That Telegraph Article
"Why it might be time to stop horse riding"
You may or may not have seen this article recently published by the Telegraph (you can find it here - warning it is paywalled) but it has caused a stir in the equine community.
The biggest thing I have noticed after reading it in full, is that many people have commented on social media that they have not read it due to the pay wall and are enraged due to the title. The title doesn't shine a good light on people who enjoy horse riding, but it is eye catching and designed to anger people.
There are equally good points (showing what we do is good for horses) and also bad points (show how welfare is compromised). It is a good balanced debate on the welfare situation across many horse sports.
Yes, there are all the things we can't deny like the high volume of racehorses being bred, horses are often punished for their behaviour, many horses being sent to the slaughter house when they are no longer useful in sport, the CDJ video, and polo bits causing harm. But there are also good mentions of the development of Sue Dysons ridden horse pain ethogram to gain an understanding of pain in sport horses, Kelly Marks intelligent horsemanship, and Dr Andrew McLeans groundbreaking work in equitation science. There will always be bad people out there, but there is so much good too.
The article does end on a good, welfare, forward thinking note - calling for camera angles to show spacing between the horses noseband and the nasal bone and for horses to be scratched rather than patted.
The head line is eye catching and designed to cause a stir, that's the point. We should talk about this, we should be uncomfortable so that we can make changes.
I was made uncomfortable as a teenager seeing horses being hit and tied down, so I looked for alternatives. I looked for Monty Roberts and Parelli, eventually learning about Equitation Science and McLeans work in college.
The article doesn't seem to want to stop riding, to me it read as - we should do better.
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