One of my earliest memories is being read Anna Sewell's 'Black Beauty', a chapter a night, as a bedtime story. (Another is getting into big trouble over my attempt to draw a horse on the highly polished surface of a table with a sharp implement.)
At the same age as today's children might watch Paw Patrol or Peppa Pig I was immersed in TV Westerns - Wagon Train, Laramie, Bonanza and The Lone Ranger.
Both the book and the Westerns depict a time when the use of horses for transport and all kinds of work was at its peak, and when consideration for their welfare was mainly centred around keeping them sound enough to be of use and around ways of preventing them from displaying unwanted behaviours. The Western horses were seldom anywhere other than tied up sleeping outside the saloon, ready for the posse to burst out, leap aboard and gallop off after the bad guys, or standing fully tacked up at the camp fire, in case the cowboys had to spring into action to head off a stampede.
'Black Beauty' famously chronicles the life of a Victorian carriage horse whose voice, and that of his friends, is used to express Anna Sewell's concern for the unnecessarily cruel and inhumane treatment of many working horses in the 1870s; in particular her horse characters speak out against the very fashionable bearing rein, which forced them to carry their heads unnaturally high, and the subsequent decline in its popularity can be directly attributed to the way she publicised its use from the horse's point of view. Bear in mind that, at this time, the idea that animals other than humans could feel pain or experience emotions was a novel concept for many people. Of course, in preceding centuries many authors had advocated for treating horses with kindness and compassion, starting with Xenophon over two thousand years ago, but Anna Sewell's book was the first to be freely available to the general public, whose interest must have been piqued by her unique approach to her subject.
How much we have moved on from those days! Or have we?
Certainly, we have moved on in that, in the UK, Europe and the US, horses are no longer a necessity but a luxury, but otherwise, I think there are many examples of le plus ca change, le plus c'est la meme chose. Tight nosebands? Rollkur? Barefoot evangelists (don't shoot, I'll come back to it another time)? Obesity in the show ring? Soring in Tennessee Walking Horses? Over-rugging? Young horse futurities and championships? One of the saddest sights I've ever seen was two years ago at the Royal Highland Show: a show jumping horse, having jumped, was being led back to the stables by its rider and full entourage. The humans were chattering away happily, their entire focus on themselves, while the horse trailed behind, its head low and its apparently lifeless tongue hanging from the side of its tightly strapped shut mouth. As I watched it pulled its tongue back in, swallowed and then the tongue reappeared, lifeless again. What suffering, ignorance, indifference and careless cruelty was encapsulated in that one little scene.
The full range of human characters around horses described in Black Beauty is exactly the same today: the kind, the compassionate, the knowledgeable, the well meaning, the ignorant, the selfish, the thoughtless and the cruel.
I think the biggest change since Anna Sewell's time is that the use of horses has become much more fragmented and polarised - from high end competition, and therefore big money, through amateur 'grassroots' and 'happy hackers', to proponents of natural horsemanship and 'force free' training to folk who have talked themselves so far down the road of compassion that the right to use horses in any way is being questioned. Every one of these camps has its true believers and its vociferous critics, and such is life today that anyone wavering in uncertainty about which way to go will be bombarded with marketing - overt or otherwise - guaranteed only to increase their confusion further. Once the decision is made, the marketing doesn't stop, the emphasis just changes onto which kit to buy, how many supplements you need, to shoe or not to shoe, to stable or not, which trainer gets the best results, which method of behaviour modification is least stressful for the horse, who to follow on Facebook and whether or not your horse will love you in spite of it all.
I call this The Noise.
I believe we all have the capacity to Quiet the Noise. We can take a moment to remember the love of horses that brought us here, and we can commit to acquiring sound knowledge about the horse, his world and his point of view which can be verified by evidence and genuine principles, and not fashion. When we develop the capacity to step into the horse's space and look through his eyes, the Noise recedes and we can begin to become true horsemen.
At the same age as today's children might watch Paw Patrol or Peppa Pig I was immersed in TV Westerns - Wagon Train, Laramie, Bonanza and The Lone Ranger.
Both the book and the Westerns depict a time when the use of horses for transport and all kinds of work was at its peak, and when consideration for their welfare was mainly centred around keeping them sound enough to be of use and around ways of preventing them from displaying unwanted behaviours. The Western horses were seldom anywhere other than tied up sleeping outside the saloon, ready for the posse to burst out, leap aboard and gallop off after the bad guys, or standing fully tacked up at the camp fire, in case the cowboys had to spring into action to head off a stampede.
'Black Beauty' famously chronicles the life of a Victorian carriage horse whose voice, and that of his friends, is used to express Anna Sewell's concern for the unnecessarily cruel and inhumane treatment of many working horses in the 1870s; in particular her horse characters speak out against the very fashionable bearing rein, which forced them to carry their heads unnaturally high, and the subsequent decline in its popularity can be directly attributed to the way she publicised its use from the horse's point of view. Bear in mind that, at this time, the idea that animals other than humans could feel pain or experience emotions was a novel concept for many people. Of course, in preceding centuries many authors had advocated for treating horses with kindness and compassion, starting with Xenophon over two thousand years ago, but Anna Sewell's book was the first to be freely available to the general public, whose interest must have been piqued by her unique approach to her subject.
How much we have moved on from those days! Or have we?
Certainly, we have moved on in that, in the UK, Europe and the US, horses are no longer a necessity but a luxury, but otherwise, I think there are many examples of le plus ca change, le plus c'est la meme chose. Tight nosebands? Rollkur? Barefoot evangelists (don't shoot, I'll come back to it another time)? Obesity in the show ring? Soring in Tennessee Walking Horses? Over-rugging? Young horse futurities and championships? One of the saddest sights I've ever seen was two years ago at the Royal Highland Show: a show jumping horse, having jumped, was being led back to the stables by its rider and full entourage. The humans were chattering away happily, their entire focus on themselves, while the horse trailed behind, its head low and its apparently lifeless tongue hanging from the side of its tightly strapped shut mouth. As I watched it pulled its tongue back in, swallowed and then the tongue reappeared, lifeless again. What suffering, ignorance, indifference and careless cruelty was encapsulated in that one little scene.
The full range of human characters around horses described in Black Beauty is exactly the same today: the kind, the compassionate, the knowledgeable, the well meaning, the ignorant, the selfish, the thoughtless and the cruel.
I think the biggest change since Anna Sewell's time is that the use of horses has become much more fragmented and polarised - from high end competition, and therefore big money, through amateur 'grassroots' and 'happy hackers', to proponents of natural horsemanship and 'force free' training to folk who have talked themselves so far down the road of compassion that the right to use horses in any way is being questioned. Every one of these camps has its true believers and its vociferous critics, and such is life today that anyone wavering in uncertainty about which way to go will be bombarded with marketing - overt or otherwise - guaranteed only to increase their confusion further. Once the decision is made, the marketing doesn't stop, the emphasis just changes onto which kit to buy, how many supplements you need, to shoe or not to shoe, to stable or not, which trainer gets the best results, which method of behaviour modification is least stressful for the horse, who to follow on Facebook and whether or not your horse will love you in spite of it all.
I call this The Noise.
I believe we all have the capacity to Quiet the Noise. We can take a moment to remember the love of horses that brought us here, and we can commit to acquiring sound knowledge about the horse, his world and his point of view which can be verified by evidence and genuine principles, and not fashion. When we develop the capacity to step into the horse's space and look through his eyes, the Noise recedes and we can begin to become true horsemen.
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