When I look at this YouTube video BayPony17’s video – Open Your Eyes – Horse Cruelty I am saddened.
What happened to the reasons people began to ride? Do you remember as a child, the joy of being with your horse, trying to understand him? Do you remember how his skin felt, his unique scent and all his likes and dislikes? Do you remember the first time he truly taught you something? Do you remember when you truly taught him something? When it was as though he could talk?
I was listening to psychologist and parenting expert Nigel Latta’s interview yesterday on Encouraging Lateral Thinking in Children, he said that if children and adults were asked the same thing ‘here is a pot of margarine, if we didn’t have a container, what else could we put it in?’ A child will come up with a range of funny and thought-provoking suggestions such as ‘in a monkey’, or ‘in your underpants’… whereas an adult will say – ‘well, you could use a bowl’. He noticed that people are sheep, they follow the crowd.
When did we lose this childish sense of looking at the world? Was it was trained out of us? Did we just fall asleep along the way? Perhaps along the line we were told how something should or shouldn’t be done, so we followed along. Perhaps we are in busy lives, too busy hustling and bustling to slow down, ‘be’ and take the time…
Perhaps it is time reawaken the child-spirit – to re-discover the horse.
Here is Klaus Hempfling helping a horse re-discover humans:
Related posts:
- Klaus Hempfling horse ‘mystique’
- Anky van Grunsven, Patrik Kittel and the horse’s blue tongue
- Klaus reveals horses ‘die inside’
- Rollkur use investigated by EponaTV
- Book Review: ‘Lessons in Lightness, the Art of Educating the Horse’
- Ethical dilemmas in horse ownership
- Equestrianism’s future
- Equestrian competition’s sad expose
- Competition & the 5 Freedoms of Animal Welfare revisited
- Do competition horses achieve the ‘Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare’?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
We are sheep! It made me think of a video a coworker showed me today. The Bystander Effect
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIvGIwLcIuw
We are so desensitized to violence against horses, it is so sad.
I think most of us got into horses because we wanted to spend time with them, and have a relationship. Once you become entrenched in the goal seeking competition adult life style, You lose sight of the actual reason you got into horses in the first place; Horses!
Molly – you are very perceptive! Thanks for bringing in The Bystander Effect (known to many psychology students), and a very good point that people become desensitized to violence against horses and fail to step in for the horse.
The Bystander Effect originated when Kitty Genovese was raped and murdered very publicly, within hearing of many people, yet no-one did anything. The ensuing supposition is that the more people that are around when something happens, the less likely you are to be helped. The feeling of the power of responsibility is diluted by the number of individuals present.
Which raises the issue of what is experienced at horse shows – especially large and international ones. People are aware that ‘everyone else seems to think it is OK’. From my experience, when I look at some of the photos I took at an international show, the expressions on the faces of people in the background told a different story – I think there were others present thinking the same as me.
A salient point is that do the sponsors of these riders and horses want their brand and name to be associated with a sport that at times contravenes animal welfare? This is something that could be useful in helping competition horses. Perhaps a polite but concerned letter to a sponsor might raise a few questions.
To be quite honest, I am saddened to see another manipulative piece of “bits cause pain” propaganda. Yes, they can, if mishandled. But we need to ask: what is unnatural – using a bit sensitively (it can be done!), or using a horse to jump over obstacles with a weight on his back? What is wrong – using established tools carefully to stay in control, or “win at all costs”?
People are sheep. They can ignore wrongdoing. They can also become talibanised, as a mob attacking all whom their leader objects to – whether that leader is a political demagogue or an opinionated loudmouth of the Fugly school. The anti-bit brigade is going this way.
If we want to root out cruelty, we need to start by aiming at the right targets.
It depends on the monkey* on the end of the bit or pair of reins, or bitless bridle, or riding crop…
This is where we have to be watchful of our own mind, actions and reactions, and to be trained and skilful in equipment use and the thing you can’t teach, but can only really be a student of the thing itself… ‘feel’.
(*not meaning any dis-service to monkeys!)