06/14/2025
Yes and yes- love the book and the links she provides as well. Great info and great page to follow!
The call is coming from inside the house š“
I wrote this just before the Olympics last year but it is just as relevant now.
Iāve had a lot of conversations with my friends over the last week, not about āthe videoā as such because we didnāt find it particularly shocking, more about the reaction to it and the state of the horse industry as a whole.
Iāll tell you why I didnāt find āthe videoā shocking, someone in elite equestrian sport is using harsh, unethical training methods? Well yeh, and the sky is blueā¦. Iām so uncomfortable with the stuff that happens in the public eye, that many, including the governing bodies, seem to be okay with, that the video just fit right in with that for me. Also anyone who has worked with these horses, at that level, knows what goes on behind the scenes. It is common knowledge. To condemn one person and continue to praise and cheer on others who are known to be just as bad is tiresome, itās just theatre.
This isnāt a case of one bad apple, and we get rid of them and everything is fine. When you have a sport that involves an animal unable to consent and a judging system that rewards compliance above all else, that couldāve been any rider, in any yard, anywhere. I donāt really care who it is, the system is sick from the top down and the bottom up.
We are sold this fairytale of partnership and horses who just love their jobs so much, all smiles and big pats and feel-good stories. Brush aside anything that doesnāt fit the narrative, weāre really good at doing this as humans. We donāt want to acknowledge uncomfortable truths so our brain tries to protect us. But if we can start to acknowledge that we have all been indoctrinated and conditioned to some degree, maybe, just maybe, we can allow ourselves to sit with that discomfort a little bit and really look at what weāre doing.
Equine behavioural science is really inconvenient when it doesnāt match up with the story we want to be true. Instead of making real change there is a lot of welfare-washing going on and we eat it up because it makes us feel good. Donāt worry about those blue tongues or that blood, look at this woman kissing her horse on the nose after she falls off! Thatās true horsemanship right there!
We need to move away from the idea that abuse is just whips and blood. I have seen several professionals condemning āthe videoā while their own pages are filled with videos causing extremely high-stress with flags or schooling their over-bent, atrophied horses in tight flash nosebands. But these people genuinely think what theyāre doing is kind and good horsemanship, weāre really good at telling ourselves these stories. This isnāt about evil people secretly getting a kick out of harming horses, this is a systemic issue within the industry.
Where is your line? We seem to look at tools and equipment as our measure rather than what the horse is actually experiencing. We will condemn someone lashing a horse with a lunge whip but weāre fine with someone frightening a horse with a plastic bag on a stick in the name of training because they tell stories that make us feel good? Or the kids at the local clear round being encouraged to āpony-club kickā, growl and slap their ponies down the neck and calling it great, effective riding? Or the āproblem-horseā trainers who āsave horses livesā by continuing to get on them while they show extremely high-stress until they just give in and get used to it, but its kind because they pat them the whole time?
How often do we hear āyou canāt make a horse do anything he doesnāt want to doā and yet most of the training industry is selling you methods to get your horse to do stuff he doesnāt want to do. We have been indoctrinated into a world where high-stress behaviour is normalised, horses are kept in inappropriate environments and we are setting them and ourselves up to fail.
We cannot expect people to be reliable advocates for the horse when their whole career and identity is wrapped up in getting horses to do stuff. Its a really tricky road to navigate and I would be much better off financially if I just dropped my ethics and behavioural knowledge and went back to āgetting horses to do the thingā. Its so easy to spin yourself a justifiable narrative, I used to do it all the time.
This isnāt about āus and themā, this is about them, and me, and you, and if we can sit with the uncomfortable realisation that we have all been indoctrinated and somewhat conditioned to accept and justify poor treatment of horses because its convenient, we can all do our part to create a better world for our horses. I canāt force anyone to change their mind, but if youāre still reading this and youāve found yourself even slightly questioning things, I encourage you to sit with those thoughts and do some further reading. š“
A book I think everyone involved with horses should read is āLanguage Signs and Calming Signals of Horsesā by Rachael Draaisma.
If youād like to read more about the welfare issues within elite-level horse sport check out the book āI Canāt Watch Anymoreā by Julie Taylor.
The following pages are also sharing plenty of information during the Olympics and beyond EPONA.tv and Milestone Equestrian
www.lshorsemanship.co.uk
www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship
Pictured is my horse of 20 years Lenny enjoy some scratches, he brings me joy just by existing š„°
