CHANGING WHAT YOU SEE – BEAUTY OR ABUSE?
CHANGING WHAT YOU SEE – BEAUTY OR ABUSE?
There is an advertisement that has appeared in my Facebook news feed. The advertisement features a young horse who has only been under saddle a number of weeks and is for sale for a lot of money. There are photographs of the horse and even a video. The trainer has captured lots of footage of the horse and even the first rides out of the round yard, the horse’s first trot, first canter….first time in an indoor arena. The advertisement has many “likes” and many comments about how flash the horse is….and it is flash, its black, its legs are elevated out in front, its poll high and neck round and it is moving with energy.
The images of this horse trigger off powerful associations in my mind…images that represent the horse and all its power and beauty. But today, I see more than that….I see the lack of rhythm in the foot falls, the stiff hind leg, the damage to the cervical vertebrae in the neck, the hollowing of the back, the way the horse’s natural balance has been disturbed appearing in its gaits and the tension and discomfort on the face of the horse. I also know the problems this horse will face down the track - a chain of damaging physical and mental consequences that have been triggered from forcing a posture on a horse it is not ready for.
The images of this horse represent a problem with our humanness, our ignorance and powerful social influences within the horse community about what we expect to see, we should see and what is okay to see! The truth is the way this horse has been trained is destructive to the horse and we need to become outraged about how our community is so blind to abuse that we click “like” on Facebook in appreciation of it!
But here is the thing….outrage with others and pointing fingers at people and calling people out does not work. It is also grossly unfair. That is no way to change what people think is beautiful or right or okay….even if you have a pile of scientific evidence to back you up…it just upsets people and gets their backs up. The trainer of this horse in this advertisement could have been me just a few years ago! I wasn’t training “incorrectly” by intention and to be honest I am still learning how to even train “correctly” and there would still be elements of the way I do things that I am sure I will discover in time are not a good idea, I am just not yet aware! But I am trying and this trainer is trying and to change the world you need to tap into every single person’s try and inspire it, not attack it.
So where do we direct our outrage?
We direct it straight back into ourselves and use that drive to inspire the growth of our own knowledge of horses, how to care for them and to develop our skill in training them in a way that their life is not held together by calming pastes, joint supplements, steroid injections, bar-shoes, pads or a team of horse chiropractors, physiotherapist, equine vets or retired at the ripe “old” age of 12 (just like some of my horses!). Above all we must work bloody hard and put in effort to read, listen, watch, ask questions and get out there and practice and embrace mistakes and prepare to struggle….because that is how you create change.
In the wise words of Socrates:
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
We need to build a new world where our eyes can differentiate between good training and training that can be mentally and physically damaging so that we can see the beauty in a 3 year old horse being ridden in its natural head carriage, minus a contact, just calmly moving in its natural gaits, allowing it to find its own natural balance…..we need to see how this is an essential and important part of a horses early training and that sets its future for soundness and success.
Now ask yourself – which of the horses in the graphic does your eye find more attractive if I told you this horse was 3 and under saddle a few weeks??
