…You do better!

🐴 When you know better – you do better 🦄

Horse ownership, horse training and the horse world in general is a tough world. There are probably almost as many methods and beliefs as there are people in these scenes.

Once you start educating yourself, you start seeing things you never saw before. These things are hard to unsee. There’s plenty of truth in the saying “when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

You start questioning things….

Watch horses in competitions, are they actually scared and anxious and not excited as you once thought?

Watch horses in stables, weaving, cribbing or violently charging at their neighbors at food time…maybe that’s not ‘just what they do’? Maybe that’s them being so stressed and so deprived that they have invented ways to help themselves cope with the huge stress of stabling.

Watch the conversations in the tack room, listen to how horses are talked about. Are they really ‘acting up, misbehaving, trying their luck or being difficult on purpose’?

Watch horses in lessons, why is the instructor saying ‘more leg, kick harder, use the crop harder, show him you mean it’ and why does the pony have to endure it? Who is on the pony’s side? Who checks why the pony is unwilling? Who takes time to retrain?

Watch horsemen giving clinics, listen to what they say, then ask… is this fair for the horse? Is the horse given time, understanding and empathy or just endless orders? Does the horse understand what is asked of him?

After seeing the questions, you study, you learn and you evolve. And don’t ever be ashamed of your past. We are all on a journey!

And then, when you know better – you do better!

Photo by Natalia R.