter people being the most vocal. Why? Because people who see the solution as slaughter don't want to march with signs on behalf of killing horses. Nobody does. But still, there is no compromise in sight resulting in countless horses suffering.
(2) Ban equipment - this irreconcilable difference is classic in the same way as "Guns don't kill people, people kill people using guns." Bits, spurs, and all the other objects on the equipment banners list do not hurt horses. Poor and aggressive riders misuse these tools and cause pain and suffering to horses. The underlying question is, if we ban "harsh" equipment, will it end abuse, or will poor and aggressive riders find other ways to abuse horses?
The alternative to banning equipment is educating riders and horse owners on the proper use of equipment, as well as establishing higher standards of honor and care through peer pressure in the horse community.
Like the divorcing parents, the ban versus education conflict has become a complete stalemate where the "kids", our horses, continue to be abused. In Europe, where countries have banned guns, we still see mass murders using knives, cars driven into town squares and more, including by illegal guns. Banning objects is faster and simpler while education is slower, more complicated and requires greater effort. The underlying question of what will work and be most effective in the long term never comes up in this stalemate.
(3) Drugging vs. Training - this dispute seems simple on the surface. Ideally, a horse should behave and be rideable without drugs. Almost everyone can agree on this. But how does the cultural context impact this question? Today, how many children are sent off to school after taking a pill? How many over wrought parents begin the day with "mother's little helper"? American water treatment plants, that process our sewage, are now finding residue from mood and behavior altering drugs in measurable amounts from our collective urine flushed down toilets.
Add to this the pace of contemporary life that is so demanding today that there "just isn't enough time" to do anything, including properly training horses and riders.
As with people, the pharmaceutical industry has "come to the rescue" for horses. We have become chemically mood and behavior altering culture, so why not add the horses into the mix? The answer is that with people there is a choice, but horses have no say in this choice. Additionally, riding a drugged horse can be very dangerous.
The top row of images depicts the ideal. Well fed wild horses roaming the open range, the skilled use of the double bridle and a rider being taught more skills is how it should be. The bottom row of pictures is instead the reality for too many horses. Malnutrition, abuse from misused equipment and horses being routinely drugged into a stupor so that fearful unskilled riders can ride them and win a ribbon is becoming more common than the ideal.
The entire horse community wants the ideal top row to be reality, but we have failed to make this happen. The bottom row of pictures represents our failure. To be fair, abuse and neglect have always been with us to a degree, but now that ugly reality is fast approaching the norm. This is because, while we all want the top row, we cannot work together to reduce or eliminate the bottom row reality. We are the collective "parents" who won't compromise to find solutions so the "kids" don't suffer. Shame on us.
In a few days it will be 2025. My hope for the new year is that we can all become better "parents". I hope we can begin to put aside rigid, selfish emotions like the need to be "right", and think only of the horses' well being in practical terms so we can improve horses' lives. No one is right as long as horses suffer.
