There is a question I have been sitting with lately, one that does not have a clean answer but that I think is worth asking anyway.

Everything we do with our horses, the riding, the training, the competing, the hours of groundwork and liberty and quiet time in the field, is driven by us. Our interests. Our desires. Our needs. The horse did not sign up for any of it. We brought them into our world, gave them a job, and asked them to meet us where we are.

Most of the time this sits quietly in the background. We love our horses. We care for them deeply. We believe, often correctly, that what we offer them is a good life. And so the question stays quiet.

Then something happens. A horse breaks down. A soundness issue emerges. An injury that did not have to happen, that might not have happened, if we had not been pushing toward a goal, a clinic, a show, a particular moment of progress that mattered to us.

I have watched this land in clients with real force. I have felt this land deep within me. The guilt is not small. Neither is it entirely misplaced. There is something genuinely worth examining in the recognition that our horses carry the consequences of our ambitions.

I do not think the answer is to stop riding. I do not think it is to abandon our goals or pretend the desire is not there. The desire is real and it is part of what makes us horsemen and horsewomen rather than simply horse owners. But I do think the question is worth holding. Whose ride is this? What am I asking? Is what I am asking reasonable given where my horse actually is today, not where I want them to be, not where we were last week, but today?

The ethical life with horses is not a problem to be solved. It is a conversation to be continued. One that asks us to hold our own needs alongside a clear-eyed accounting of what we are asking of another living being who cannot advocate for themselves in the ways we can.

They give us so much. The least we can offer in return is the honesty of the question.

~ Paul

PC – Erin Gilmore Photography