I’ve been wondering about the current situation in equestrian sport. It seems that there is an increased interest from the media – after all, stories of Olympic Gold Medalists whipping horses “sell papers”. It also seems that many people’s threshold for what is unacceptable has been lowered. I would suggest this isn’t a bad thing.
How bad a place is equestrian sport really in? Worse than it’s ever been before? Or is it just that there is an increasing awareness within and outside the equestrian public? And more importantly, what immediate steps can be taken to improve sporthorse welfare?
While there has been a lot of talk and documents produced about SLO and protecting horse welfare, I’m not convinced of how much real change we have seen.
So what options are there?
♞Enforce the current rules
♞Modify the current rules
♞Introduce new rules
♞Greater education
♞Retraining of officials – stewards, vets, judges, etc
♞Stiffer penalties for abuse
As many have already suggested, there are rules in place to prevent many of the welfare issues we already see in horsesport. They just need enforcing. For example, aggressively riding horses with their heads on their chest in warm-up should mean immediate disqualification as a minimum. Intentional use of abusive practices, such as hypersensitisation, placing sharp objects inside boots, severe medication abuse using substances on the banned list (not borderline or accidental prohibited substances), etc should mean a lifetime ban (IMHO).
I worry that we are running out of time to police ourselves unless we take some real action that delivers clear and rapid improvements in horse welfare. Time to stop the talk and “walk the walk”.
