#Equestrian Tips
Equestrian Social License
My values are listed on my website and include; Advocate of Equestrian Social License and Making a difference. Here are a few of my thoughts on this hot topic and your comments are welcomed.
Equestrian Social license is our right to participate, ride and enjoy Equestrian sports, by society. The judge, and potentially jury, is the community - people, who themselves may know little about horses. It affects all horse sport across the disciplines. At the extreme end, society believes horses should not be ridden but exist as grazing animals or pets, at the less extreme we may lose it as an Olympic sport. These people believe horses don’t want to do a sport, we’re hurting and forcing them, care takers and riders don’t look after horses needs and wants no more than the economical side to owning one, (they assume horses make people money) or horses should live in the wild. The list can go on further, it is a very serious topic that needs every horse person to spread collectively positive communication to the community that these beliefs are not well founded.
How do people form these opinions if they aren’t involved in horse sport? They see it on social media, coverage of the Olympics and Racing Carnivals, even at rodeo’s horses are a part of the show. When an incident occurs, it has wide and reaching channels that shake the social permission we currently hold to participate in horse sports. The non-horsey person doesn’t separate the many uses of horses so we’re all in this together. When an accident occurs, or a horse behavior that looks to cause a horse discomfort makes the news or social media, it is amplified and circulated to such a great extent that everyone’s Equestrian Social License is rocked and might solidify with time. If you see a post of a fellow horse person calling out another on any of the many trend topics like nosebands, side reins, western pleasure lope, rollkur, recent viral topics within our sport, consider if you’re part of a bigger problem and not part of the solution, like the deconstruction of the social license to ride horses in sport.
Learning how to compete with sportsmanship, horsemanship and qualified coaches makes riding your horse a fantastic and rewarding life experience.
The best way to help the above situations is to help at the level of associations, events, rules, coaching, education, or direct communication, not into the wind of social media. Post a positive and correct photo of what to look for in performance and be genuinely educated in the topic, unless you do harm to the very sport that gives us and horses a fulfilling life. Choosing not to comment is also a great way to stop this harm.
As horse people we could start a plight to deliberately mention to non-horse people one positive conversation every time you are outside your horse circle. If this was a conscious move done all over the globe, this would make a difference. Have something short prepared, like “ did you know horses, unlike the similar looking Zebra, truly like to be trained by people and enjoy using their competitive personalities?” or “I’ve never seen a little girl happier than when she is learning to care and ride a horse”. There is so many ways for increasing the social license to the community.
Horses like people and attention! Grooming is part of riding horses, who doesn’t want a back scratch?
I recently was at a bike store chatting to the attendant when I mentioned horses, he said he was glad horse sport was banned from the Olympics now because he thinks it’s cruel. I exclaimed it wasn’t banned, then I realized he was referring to the talk regarding the Pentathlon and the jumping. I made a brief comment that it was unfair to the horse and rules need to be revised, but luckily she didn’t own or normally ride the horse and dropped it. We changed subjects, but the next thing he said startled me. His fun outdoor thing was hunting with his pig hunting dogs. I’m not wanting to start a conversation about hunting pigs with dogs, however, to be told horse sport is cruel by someone who takes his dogs pig hunting I realized we are very off track with our social license.
We do have a big responsibility to the horse and how we ride, train and treat them. There are currently studies gathering data to use as a tool to identify indicators of horses discomfort, lameness and pain while in competition. These results will help coaches, riders and trainers to understand more deeply the behaviors of ridden horses doing our sports with some predictability of their safety and comfort to avoid outcomes no-one is interested in. This is more complex discussion for another time. For now, please be mindful of your photo’s, comments and sharing of posts that showcase our well-loved and knowledgeably competed horses in anything but good light. Stay informed on what is considered a poor training technique, overly long training of an upper level movement or a video that shows a fall or half a story, even if it’s funny in your eyes. Post nice photos and videos of horses doing their job easily, even if it’s just for the positivity of it with pats and smiles. Responding to other photos of different disciplines if it’s a positive photo helps bond the equestrian sports and our horse community. I can’t imagine a world where little people can’t dream of representing their country at the Olympics one day like my students and I did.
Competition horses are cared for, wrapped in cotton wool to travel!
