Go to any horse message board that you want and you will certainly have no difficulty finding a series of railings against various training techniques and devices viewed to be inhumane. Of course, nearly all of these devices and techniques are either inhumane or are, at best, subject to abuse.
The unfortunate reality is that focusing on these abuses serves only to perpetuate the root cause of the abuse. We labor under the silly delusion that horse showing, racing, and other forms of competition can be made pure by simply removing the bad aspects of that competition.
No, it is not the severe bit, soring of the legs, discarding of the imperfect competitors, or the over production of foals in the quest to breed 'quality' that is at the heart of the abuse, it is the competition itself.
When a child decides to train his horse to its maximum physical capability in order to see just what the horse and rider can achieve together the bond between horse and rider is strengthened. The instant that the child decides that she must test her horse against other horses and riders a fissure forms in that relationship. Its inevitable result is to reach the point of deciding to sell the horse in order to purchase one that can out compete other horses.
A system that teaches a 12 year old girl that she must sell her best friend because he can only win her a yellow strip of cloth and replace him with a 'better' horse that can win her a blue strip of cloth is a sick and perverse system. It produces neither better horses nor better people.
The malignancy that grows from this system is the concept that a horse's value is tied to its competitive success. The inexorable truth is that a horse's sales price increases with its competitive success, but sales price has no relationship to value. All horses, just like all people, are equal in value.
Every step that Tradewind takes on his once crippled hooves is priceless. Every log jumped over on the trail that produces a smile on the face of its rider is worth every bit as much as the highest rail in Olympic competition. Every horse that takes a kid on his first canter is worth as much as every horse whose canter pulls them away from pack and leads them over the finish line first.
The established horse world cannot be reformed. It cannot be repaired. But it can be replaced and natural horsemanship, natural horse care, and natural hoof care are the three pillars that a new horse world can be built upon.
It is not the bit, the whip or the spur that cause the most suffering to horses. It is the ribbon, the trophy and the winning purse that do so.
(This is a shot of Red Feather. I do not believe that he has ever been in a stable, but he found the living room of the Little House to be to his liking.)
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