As the ice outside my front door is almost an inch thick and I haven’t seen my horse in five damn days, why not wade in to the latest equine related hubbub? I’m not going to dig up links or anything, so here’s an outsiders quick summary:

Some previously hot shot Hunter/Jumper rider from the 80’s turned trainer was giving a clinic for specially invited young H/J riders, on borrowed horses in Florida. Now, I didn’t listen to the whole clinic, but I did watch a three minute video someone had made of the “highlights” (more like “low lights”) of the clinic. It was a bunch of garbage that as a thirty something year old who has developed my own ability to filter out said garbage and practice in removing myself from situations I don’t agree with, I would have immediately packed up and left. But this was a bunch of junior riders on high dollar borrowed horses, supposedly the future of hunter/jumpers to represent USEF, so their ability to leave when they’re being bullied and shoveled full of junk is a lot less.

I’m sure as some folks defend this trainer that some of the content of the clinic was technically helpful, but these comments over shadow everything. It was all stuff I’m sure we’ve heard before, “make the horse do the thing, if they don’t do it, bully them into it, let them hurt themselves” instead of backing off, giving space, problem solving. Some of it was straight up, Safe Sport trained coaches are supposed to know better bullying. Language like this doesn’t build better athletes or happier horses, it diminishes the entire relationship between rider and horse, the whole reason most of us get into riding. It opens the door to completely valid criticisms of our equine based sports and how we treat both our juniors and our horses.

Equine sports are unique in that it’s not just our human youth we’re supposedly trying to “toughen up” to be better, we’re also dragging along an animal into our choices. Bad as it is (and it is awful) to bully our kids, it’s another shade of stupid and wrong to include the horses in the bullying. One only has to peruse the headlines one Google page deep to know why this “I was treated this way and turned out fine!” style of coaching leads to downright abuse, unhappy adults, and diminished in the public eye. There is a difference between plain or direct language and bullying, and good coaches should strive to find this balance, not let their inner demons barf all over kids and horses just trying to have a good day. I’m thinking that this style of “coaching” is one aspect of the diminishing horse ownership and sports participation we’re seeing. Who wants to pay good money only to be bullied, yelled out, and directed to beat your horse into compliance for fun?

Now more than ever, the social license to operate, or thrive, has to be at the forefront of every decision we make in regards to our horses, especially our competition or sport horses. Our decisions must be horse first, ethical, and defensible beyond “They’re treated like royalty, so it’s fine how we ride them an hour a day!” We are each responsible for finding our way to better horsemanship, every day. We have to review what we know and how it fits in the context of “Is my horse thriving?” I follow a slew of horse people through various social media channels, and most of them are more eloquent on this topic than I, even when I don’t quite agree with them. Keystone Equine is a beautiful author and trainer in Canada, and so much of what she writes makes absolute sense to me…until she gets talking about a finished bridle horse in a giant spade bit. Lockie Phillips sums up his path well, “Science, Empathy, Feel.” Warwick Schiller and his style of woo have immensely helped Tarma and I. There are so many good or better horsemanship ideas, methods, and practices available to us today, but just as much questionable, baby out with the bathwater weirdness to sort through. Some of what we learned as kids is still valid (never put away a wet horse); a lot of it can straight up be left by the wayside.

For my part, I’m finding my way between those who would never ride (or really interact) with their horses at all, for fear of ever putting pressure on a horse, and those who still embody the “just ride out the buck” mentality. I chose my sport of endurance in large part because the ethics of it (Region 7 notwithstanding) are solidly defensible to me. I can make horse first management decisions and they help her thrive, both for herself and for our sport. I have no arbitrary tack rules to follow, only the trial and error between Tarma and I with an emphasis on comfort and communication. For those that wrongly cry “You can’t force a 1200 pound animal to do anything!”, endurance does fit this the most of any equine sport I know of. Short of the vehicle based hazing you see in Region 7, it really is quite hard to get a horse that doesn’t want to be motoring down the trail to do so, whereas it’s perfectly possible in other sports to coerce and bully a horse into jumping or reining or what have you, as prey animals horses hide pain and internalize stress to get along.

On the flip side, it’s also possible to see just stunningly beautiful jump courses, cow sorters and hunters that are clearly happy to be flying along with their human. Why wouldn’t we, as people who love horses, want to see more of actually happy horses and riders in love with them in our publications and social media? We all need to get to a point where when we see a horse behind the vertical, with a gaping foamy mouth, we don’t shout “It’s just a moment in time!” We need to ask to see the video, see the ring steward’s statements, and then go, “That’s not defensible. Change it.” Call out abusive, bullying language in the moment; I promise you, it’s a lot rougher on the person it’s directed at than you. Share with the kids how you developed a discerning eye and that ability to say, “No, this isn’t right”, (they are listening!) Love your horses, and thank them every day for just being themselves and along with us.