Pictured is Colida Twisted Lace aka Bijoux
Most people profess to love their horses and that their horse loves them. We usually try not to anthropomorphize animal emotions, but there is no doubt they grieve, form attachments, and have fears and likes. We often attach our emotional responses to our horses, usually very unrealistic ones. Horses are not spouses, boyfriends/girlfriends or children, but we clearly form attachments to them that are just as strong. We grieve their loss, worry about their injuries, and prefer certain horses over others. We love them deeply, obsessively, and sometimes that love comes with a heavy price.
Most good, healthy relationships are a partnership. A partnership requires each participant to put forth effort to help make it work. Despite media assertions all partnerships are not equal at all times. They usually exist in a state of constant flux with one partner at any given time doing more than the other partner. This ebb and flow usually works out to fairly equal in the end. Our partnership with our horses also has these ebb and flow periods. We feed, vet and farrier them, they allow us to ride and compete, possibly winning money and prestige. Sometimes they reproduce for us and give us a foal to sell or to raise to continue on competing. Many hours of our time with the daily drudgery vs a few hours of their time carrying us around and making us happy. It’s a relationship that works, until it doesn’t.
Now think about human relationships and how they affect the emotional and physical health of the people engaged in them. If your partner beat the crap out of you for a little mistake, or poked and whipped when you were working your hardest, you’d consider that relationship abusive and get out of it. Yet people constantly do this to horses and then wonder why a horse blows up one day, or starts to require a more severe bit in order to stop. And once that step is taken, when pain is added to the mix, it escalates the anxiety and adverse responses. It’s a very vicious cycle and people can’t seem to understand that the horse that nickers to get his food and enjoys being brushed is not the same horse you get once you use spurs and a nasty bit. Because once you choose to be unfair you’ve changed the rules of the relationship. You’re the domestic abuser that can behave in public or in front of your partner’s friends, but becomes a tyrant where you think others won’t be allowed to judge you. Most often this is the show ring, where every other trainer is using too much spur, too heavy a bit and promoting their dominance over their partner just to win a class. It’s an unbalanced relationship. Because in your mind the horse OWES you a good ride for all the other things you do for him. But in his mind you are the herd member that brings him food, brushes him, sometimes holds him while other people handle his feet or stick needles in him, and now you’re a brute causing him pain and making him do things he clearly doesn’t want to do. He’s not thinking in terms of what he owes you, because horses don’t understand the barter system. Because of this it’s an unfair system. It would be the equivalent of you demanding your toddler child pay rent or contribute to the groceries before you’d take care of him, even though you love him, you just can’t let him leech off of you. He’s got to owe you something, right?
I realize that a lot of you are going to jump up and talk about how competing is a business, and how if the horse can’t produce it might end up on a truck to slaughter. This is true, sadly it happens a lot. It’s an absolutely horrible aspect of the horse industry. In order to stay viable a trainer or breeder has to garner wins and in order to do that the horse has to produce. However, we all know that even after winning horses still fall through the cracks and end up slaughtered, just remember Ferdinand. I am 100% in favor of humane showing, breeding and industry practices. I am 100% against the deliberate blindness to abusive equipment, training practices and wholescale dumping of horses if they can’t compete. And the main propagators of all of these things are the trainer/judges that reward performances that can only be achieved through abuse and an industry that will NOT speak up and police its own. The fact that PRCA, NBHA, WPRA, NFR and others have no equipment rules that demand humane equipment and won’t ban things like twisted wire gag bits, brain chains, segunda and correction port mouthpieces, shows you how little they care about the partnership with the horse, and how much they condone abuse. I love to watch a good rodeo, I love to compete, but I can’t stand to see horse after horse getting its mouth ripped up by crappy equipment and heavy handed riding because their rider has decided to be the equivalent of the drunk guy in the wife beater and show them who’s boss. It’s ridiculous to watch a horse getting his ass beat as he enters an arena, around a pattern then whipped and spurred home and still hear people talk about it being a partnership and how much they LOVE their horse. It’s not a partnership; it’s a master/slave situation. If your partner did that to you the police would be called. If your boss treated you even a tiny smidge like you treat your horse you’d have HR all over him and a lawsuit to boot.
I’m sure several people will deliberately misunderstand me and accuse me of being for PETA or against riding, which is absolutely not the case. I love riding, love competing, love breeding, raising, training and promoting my horses. What I don’t love is the thought that one day one of my beautiful babies would end up in the hands of someone that thinks an unfair partnership is okay. It would be like watching my child be subjected to the violence of a spouse. I can’t promise that someone wouldn’t be feeding the fishes at the bottom of my pond.
I also understand the need for discipline and that some horses run a little hot or have some aggressive tendencies. It still doesn’t excuse abuse. You can discipline fairly. You may even need to use extreme measures during an emergency to restrain a horse. A breeding stallion can require a mouth or chin chain to keep him respectful of his handlers when his hormones are going crazy. However, we recognize that these are specific cases, we aren’t patting ourselves on the back and trying to pretend the horse likes it and simply tolerates it because he loves to get ribbons too. He doesn’t care about ribbons. He cares about food, being able to exercise, his herd mates, sex if applicable and being able to live his life without someone abusing him. So stop pretending you have an equal partnership if any part of it means your horse has to tolerate severe bits and abusive riding in order to earn his feed and care. Stop pretending your hands are soft enough for severe bits. Stop pretending your spurs are gentle cues when you’re flogging the sides of your horse every stride. Stop pretending your horse gets the same satisfaction from the relationship that you do, he cares nothing for checks, ribbons or bragging rights. Start working on communicating instead of subjugating. Improving yourself will absolutely improve your horse. Be fair, be just and be ready to take it to the next level by communicating without pain.
Copyrighted
Tracy Meisenbach
2020
Copyrighted
Tracy Meisenbach
2020
Trinity Appaloosa Farm
Do not copy or repost without permission.
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