Do horses share their rider’s enjoyment of sporting and recreational activities?
It’s a question that was asked in February 2013 by Dr. Bidda Jones, chief scientist at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Australia. She was speaking at the fifth Equitation Science Annual Conference at the University of Sydney, and her remarks were reported by Horsetalk.
Jones said that, with the possible exception of police work, the things we make horses do are all carried out for the same reason: human entertainment.
She noted that horseback riding provides some pluses for horses, such as the provision of food and shelter by owners.
But, otherwise, she said there is little benefit for the horse. I would disagree. Some horses do seem to enjoy having a job, but this may be due to the fact that owners lock them up and bore them to the point that anything would seem better than doing nothing.
Jones said there was no moral justification for these activities, and she asked whether horses should be made to participate.
She said there is only public outcry after high-profile stories, such as a horse’s death during competition. But other issues are of concern, too, and the horse industry needs much more objective measures of welfare and a more sophisticated ethical framework than current laws or codes provide.
Her list of welfare issues includes:
Training and riding techniques that involve punishment or extreme control;
Use of specific types of tack that have a high potential to cause pain or distress, including double bridles, lever bits and cranked nosebands;
Use of artificial aids, such as spurs and whips;
Extreme challenges in competition that cause acute or chronic injury;
Housing in single stalls, inappropriate feeding;
Lack of long-term responsibility for horses, leading to multiple ownership.
She laid out a possible scale for evaluating horse welfare but said competition is an area difficult to address because “the nature of competition is to increase the level of challenge or difficulty, which comes into direct conflict with the concept of minimizing suffering.”
She urged her audience to remember that it’s the tractability of horses that makes them a pleasure for us to work with – but it also makes them vulnerable to abuse.
She said: “We must not take horses for granted and must strive to understand better our impacts on them and continually strive to reduce them. Which means reassessing what’s good, what’s normal, and what’s plain bad.”
My question would be: If horses don’t enjoy being ridden, then what?